Six days after a lone gunman killed 50 people and wounded 50 others in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the country imposed a ban on military-style assault weapons such as the ones the gunman used -- two semi-automatic weapons with 30-round magazines, two shotguns, and a lever-action firearm, all of which he had bought online.
It was one of New Zealand’s darkest days, said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the deadliest mass shooting in modern New Zealand history. New Zealand has just been ranked by the Global Peace Index as the second safest country in the world behind Iceland.
A great deal of the worldwide reaction had to do with the reasons for the killing. The killer was identified as a “white supremacist” who had targeted the Muslims in their Friday prayers in their mosques. In the UInited States, many officials hailed the swift action of New Zealand’s government in banning the powerful weapons used in the shooting, which had been so easily acquired by the gunman.
The swift ban was in marked contrast to the refusal of the US to restrict in any way the acquisition of weapons by Americans despite repeated mass killings. Gun ownership is a revered tradition in US history, protected by Amendment 2 of the American Constitution. Thus, despite the many mass killings in the US by lone gunmen carrying multiple weapons, American officials have refused to restrict the right to acquire these weapons.
The deadliest such incident in US history was on October 1, 2017, when a lone gunman at a hotel window rained bullets on a big crowd attending an open-air country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, killing 58 and wounding over 515. A year later, on November 5, 2018, another gunman opened fire on a congregation during church services in a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing 26 and wounding 20.
Before these, there were many similar attacks in the US – 14 high school students and three teachers killed in Parkland, Florida, in 2018; 49 killed in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016; 32 killed at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, in 2007; 26 killed at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012; 23 killed in Killeen, Texas, in 1991; and 21 killed in San Ysidro, California, in 1984.
Students in schools all over the US demonstrated to demand stricter gun laws after each of these incidents, but the US Congress refused to enact any law restricting the ownership of guns. President Donald Trump met with protesting students after the Florida high school shooting in 2018, but could only suggest arming teachers to protect their students. Americans have come to expect no government action to restrict the acquisition of firearms, no matter how powerful, by American citizens.
But New Zealand responded decisively to the mass killing in Christchurch, acknowledging that a big part of the problem was the easy availability of powerful weapons, so that any person -- Islamic terrorist or white supremacist or simply one breaking down from some intense pressure -- could easily acquire the means to strike out with deadly violence.
So now New Zealand has banned the easy acquisition of high-powered weapons that are normally issued only to military forces to use against enemies of the state. US officials have resisted all efforts to take this step. We can expect more incidents of mass killings in schools, parks, and churches to continue in that country.