Tag: gun control

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Gun laws and who to blame

Australia had Port Arthur. Since the swift response by Canberra to restrict gun use, there has been one mass shooting in 2019.

New Zealand witnessed a gunman kill 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch. According to NBC news, lead Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to announce plans to ban nearly all military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles on the Thursday six days after the unfortunate event.

The United States has had Dayton, El Paso, Parkland, Las Vegas, Columbine, and more. The United States’ response? The Independent reports that Walmart has removed video game advertising.

For years, the American public has grappled with the reality of mass violence. It came in many forms; in schools like my high school, Columbine, to the more recent hate crime in Texas and the random attack in Ohio.

Since Columbine High School just over 20 years ago, the general tendency was to blame video games. The link is not completely insignificant, but not a sole factor either.

“But the story isn’t that Republicans are blaming video games,” according to Vox.com. “It’s that they’re blaming anything other than lax gun laws and the huge number of firearms in this country.”

Kean University assistant professor Allison Paolini wrote an article on Counseling.org pointing out the role of mental health in gun violence. Every human being is at risk of mental health problems, and yet, according to Paolini, America is the only recipient of routine mass violence.

Politicians in my home country will cry every species of wolf before addressing the real problem: easily accessible guns.

“Following a series of mass shootings in the US in recent years,” according to the BBC, “there has been little in the way of sweeping gun-control reforms.”

This disturbing trend has to stop. The blame has been thrown every way, and yet nothing has changed. Attributing these actions to virtual reality’s effect on human beings enables people in power to properly handle the situation.

The recent societal outrage towards video games has happened before, to no avail. The link between video games and violence has been proven by Oxford and the National Center for Health Research to be nominal — both found that games contribute insignificantly towards aggression but not towards violent and criminal acts.

The American Psychological Association found opposing results, finding a link to “increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior.” However, most other studies verified the former statement, not the latter.

It’s one thing to place blame, but there are powers at play that avoid even banning games as a potential solution. Not that legislation against video-games will do anything except potentially infringe on first amendment rights of game makers.

Large capacity magazine ban, assault weapons ban, bump stocks ban, or even universal background checks; all solutions the New York Times stated has been debated and shelved by lawmakers. Any of these are viable options to slow down these attacks; yet none have passed.

Until we see some remote semblance of action to save lives, be it in better rating systems for entertainment, improvement in mental health screenings, or the gun control that my country has clamored for, the counter will continue to roll up. There is no one solution, but inaction is certainly not the answer.

 

Graphic by @sundaeghost

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News

Montrealers march to support Parkland teens

Montrealers marched on March 24 in support of victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting. Photo by Mackenzie Lad

A month after Florida tragedy, hundreds of protesters demand gun control reform

“A year ago, I was sitting in the classrooms of Stoneman Douglas,” said Cyril Yared as he waited for the rally to begin. “I still have two sisters who are there.”

While millions have heard the horrific story of the Feb. 14 school shooting that took 17 lives in Parkland, Fla., for Yared, the tragedy is personal. Now a first-year McGill student, Yared graduated last year from Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD), the high school where 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on teachers and classmates. While Yared’s sisters, who were both at school on the day of the shooting, were unharmed, Yared did know Carmen Schentrup, a 16-year-old girl who was killed by Cruz.

“I knew that one day the world would know her name—perhaps because she found the cure for cancer or some other extraordinary reason,” Yared said about Schentrup, whom he says remembers as a bright, ambitious student who took classes several grades ahead of her level. “She was left as evidence of another community shattered by the sound of gunshots.”

Yared was one of three Parkland residents who spoke at the rally in Cabot Square in downtown Montreal on March 24. Debbie Desmettre, a 1997 MSD graduate, and Ellen Malka, a mother of two MSD students, also gave stirring speeches.

“Our community, our peaceful little Parkland, was attacked,” Malka said. “These kids experienced things that nobody should ever have to.” She added that, while her children were not physically harmed in the shooting, one of them was traumatized by the sight of the victims’ bodies during the evacuation.

