[US] lawmakers voted down four separate measures just one week after a terrorist attack in Orlando marked the deadliest mass shooting in the nation’s history.
Democrats and Republicans had put forth competing amendments to both strengthen background checks and prevent suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms. But all four bills fell short of the 60 votes needed to clear a procedural hurdle in the Senate, in a near replica of a vote held in December when a pair of shooters killed 14 people and wounded 22 more in San Bernardino, California.
Guardian
Because we have to protect our drug trade. Duh.A disturbed man with an AR-15-style rifle walked through a popular historic site in 1996, shooting up the cafe and gift shop. He left 35 people dead and 19 seriously injured.
The country’s conservative leader pushed through immediate, sweeping changes to gun laws. Chief among them was a ban and mandatory buyback of more than 600,000 semiautomatic rifles and other long guns, which were then melted down. In all, one researcher estimates, the government ultimately destroyed about a million weapons – roughly one-third of its total gun stock.
That was in Australia, a country that has not had another large-casualty mass shooting since. Officials repeatedly ask: why can’t America do the same?
Guardian
Well, there's that, too.Even before the “big melt”, as one Australian gun researcher put it, Australia’s per capita rate of gun homicide was much lower than America’s. Handguns were already strictly regulated.
And that.For the US to collect and destroy the same proportion of firearms that Australia did it would require a buyback of 90m firearms.
We're Number One.The US could end all mass shootings today and its rates of gun violence would still be many times higher than other rich countries.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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