Late on Sunday morning, a 26-year-old man opened fire on a small church community in Sutherland Springs, Texas where his in-laws were known to attend. At least 26 people were killed with many more sustaining critical injuries and still more with non-life threatening injuries. Also, it is believed, killing himself in the aftermath.
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Gun advocates including the President of the United States have come forward with claims that the gunman, Devin Patrick Kelley, was mentally ill. They will say we should blame his mental illness and not our country's deficient gun regulations. He may indeed have been ill, but the bottom line is, if gun control laws in the United States were stricter, this wouldn't have happened.
Devin Patrick Kelley spent a year in prison in 2014 as a result of domestic violence against his wife and child. Yet, he was able to walk into a gun shop and purchase an assault rifle. The rifle–one he did not even have a license to carry–was later used to murder innocent churchgoers including babies and elderly, in one of the hundreds of mass shootings America has seen just this year.
Again, we hear the same refrain from President Trump. Yet, another hollow tweet. A tweet with no promise for change behind it, another requisite response, but no action.
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Our powerful government just isn't getting it. They continue to look the other way as hundreds and hundreds of Americans die in senseless acts of violence that could have been prevented or at least minimized if it were harder for citizens to obtain guns. If it were more difficult for ex-convicts and people suffering from mental illness to go into a store and walk out with an assault rifle.
Kelley was an ex-con, a man who spent a year in prison for assault on his wife and child, a man who was discharged from the military for bad conduct, a man who was reported to authorities for abusing animals. He was a man who never should have been sold a gun. Still, he legally purchased one.
A law enforcement official has said that there was nothing in his background check that disqualified him from buying a gun. And yes, this was after his arrest, after his incarceration, after his violent tendencies were already well documented. How is this still possible in a country with one of the strongest governments and law enforcement systems in the world?
But politicians continue to turn a blind eye because they are too afraid to lose support for the ever-decreasing sect of the population who believes that gun control isn't an issue for government. But the numbers indicate otherwise. There have been 310 days in the year 2017 and 307 mass shootings, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. Not just deaths from gun violence, actual mass shootings.
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And of course, just over a month ago the U.S. experienced its most deadly shooting to date when a lone gunman opened fire on a Las Vegas music festival killing 58 people.
It's absolutely shocking that there are still people in this country who vehemently deny the necessity of stricter gun laws. And yet, there are. The question remains. When will our politicians stop caring so much about politics and start protecting the American people?