“Although this is an American issue, we feel it is our duty to stand in solidarity with our neighbours,” said Sophie Saidmehr, a McGill student and one of the two primary organizers of the local protest. “This is no longer a partisan issue; it is simply a question of our humanity.”

After the speeches, protesters marched along Ste-Catherine Street West and René-Lévesque Boulevard. Many protesters brandished signs with politically charged messages, including “Protect Children, Not Guns,” “Never Again” and  “We Call B.S.”—a reference to MSD student Emma Gonzalez’s now-famous speech given at a gun control rally in Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 17. Throughout the march, chants among the crowd included “Take no pay from the N.R.A.” and “Vote them out.”

The event, which gathered hundreds, was a sister march to the one held in Washington, D.C., which organizers estimate was attended by about 800,000 people, reported NBC News—300,000 more than originally predicted.

The protest, officially called March For Our Lives, was created in response to high rates of gun violence in the United States. According to Time, there have been 239 school shootings in the United States since 2014, resulting in 138 deaths. Many statisticians, activists and mass shooting survivors believe the astonishing rate of violence is connected to the country’s lax gun laws. In some states, weapons such as AR-15 style rifles can be purchased without a background check or waiting period.

For a long time, the cycle has seemed never-ending: another highly publicized, deadly mass shooting would occur, from Columbine to Las Vegas, and little political action would be taken after the news cycle ended. However, following the Parkland shooting, a number of teenage survivors voiced their outrage on social media and in the press, adopting the role of gun control advocates. In collaboration with the non-profit organization Everytown For Gun Safety, a number of MSD students, including Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg and Sarah Chadwick, organized the original demonstration in the capital.

Since the protest was announced in the days following the Parkland shooting, more than 800 sibling marches were planned across the globe. Other Canadian cities, like Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and St-John’s, also participated.

Despite the topic of gun control often being labeled an “American issue,” some Montreal protesters handed out flyers opposing the fact that AR-15s, the weapon used in the Parkland and other high-profile shootings, are also legal in Canada. There are, however, tighter restrictions on these weapons here than in the United States, such as mandatory background checks and a cap on the number of ammunition rounds that can be owned at one time, set at five.

After just a few weeks, the Parkland shooting survivors have already made significant progress in passing Florida gun control legislation by pushing Senator Marco Rubio to endorse certain gun control measures. However, Yared said there is still work to be done, and it’s important that Canadian and American citizens who are concerned about this issue register to vote and speak with their government representatives.

“This march is just one step,” Yared said. “We just have to keep going forward […] We’ll have to fight at the polls to get the change that we want.”

Photos by Mackenzie Lad

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Opinions

A first step in the march for change

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

Most people are familiar with the phrase: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” On March 24, that change manifested itself in the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., and hundreds of other cities across the United States. Although the march was organized by American students to protest against weak American gun laws following a lengthy streak of shootings in American schools, thousands of Canadians marched in solidarity on Saturday. The ability of a group of Florida teenagers to spark a transnational demonstration is courageous, inspiring and a major step toward effecting real change.

We live in an age where mass shootings are normalized in the United States—or at least they were until about six weeks ago. So far this year, there has been an average of more than one school shooting every week in the United States, or a total of 17 shootings in 12 weeks, according to CNN. While Canadians should be proud to support our neighbours to the south in their fight to improve gun control, it’s important to remember we are not immune to the problem in our own country.

There were 13 shootings—two of which were fatal—in Ottawa alone in January 2018, reported CBC News. This equals to 40 per cent of the shootings recorded in the city in all of 2013. Of the 34 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, Canada has the fourth highest rate of death by firearm, according to The Globe and Mail. The rate in Canada is more than twice that of Australia and 10 times the rate in Britain.

