Fresh in the minds of many Americans is the Monterey Park Lunar New Year shooting this past February 2023 which took the lives of 11 people within a tight-knit community made up of mostly first generation Chinese immigrants. The 72-year-old shooter used a semiautomatic pistol to shoot into a dance hall on the night of a Lunar New Year celebration before being chased by police and ending his own life. What was a lively celebration turned into a site for a memorial and grief in an instant.
In June 2022, the Supreme Court made a landmark ruling on gun laws around the country, granting Americans the right to carry firearms in public for the purposes of self-defense. The decision quickly put gun control laws in several states across the country at risk, with legislators quick to capitalize on the Court’s most recent ruling on this hotly debated issue.
The ruling came on the heels of years of gun violence throughout the country. According to The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization which records information on mass shootings, there were 647 mass shootings in the year of 2022, with more than 44,000 deaths due to gun violence that year. According to a 2018 report by the Small Arms Survey, developed by the Geneva Graduate Institute, there are nearly 400 million firearms in the United States, a number greater than the country’s total population. With the lives of so many at stake, it is worthwhile to examine the ruling, its downstream effects, and the real impact it will have on American society in its wake.
It is important to note that guns and gun ownership have been ingrained into American culture over centuries, with the industry having a recent boom in the 21st century. Moreover, in recent years, gun ownership has included much more deadly firearms than a simple handgun. A recent report by the National Shooting Sports Foundation shows that there are nearly 20 million rifles in the style of AR-u15s in the United States. This comes after a federal ban on the weapon expired in 2004, which has resulted in the amount of these guns in circulation nearly doubling since. The AR-15 has since been used in mass shootings in Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 and Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 – taking the lives of dozens of children. When it comes to the debate on gun control, it is impossible to ignore the lives that have been lost as a result of mass shootings. The victims are so often children or members of marginalized communities, and take place in public areas where people feel the safest. In 2018, 11 Jews were killed in a mass shooting in Pittsburgh, and in 2016, 49 people were shot dead at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. In a May 20th article for CNN, Faith Karimi reported on how mass shooters are beginning to target “soft targets”, which are public spaces where there is little security present.
In an interview with PBS this January, Judy Chu, the U.S. representative for California’s 28th district, had discussed pushing for gun reform legislation. On the matter, she said, “We have to fight for it. We have to take a step forward wherever we can… I still think that we should put at the top of the list true universal background checks, because those have proven to save lives by keeping guns out of the hands of violent and criminal people.” California’s gun control laws are now at stake as a result of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling. The state currently has control laws similar to a New York law which requires people to demonstrate a need for concealed carrying in public places prior to obtaining a license. This New York law was struck down as a result of the Supreme Court ruling, and similar laws across the country will soon face similar challenges.
Proponents against gun control laws often cite that these restrictions are infringing upon the Second Amendment, which protects gun ownership, and prevents people from being able to use guns as a means of self-defense. There are several caveats to this argument. Firstly, the Second Amendment does not protect a complete and unlimited right to own firearms. Much in the vein of how not all forms of free speech are protected under the First Amendment, specific means of control control laws are not explicitly prohibited as part of the Second Amendment. Secondly, it is important to note that the Second Amendment was written at a time where civilian militias were common, and weapons were far less technologically advanced and deadly. As a result, the context through which the amendment is being viewed has significantly changed since the writing of the Constitution.
A 2020 poll by AP VoteCast is revealing in how the public views gun laws – with only 10% of responders saying the gun laws should be less strict than they currently are. If more Americans knew that mass shootings are averaging more than 1 per day, more Americans would realize that they themselves are now in more danger because of more guns on the streets.
