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Xinhua News Agency, Washington, December 17 (Reporter Chen Cong) A shooting occurred in Connecticut, USA on the 17th, and 20 students were brutally killed. This shooting has once again triggered a debate on gun control in the United States. But whether this terrorist incident can change the trajectory of this debate and produce tangible results remains to be seen.
A bloody year for gun violence
In 2012, more than a dozen mass shootings occurred in the United States, killing nearly 100 people. It was a bloody year that destroyed many families and left the survivors with scars that will never heal.
In one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history and the latest in a series of mass shootings, a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20 children aged six or seven and six adults on Friday.
The gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, killed his mother and then drove to the school to carry out the shooting. He sprayed bullets into two classrooms before shooting himself. All 26 victims were reportedly shot more than once, some as many as 11 times.
The incident comes just months after a massacre at a movie theater in Colorado, western United States, in which a gunman opened fire on a crowd of moviegoers during a midnight screening of the new Batman movie, killing 12 people and injuring 70.
In another high-profile mass shooting in August, a white supremacist shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before killing himself.
Other major shootings this year include one at Texas A&M University in August, where a 35-year-old man killed three people, including a police officer, and in April, an alumnus of Oikos University in Oakland, California, killed seven people in an execution-style shooting.
Calls for stricter gun control
Mass shootings have occurred so frequently this year that many Americans seem to have difficulty recalling each incident, and discussions about how to combat gun violence in the United States often die down within a week of each shooting.
But some experts said things may be different this time, stressing that most of the victims of Friday’s shooting were children 7 years old or younger.
“The large number of fatalities, coupled with the deaths of 20 young children, gives this issue a human dimension that we have never seen before,” said Darrell M. West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
In the past, the Democratic Party has always been hesitant about gun control, fearing that it would lose the support of some core voters. West told Xinhua: “The Democratic Party has always been afraid to touch the gun issue, fearing that it would make them lose the support of rural voters. This time the situation may change.”
Indeed, calls for stronger gun laws have grown louder in the wake of the Connecticut shooting. U.S. President Barack Obama, visibly shocked by the incident, said Friday that “meaningful action” should be taken “regardless of politics to prevent more tragedies like this from happening.”
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that she plans to reintroduce a bill that would restrict the possession, sale and transfer of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an outspoken gun control advocate, said on the same show that addressing the issue should be at the top of President Obama’s agenda.
Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said Friday: “In the name of the children and teenagers who die every day in our country from guns … we must use this horrific moment as a catalyst to demand long overdue, smart changes in our country.”
But gun owners’ rights groups such as the National Rifle Association are expected to push back against any measures they consider unfair.
Gun owners have long argued that too much gun legislation puts more guns into the hands of criminals — who often obtain them illegally — and deprives law-abiding citizens of the ability to protect themselves against robbery, burglary, rape, murder and a host of other crimes.
Some gun rights advocates also argue that mass shootings often occur in gun-banned locations like movie theaters and shopping malls, allowing mass shooters to kill as much as they want without having to worry about being shot themselves.
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