Opinion by Philip Alpers
Updated 7:21 AM ET, Wed June 1, 2022
Sydney (CNN)A man — almost always a man — commonly with no criminal history and no diagnosis of mental illness, armed with a lawfully obtained semiautomatic ‘assault’ weapon, kills and injures a large number of innocents in a place they imagined to be safe.
It happens around the world, but horrifyingly more and more often in the United States, most recently in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.
To those of us who live in culturally similar nations, but where the availability of lethal weapons is limited, Americans’ increasing reliance on guns even in the face of escalating horrors is unfathomable.
We live in far less fear of gunfire, and view America’s self-inflicted problem with firearms as a symptom of crippling political dysfunction. As each shooting eclipses the last, as fear and ideology trump the evidence once again, it’s terrifying to imagine the scale, the sheer enormity of the tipping point which might finally force American politicians to face their collective responsibility and enact change.
R&I – FS
Embrace Common Sense
Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/01/opinions/australia-uk-new-zealand-mass-shootings-gun-laws-alpers/index.html