High price of ‘freedom’ is a cost too great to bear

TWELVE days after the Port Arthur massacre, when 35 people were killed by a madman loaded with an AR-15 rifle with a 30-shot magazine and a semi-automatic .308 FN rifle, then Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced a sweeping package of gun reforms.

And when New Zealand experienced a mass shooting in 2019, that country acted in just 26 days to tighten gun laws.

But in the United States, it has been 57 years since one of the first gun massacres, the University of Texas tower shooting in 1966 that claimed 17 lives, and yet deadly weapons remain frighteningly easy to obtain.

The mass shooting at a school in Nashville this week, where six people, including three children, were killed, marked the 130th mass shooting in the US this year. But gun enthusiasts maintain their mantra that now is the time for mourning, not politics. A time for thoughts and prayers rather than polarising debates about firearms.

Gun violence is now the leading killer of American children. US children and teenagers are 57 per cent more likely to die young compared with children and teenagers in other advanced countries, like Australia and New Zealand, and guns are one important reason.

One study found that Americans ages 15 to 19 are 82 times as likely to be shot dead as similar-age teenagers in their peer countries.

The horrific numbers are not lost on the majority of American people. They want change.

According to a new poll, 71 per cent of Americans say gun laws should be stricter.

The poll was conducted between July and August last year after a string of deadly mass shootings – from a New York grocery store to a school in Texas and a July 4 parade in Illinois.

But despite the overwhelming public sentiment for change, the country remains paralysed by politics.

As one US-based columnist wrote in The Guardian: “What is there to say about a society that sacrifices its babies at the altar of firearms? What kind of ‘freedom’ allows civilians to amass weapons designed to exact maximal damage on the human body, but doesn’t give citizens the basic right to go to the movies, the shops, schools, places of worship and even their living rooms or front porches without facing down the pervasive threat of deadly and random violence?”

Whatever your politics in Australia, the gun control measures introduced by John Howard in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre remain one of the best example of leadership in our country’s history.

What Howard got right was to immediately make gun control the focus of a nation in mourning. He captured the heavy emotion of the moment.

He later reflected: “I knew the Labor Party would probably support any new measures we brought in and I thought, ‘For heavens sake, what’s the point of being in office when you can’t do something significant in relation to something that affects community safety?’”

We are lucky to live in countries like Australia and New Zealand where protecting lives trumps any notion that bearing deadly arms for no good reason is a person’s right.

But we can’t afford to get complacent when it comes to gun control laws.

Sadly, we have constant reminders from the US of what easy access to destructive weapons can lead to when in the wrong hands.

It’s a tragedy. After tragedy. After tragedy.

And US political leaders only offering thoughts and prayers is nowhere near enough.