Handgun bans, such as those that operated in Chicago and Washington, DC, before the Supreme Court struck them down, would be needed on a national scale. If Americans want a society where schools do not, as the one in Newtown did, have to drill their children in emergency lock-down procedures, more drastic measures should be contemplated. It also referred only to the sale of new weapons, and made no attempt to tackle the mountain of killing equipment already in the public's hands. The list of banned weapons was filled with loopholes, and was easy for gun-buyers to evade. The great bulk of America's murders are committed with "ordinary" handguns, not the sort that would be covered by any remotely likely ban and the evidence that the 1994-2004 ban altered homicide rates is sketchy at best. These measures will all help, though they cannot be anything like the panacea that the would-be regulators dream of. If you want to be safer, change the constitution Some form of new regulation does seem possible: perhaps a reinstatement of the assault-weapons ban which, between 19, prohibited the sale of a list of the most militaristic weapons, or an end to the "gun-show exemption" that allows people to buy weapons without the usual background checks that supposedly prevent the sale of weapons to criminals and the insane. The crime in Newtown was so horrible that even the National Rifle Association is talking about change.
Nothing came of that Mr Obama never even attempted to follow through, and no gun-control bill ever made even the floor of Congress during his first term, although the Democrats held bulletproof majorities there. Only an idiot, or an anti-American bigot prepared to maintain that Americans are four times more murderous than Britons, could possibly pretend that no connection exists between those figures and the fact that 300m guns are "out there" in the United States, more than one for every adult.īarack Obama does appear to be seizing the moment to push for tougher gun regulation but America has heard such promises before, not least from the current president on the campaign trail in 2008. America's murder rate is four times higher than Britain's and six times higher than Germany's. If America is ever to confront its obsession with guns, that time is now. Every country has its madmen, but Min was armed only with a knife, so none of his victims died. The American was armed with a semi-automatic rifle with an extended magazine and two semi-automatic handguns. After a ten-minute rampage 20 of them were dead, as were six teachers and the killer himself. But in Newtown, Connecticut, the little ones suffered even worse. In China's Henan province, Min Yongjun burst into a classroom and hacked away at 23 children, severing ears and fingers.
ON DECEMBER 14th maniacs in America and China unleashed the horror in their heads on the most innocent of targets.
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