Effective gun control has been terminated at the federal level, and gun circulation in Canada has amplified. According to The Globe and Mail, the Harper government overruled the RCMP’s ban on military assault weapons, and eliminated the legal requirement that the sale of shotguns and rifles be tracked. Today, people with gun licenses in Canada can buy an unlimited number of unrestricted guns (i.e. shotguns and rifles, among others), and there is no record kept about any of these purchases. Gun owners in Canada can also avoid background checks because of automatic six-month license extensions that kick in if they fail to renew their license on time. Additionally, from 2012 to 2016, the importation of guns to Canada almost doubled compared to the previous four years—increasing from more than one million to just under two million, according to The Globe and Mail.

So while most of the news media turns its attention to the overwhelming number of massacres in the United States, it is undeniable that gun violence and a lack of gun control are problems in Canada as well.

As Canadians, we should be proud to stand against the people who deem corporate greed and political gain more valuable than the innocent lives of children. We should be proud to support anyone who tries to effect positive, peaceful change in a world that seems increasingly polarized and violent. Canadians should take inspiration from the brave voices and powerful words of young Americans, and make sure our own government understands that weak gun control will no longer be tolerated here either. We should all be determined to end gun violence and school shootings.

A school should be a safe space for everyone. It’s where we go to learn, to flourish and to create a future for ourselves. It is outrageous that shooting drills have become as commonplace in schools as fire drills. Parents should not drop their children off at school fearing they’ll never see them again.

Change comes slowly, but we at The Concordian believe it will come. Children are the future, and Saturday’s march was just a taste of the future these courageous young people will build for themselves. The people in charge can not be relied on to protect that future, nor should it be solely their responsibility. As the students of Parkland high school continue to show us, we must become the change we wish to see in our world.

Graphic Alexa Hawksworth

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Opinions

The real reason behind gun violence in the U.S.

Graphic by Zeze Le Lin.

Blaming mental illness for shooting massacres is offensive and misleading

Blaming mental illness for gun violence is not okay, and I believe President Donald Trump is only causing more harm when he encourages the use of guns to supposedly prevent gun violence.

On Nov. 5, a gunman opened fire at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, reported The New York Times. The shooter was later found dead in his car and identified by authorities as Devin Patrick Kelley. He killed 26 people.
Trump, who was in Japan at the time, blamed the shooting on mental illness. He called the tragedy “a mental health problem at the highest level” and described the shooter as a “very deranged individual,” according to The New York Times. I believe Trump is using mental illness as a scapegoat for acts of violence. He also specified that “this isn’t a guns situation,” according to the same source. This further proves his incompetence as president.

In my opinion, Trump is unable to tackle this nationwide issue in an objective fashion. He is turning away from the real issue destroying the lives of many Americans each year. According to the not-for-profit corporation Gun Violence Archive, approximately 13,286 people were killed in the United States by firearms in 2015.

Not only is blaming gun violence on mental illness largely false, it is also offensive and misleading. Doing so increases the stigma around mental illness and perpetuates the incorrect assumption that mentally ill people are violent. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the majority of people with mental illness are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. Only three to five per cent of violent acts in the United States can be attributed to individuals with serious mental illness, according to the same source.

Not only does Trump fail to assign fault where it is due, I believe he is promoting gun violence. Two days after the Texas shooting, the president praised another man in the church who shot Kelley. “If he didn’t have a gun,” Trump claimed, “instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead. That’s how I feel about it,” reported NBC News. With his pro-gun stance, Trump is fostering the view that gun ownership helps prevent massacres, and gun misuse is due to mental illness.

While I do believe mental illness and the availability of psychological services in the United States needs to be addressed, I think it is clear that gun control is what will prevent so many mass shootings from happening. The best way to prevent these tragedies is to ban the weapons that are used to hurt so many rather than promote equally violent retaliation. In the aftermath of the 2006 Dawson shooting here in Montreal, the college built a garden to promote a peaceful, safe space and began offering a non-violent communication course for students to take as an elective. I strongly believe this is the type of attitude the American president needs to have if there is any hope of lessening the number of tragedies his country regularly faces.

