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Cracking down on killing machines

April 1, 2019   ·   0 Comments

ANOTHER MASSACRE grabbed headlines around the world over this month.

Newspapers, social media, television broadcasts and radio replayed the senseless violence on Muslims at prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand. Fifty were killed and another 50 were injured. This occurred at two mosques, with only one person facing charges as a result.

It seems as though gun violence, especially in large quantities, has become the norm in the world. This shouldn’t be the case and is due, in part to lax fire arm laws .

The number of gun deaths worldwide had reached 6.5 million by 2016, according to The Economist. Three-quarters of gun deaths occur in 15 countries, United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Ethiopia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, India, Thailand and the Philippines. 

Latin America has some of the most violent countries by murder rate. Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela are the top three countries for deaths by guns per population. These countries, however have some of the worst corruption, organized crime and dysfunctional criminal justice systems that further fuels the problem. 

In North American, an estimated 200,000 guns per year are first sold in the United States, then smuggled over the southern border and used in violent crimes in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Until this month, violent massacres were not heard of in New Zealand. Before the deadly attack in Christchurch, the last mass murder occurred in 1997 in a small north town of Raurimu where six people were killed and four wounded, according to the New Zealand Herald. The perpetrator was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. 

In the wake of the tragedy at Christchurch, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has already taken new action by overhauling the country’s gun laws to ban assault rifles and compensating the owners who have to turn theirs in. 

The country’s cabinet already agreed in principle to the reforms, along with a public inquiry to examine whether security agencies should have known about the attacker’s intentions before the shooting took place. 

New Zealand and the United States were similar in their approach to guns. Both were among the only nations without universal gun registration rules, and both have strong gun lobbies that have stalled previous attempts to rein in gun owner’s liberties, according to the Washington Post.

One country with a low rate of gun violence is Japan. A country of more than 127 million people, there are no more than 10 gun deaths a year, according to Business Insider. Toronto usually has that many in any given month.

Japan has rigorous gun regulations enacting gun control from the stance of prohibition.  

If Japanese people want to own a gun, they must attend an all-day class, pass a written test, and achieve at least 95 per cent accuracy during a shooting-range test. Then they must pass a mental-health evaluation, which takes place at a hospital, and pass a background check, in which the government digs into their criminal record and interviews friends and family. They can only buy shotguns and air rifles – no handguns – and every three years they must retake their class and initial exam.

The country has also embraced the idea that tougher gun laws will cause fewer deaths. 

In the U.S., the constitutional right to bear arms has led to looser regulations and easier access to firearms. This contributes to the 30,000 men, women and children being killed by guns each year. 

A question that should be asked here as well as in the U.S. is whether there really is any need for any civilian to own an automatic or semi-automatic firearm.

Although the gun lobbies in both countries would object to the laws being passed in New Zealand, which are apparently modelled on those in Australia enacted after another massacre in the 1990s, we would love to see the rational basis for such opposition,

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