We Need Louder Voices for an Assault Weapons Ban
On the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 25, a series of mass shootings occurred at a bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, a city of 37,000 people, killing 18 people and injuring an additional 13 others. The police quickly identified the suspect as Robert Card, a former Army reservist and firearms instructor who was evaluated for mental health treatments, who was later found dead three days later.
The senseless murders have sent shockwaves not just through the state of Maine but through the entire nation. President Biden has ordered all U.S. and Maine flags to be lowered until Monday, while urging area residents to exercise caution until the suspect is caught. According to a database from the Associated Press, the Lewiston mass shooting marked the 36th mass shooting in the year 2023 alone, which has led to 190 deaths, making this year already the second deadliest year of mass shootings on record.
Mass shootings are not the only means people’s lives were taken by gun violence. Between 2015 and 2019, an annual average of 38,826 individuals lost their lives due to gun-related incidents. Out of these, 60% were suicides and 36% were homicides, with both figures pointing to the lethal nature of firearms.
Within hours of the news breaking, people have expressed their grief towards both the people who were killed, but also directed their anger against a major culprit behind a majority of a large number of the mass shootings in the United States–high-capacity assault weapons. According to pictures released by the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office, the suspect, like many other mass murderers in America, was carrying a semi-automatic rifle, similar to the weapons used in Aurora, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Uvalde.
Mass shootings in this country often follow a usual routine of politicians absentmindedly expressing their “thoughts and prayers” while taking actions actively enabling mass shootings to become easier, which is contrary to almost everywhere else. Many other countries, such as Britain, New Zealand, Norway and Australia have all passed laws restricting deadly weapons such as semi-automatic rifles after deadly massacres.
The United States has a fixation on the superior right to gun ownership unlike almost any nation in the world. It is one of only three countries in the world that considers gun ownership a “constitutional right,” while others that used to observe such right have since repealed such laws. The Supreme Court has long supported the legal interpretation that efforts banning or restricting guns will be a violation of the Second Amendment of the United States, as seen in their rulings in District of Columbia v. Heller, where the majority opinion wrote that “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” The Heller ruling fundamentally created the debacle we have today that was only worsened by a 2010 ruling that deemed such right is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and a 2022 ruling that essentially incapacitated states from making their own laws stricter than federal gun control standards.
While 32% of American adults personally own guns, there are around 393 million personally owned firearms in the country, more than the distribution of people. With gun violence continuously being a problem plaguing the country, polls have shown that assault weapons bans have gained strong support in a survey. Jared Golden, a conservative Democrat congressman who grew up and currently represents Lewiston, has said that this shooting changed his previous stance opposing an assault weapons ban, saying in a press conference that “the time has come for me to take responsibility for this failure.”
Given the popular support of stronger laws to prevent gun violence, the forces driving behind the inability to pass more effective measures curbing gun violence is rooted in both the Supreme Court’s rejection to gun reforms, as well as the political dysfunction in Washington. Federally, semi-automatic weapons were banned for 10 years between 1994 and 2004, but such passage has since become an impossibility due to the rapid growth of strong lobbying powers by gun rights organizations that pushes false equivalences and narratives that links gun ownership to individual freedom and civil rights. During the 117th congress, while the House of Representatives were able to pass another federal assault weapons ban, the law never heard a vote in the Senate due to the existence of the filibuster that destined its failure. Despite turmoil and decline in recent years, the National Rifle Association has continued to wield strong influence, donating millions of dollars to right-wing politicians to urge opposition against any and all forms of gun reform, while feeding them all kinds of talking points to shift the blame away from guns.
We have seen some meaningful efforts to raise greater awareness and limited legislation against gun violence in spite of political dysfunction. Student survivors in Parkland used social media to raise their voices, sparking a major protest involving young people en masse across the country; after the Uvalde tragedy erupted, Congress finally passed bipartisan, collaborative actions that strengthened background checks and restricted access to firearms for specific groups of people. However, the current calls and laws are far from enough. Guns have been continuously mythologized and elevated to a position it never should belong to, and is actively endangering everyone living in this country due to their deadlines and ubiquity.
The political hurdles in both the Supreme Court and Congress that are impeding efforts of gun reform to become reality embodies the level of detachment of the political institution and people’s will. The bloodshed from these mass shootings is a painful reminder that gun violence is neither an obscure nor an irrelevant topic–it is something that could directly impact our lives. Without meaningful legislation, such as an assault weapon, Lewiston’s tragedy will be far from being the last one, and mass shootings will become the frustrating routine Americans are forced to endure and get accustomed to.
