Last night the news broke from America that 17 people have been killed following a mass shooting at a school in Florida. Another 14 were injured, 5 of which suffered life threatening injuries. The shooter was identified as Nikolas Cruz, a former student of the school who had been expelled for behavioural problems. Concerns were raised by the FBI six months ago after a user on YouTube called ‘Nikolas Cruz’ posted a comment saying, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter”.
Florida Governor, Rick Scott said, "You come to the conclusion this is just absolutely pure evil," with the usual plethora of faux-Republican and Democrat sorrow tweets of ‘condolences and prayers’.
If only they could do something about it.
Gun laws
The Republicans have spent a large period blocking and removing laws that would have made it more difficult for Cruz to get hold of the AR-15 like semi-automatic weapon he used to commit the atrocity. Trump’s administration blocked a bill that made it harder for those with mental health illnesses to get weapons, purged 500,000 from list that labelled them as fugitives and made it easier for fugitives to buy guns, they made it easier to obtain silencers and passed a bill that allows people to carry concealed weapons across state lines plus much more.
When Rick Scott was questioned as to how Cruz got hold of the weapon, he attempted to deflect the issue away from gun laws and said that they’ll look to keep people safe through law enforcement and mental health illness funding, the latter is likely to be cut in the upcoming budget, which was revealed two days before the shooting.
The constant deflection away from the issue of gun laws is because the NRA help fund politicians like Rick Scott and the after every mass shooting, it is the NRA whose profits increase dramatically. It is no wonder they lobby hard to oppose any restrictions.
Flawed political system
Most people in the UK can’t get their heads around why nothing has been done even though you are more likely to get killed by a white American (terrorist or not) than an Daesh-inspired terrorist.
But it is an issue that divides America down the middle, despite the Las Vegas shooting and various school and other shootings throughout decades, the second amendment remains untouched. The second amendment is the right bear arms and this law was made when guns had a capacity of 1 shot and took a good 5 minutes to reload.
Every time a senator speaks in favour of restricting gun laws, the NRA and its supporters begin the claim that they are taking away the very rights of the people.
Completely quashing any further debate on the issue over the idea of what liberty stands for even though most of the supporters of the NRA, are those who would happily remove the rights from other humans because they are deemed ‘unworthy’. That is largely a generalisation but it does mostly stand up to the test but there are of course those Democrats who support the NRA and/or the second amendment.
The political system that America is built upon, is flawed at the very best. There are still attitudes and laws in the very core of the political system. Where for centuries the population have been convinced that the second amendment exists to protect a free state, but the reality is that it puts more people in danger than it saves.
Neo-Nazis and other far-right figureheads will always try and claim the state of the countries in the Middle-East even though US intervention is at fault for most of those problems but that is a whole other issue. Gun laws in America present a real problem for any genuine politician because the wealthy who back the NRA will always spend vast amounts of money, lobbying and funding campaigns for candidates who support the NRA, because the investors and NRA members directly profit from every mass shooting.
