It’s 14th February 2018, a mere 45 days into the new year and an expelled student by the name of Nikolas Cruz, armed with a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 .223 (also known as an AR-15 assault rifle), smoke grenades, a gas mask and magazines of ammo walks into his old school in Florida and slaughters 17 people in a hail of bullets. Whether you were a pupil or teacher didn’t matter, if you were in the crosshairs, you were a target. In addition to the 17 mortalities, another 14 were wounded, 5 of whom have life threatening injuries.

Whilst this is a horrific story to hear, especially for people in the UK, it is not actually that uncommon in America, in fact there had already been another 8 school shootings that had resulted in fatalities in the preceding 45 days (the total number of school shootings is actually 18, however the rest did not result in fatalities). Since 2013 there have been 290 school shootings, which averages out at about 1 a week, not really a stat for a developed country like America to be proud of.

Guns, Guns, Guns

America has always been renowned for it affection with weaponry. Since the inception of the USA almost 250 years ago, many Americans have exercised their right to bear arms. After all, the second amendment states that “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.”

But does that statement mean what Americans think it means? In 2012, the firearms industry raked in approximately $31.8 billion (they also account for more than 50% of the global weaponry market) which is a lot of money so it’s easy to understand why certain sections of society argue that it means everyone is entitled to own a gun.

But what does it really mean?

This has been a subject of debate for years, the first case to argue against the definition of the second amendment dates back to 1875. In most instances the courts have sided with the argument that the amendment allows individuals the right to bear arms.

The key to deciding how the amendment should be interpreted is to take into context what America was like when it was written. In 1791, when the Bill of Rights that contained the second amendment was added to the constitution, there were no police stations or federal army so it was down to the citizens to handle the security of their neighbourhood. The Americans had just defeated the Brits in a civil war and incidents with Native Americans were commonplace.

This meant that carrying weapons was commonplace, not only for defence, but also to hunt dinner being as there were no supermarkets or grocery stores to speak of. Duelling pistols were also popular at the time, meaning Americans weren’t averse to shooting each other as well as natives. Many white colonists were also slave owners so they needed weapons to keep them in check and prevent any uprising or revolt by the slaves.

Another consideration to look at is the fact that when the amendment was written, muskets and flint lock pistols, which were the common firearms of the time, could fire, at best, 3-4 rounds per minute, and that was by a skilled musket man. The range of these weapons was also terrible at about 50m. I doubt they would ever have imagined that firearms would advance to the point where they could fire 45 rounds per minute as per the AR-15 assault rifle with an accuracy up to 550 meters.

Had they been aware of, or even envisaged this, I’m quietly confident they would have worded it differently. This bring us to the modern day conundrum that America finds itself in. What did they mean when writing the second amendment and was it intended to last indefinitely?

So can they own guns or not?

As it stands, the amendment will remain as an entitlement for all Americans to own a gun. The debate continues to raise its head though everytime a mass shooting occurs in America, particularly when one occurs in a school. One major problem with pushing forward an agenda of amending the amendment is the opposition it faces. The National Rifle Association (NRA) holds a lot of power in Washington, claiming a grassroots membership of 5 million Americans and is responsible for sizable contributions from gun lobbyists (much of which has gone to republicans). The ability of the NRA to shape gun policy has been a thorny issue in impeding the Democrats ability to tighten gun control laws.

Despite the arguments for or against gun control, one thing that America always seems to overlook are the facts. They claim that gun control won’t stop the shootings and that all the shooters are ‘mentally ill’ (if they’re white, terrorists if they aren’t) but is that what the statistics say?

So how does the UK compare?

Lets look at the UK. Over here we have very strict gun controls and have done for a considerably long time. We too have a bill of rights (from which the American Bill of Rights took its inspiration) which allowed for gun ownership but unlike America, we didn’t exploit or perpetuate this law. As our nation grew, we adapted our laws to grow with it.

The UK only banned handguns in 1996 after the Dunblane School Massacre in which 17 lives were taken, that was our first, and last, school shooting in our history. Prior to that there had only been one mass shooting which occurred in 1987 in Hungerford in which 16 people perished and 15 were wounded. After we banned handguns and tightened our laws in relation to Dunblane, we have only had one other mass shooting, the Cumbria shootings of 2010 in which 12 people were killed and 11 injured.

As a result of our gun control measures, we have one of the lowest rates of gun deaths in the world. Compared with America who average out at 27 people shot dead everyday and 290 school shootings since 2013, they have seen enough violence and death to last Britain a lifetime.

Will the stats make them change the law?

A few more interesting facts about American gun ownership and the mass shootings that follow are that there are an estimated 300 million guns in America, 89 for every 100 people, the highest rate per capita than any other country in the world. Gun death rates in America are 25.2 times higher than in most other developed nations. If other rich western nations had the same population as the US, America would still outdo them on gun deaths by at least 5 to 1. Finally, the US makes up less than 5% of the worlds population but holds 31% of global mass shootings.

Despite all these stats showing that America has a gun problem and that heavily regulated countries don’t, America does not appear to be in a hurry to change the law anytime soon. As sad as it sounds, we are just going to have to make do with their ‘thoughts and prayers’ everytime an American citizen decides to shoot everyone down for their own twisted reason because, you know, thoughts and prayers are just what you need to fill the void left by losing a loved one.