The Las Vegas shooting on Oct. 1 left 59 people dead and hundreds injured in what is now the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
A mass shooting is defined as an incident involving gun-related violence where four or more people are shot.
With that definition, there has been 1,516 mass shootings in the last 1,735 days as of Oct. 1, according to The Guardian.
“There will certainly be a time for that policy discussion to take place, but that’s not the place that we’re in at this moment,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee after the shooting occurred.
If not now, then when is a good time to talk about stricter gun laws?
Does it have to be on a Tuesday?
Maybe when there is a full moon?
Does it have to be a day where we have a president that is respected by both parties, who also isn’t knee deep with National Rifle Association, when racism is over, sexism is nonexistent, and a bunch of stuff that will likely never happen?
Our government had several opportunities to change the gun laws. When Sandy Hook, Virginia State and the Florida club shooting happened the government did what had to be done. They talked about gun laws, waited for the talk to die down, swept it under the rug, then when the next shooting happened they did the same thing. That is the only logical thing to do. If only they had the power for change.
The Second Amendment was passed in 1791 and hasn’t changed since. Imagine trying to make a law today that would still be relevant in the year 2243.
Either we aren’t progressive enough as a society or big businesses don’t want to lose out on that market. It is both in this instance.
The guns in 1791 shot two to three times a round and reloading time took approximately two minutes.
The Las Vegas shooter had 23 weapons in his hotel including semiautomatic rifles, scopes and hundreds of rounds of ammo.
These aren’t the same times at all.
Most of the guns used by the shooter could have been bought legally in Nevada, which has very loose gun laws. Nevada’s gun laws do not require a permit to buy any firearms, they also do not require you to register your firearms. Nevada also doesn’t limit the amount of magazines you can purchase.
The guns bought legally were purchased at gun store in Mesquite called Guns & Guitars.
The owner of the store James Sullivan told USA Today the shooter “passed every background check, every time he bought a gun.”
If this man who clearly had no reason for owning a gun, besides harming others, then we need to rethink these laws.
“We’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by,” said President Donald Trump on Oct 3, the Tuesday after the Vegas shooting.
The time has come and gone tons of times and the conversation isn’t going to get easier, but the conversation needs to be had.
In the last 10 years each shooting has eclipsed the previous to be considered the “worst” in the history of the country.
