Indiscriminate Shootings Return to the United States

After the latest mass shootings, and the absence of any agreement in Congress, President Joe Biden is considering implementing greater gun control through a series of executive orders.

The right to bear arms, guaranteed by the Second Amendment added in 1791, stands in conflict with the gun violence and murder in America’s streets in the 21st century.* This problem is one of the core issues currently polarizing this country, with more than 400 million firearms in the hands of civilians. The population is a little over 330 million people.

In less than a week, the U.S. had to deal with another 18 deaths resulting from two separate mass shootings (one in Georgia and the other in Colorado) that left the country devastated. In Boulder, Colorado, the memory of Columbine in 1999 (when 13 people were killed in school by two students who later committed suicide) and of the 2012 Aurora shooting (when a young man, who is currently serving life in prison, killed 12 people while they watched “Batman” in a local movie theater) makes it even harder to heal a wound that keeps getting ripped open.

Not even the pandemic halted what gun control groups consider a “public health emergency.” It is true that before the latest shootings, these kinds of tragedies were out of the media spotlight, overshadowed by the COVID-19 crisis. However, people continued getting killed in record numbers. Nearly 20,000 Americans died due to gun violence in 2020, according to the Gun Violence Archive, more than in any other year since the start of this century.

The data from the GVA is terrifying, and it only covers January and February 2021:

– 3,045 deaths by firearms;

– 5,300 wounded by firearms;

– 73 mass shootings;

– 144 children killed by firearms;

– 599 teenagers killed by firearms;

– Approximately 4,000 suicides by firearms (Estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

In the face of such a chilling scenario, and knowing that Congress will not act quickly, or at all, to impose new gun control laws, Democratic President Joe Biden is considering issuing a series of executive orders in the next few weeks as the first measures to combat the problem of gun violence and ease pressure from groups that are seeking ask stricter gun control.

These executive orders, if enacted, would be divided into three categories. The first would classify “ghost guns” as real guns. These are packages that include all of the necessary pieces to build a gun. Secondly, there would be orders to finance intervention programs to halt gun violence in certain communities. Lastly, the measures contemplate ordering more comprehensive background checks.