Shortly after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Barrack Obama signed 23 Executive Orders aimed at preventing future gun violence. The president also “proposed new legislation that would, if enacted, amount to the biggest change in gun laws since 1968,” reports Time magazine. “This is our first task as a society—keeping our children safe,” Obama said. “This is how we will be judged.”
In 1968, there was one gun in civilian hands for every two Americans. As of 2009, there were more guns than Americans citizens: 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles and 86 million shotguns. Nothing proposed by the president would take away those guns, reports Time.
A survey taken by Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research prior to the tragedy found: 82 percent of Americans favored mandatory background checks for all firearm sales, not just for licensed dealer sales. Sixty-eight percent supported laws mandating reporting gun thefts. There was also broad support of stricter standards for issuing permits to carry concealed fi rearms than are in place in most states.
In a poll taken in mid-January, after Sandy Hook, 55 percent of the those polled supported stricter gun control, while 44 percent opposed it, according CNN/Time.
For decades, incidences of mass shootings have remained steady in the U.S., while gun homicides have consistently declined with crime rates. Yet, more often than not, shooters do not have criminal records, suggesting conducting background checks on all sales might not be a deterrent to someone wanting to kill with a gun, reports Johns Hopkins.
Of the 23 presidential orders, the one to “help schools hire more resource officers” is criticized in The Nation magazine for accelerating the “school top prison pipeline.” The Nation argues, “The president should direct the Justice Department to draw up a racial impact statement to analyze how such a policy might disproportionately affect children of color, and take steps to ensure that it does not.”
The National Rifl e Association publicly argues for armed security guards at schools. Subsequently, in Fargo, North Dakota, schoolteachers who have permits have armed themselves with side pistols, reports CBS News.
However, a gun expert reporting for Time magazine said, “Winning a gunfight without shooting innocent people typically requires expensive training and a special kind of person.” As an example, in New York City, “officers involved in gun- fights typically hit their intended targets only 18 percent of the time,” according to a Rand study.
The Time magazine expert said the brain does not work the way people think it does when under sudden attack. He said grown men will “freeze under threat, like statues dropped onto the set of a horror movie.”
The Johns Hopkins study argues, “Central to effective gun policy is being able to identify higher-risk, prohibited persons attempting to buy guns, and to prevent those purchases.” Preventative gun purchases are the foundation of the federal government plan–the Brady Law.
Because of the Brady Law, Johns Hopkins reports more than two-million applicants were prevented from buying fi rearms.
Policy debates around gun control typically focus on assault weapons bans and Large Capacity Magazine (LCM) bans because of their use in several mass shootings.
Jared Lee Loughner used a Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol, with a 33-round magazine. Loughner was able to kill six and wound 13 people, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in January 2011.
The incident in Aurora, Colorado that left 12 dead and 58 injured was accomplished by a man using an assault rile with a 100-round magazine.
The Virginia Tech University and Foot Hood, Texas mass shooting were the result of weapons with LCMs.
The findings of the Johns Hopkins study imply that policy makers “need to be realistic about the likely impact of an assault weapons or LCM ban,” as the report found “ammunition capacity of 10 or more rounds” were relevant in a small percentage of shootings.
Since the Sandy Hook shooting, more than 250,000 people have joined the NRA, which has vowed to oppose Obama’s proposals for gun reform, according to The Economist Magazine.