Following Trump’s response to the Texas shooting, the hashtag #LivingWithMentalIllnessIs began trending on Twitter. This is a positive step towards something bigger. This hashtag gives people who live with mental illness a platform where they can share their stories and disprove Trump’s views of why gun violence takes place. I also hope this hashtag promotes peaceful communication between people and ends the stigmatization of mental illness as a dangerous or violent disorder.

Graphic by Zeze Le Lin

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Opinions

Mass shootings: Why does this keep happening?

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

Las Vegas massacre highlights the deeper problem of gun control in the U.S.

Fifty-eight people lost their lives when Stephen Paddock opened fire from the 32nd floor in his Mandalay Bay hotel room in Las Vegas on Oct. 1. This was the 273rd mass shooting of 2017—also the deadliest in modern American history, according to Time.

Various conservative news sources have reported that no one could have seen this tragedy coming. It was totally out of the blue. That’s strange given the fact that Paddock bought a total of 33 guns in the last year, according to CNN. In February, President Donald Trump signed a bill into law that forbade the U.S. Social Security Administration from submitting the names of people with mental illnesses to the national background check system. I believe this has no other purpose than to get more guns into the hands of more people.

When a man like Paddock can amass nearly 50 guns throughout his lifetime, the main problem isn’t mental illness or hotel security. The real culprits are the gun laws (or lack thereof) currently in effect in the United States, and the people unwilling to change them.

Even though assault rifles are illegal in the United States, Paddock had bump stocks—small pieces of hardware attached to his guns that help semi-automatic rifles fire nearly as quickly as full automatic ones. The kicker? They were purchased legally. Why are they legal?

The answer is the NRA (National Rifle Association). The answer is always the NRA. For decades, they have pushed for increased deregulation of firearms and even opposed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. The group has so much power through campaign contributions and lobbying efforts that it’s literally undemocratic. They have spent over $200 million in the last 20 years promoting their agenda, according to the U.S. Federal Election Commission, and that somehow seems to drown out the fact that nearly eight out of 10 Americans are in favour of implementing the most basic gun control laws, according to the Pew Research Center.

Even the majority of Republicans (82 per cent) advocate for barring people on the no-fly list from getting guns. More than half of Republicans (54 per cent) approve of background checks for private sales or gun shows and a database that will track gun sales across the country, according to Pew Research Center.

Many Americans will argue that it is their constitutional right to protect themselves. In reality, nowhere in the American Constitution does it say people have the unalienable right to own a gun just because they are American. Word-for-word, the Second Amendment reads: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Notice a very curious group of three words that is often left out of the NRA’s and many Republican’s speeches: Well. Regulated. Militia. That means if the freedom of the United States is under threat and militias are brought into action, their right to have arms will not be infringed. It does not say anything about private citizens. I imagine the beginning of the Second Amendment is often left out because “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” sounds a whole lot better for gun advocates.

In my opinion, the NRA has ignited this pro-gun fervor by convincing millions of people there is a secret, totalitarian super-government hell-bent on taking away their guns and freedom. Truthfully, what gun control advocates are trying to do is simply make sure gun owners don’t misuse them or put anyone in harm’s way. Like, you know, the nearly 100,000 people who have died in the United States since 2014 from gunshots, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Right-wing media and politicians have a go-to tactic when a mass shooting they can’t politicize occurs. They avoid talking about the real problem at hand. Take Fox News’ Sean Hannity, for example. He spent more time talking about how he would have been able to help the people of Las Vegas had he been there, rather than discuss the serious ramifications of the lack of gun control. These commentators and politicians give their thoughts and their prayers, and that’s it. However, they had no problem politicizing shootings when they happened in San Bernardino, Fort Lauderdale, Brussels or any other instance of violence that fit their anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Every time we say “never again,” people seem to think doing nothing will solve the problem. What really needs to happen is a significant overhaul of the current legislation and a bipartisan effort to limit who can obtain firearms to avoid more senseless deaths.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth

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