New Zealand Shooting

by Hayun Park

Is having a complicated government always good? Well these days, it’s seems not so great. Having to go through hundreds of courts and pleas to make a new law used to be good back when everyone was trying to make ridiculous, unfair laws. However, these days people are fighting for quite the opposite. Gun laws.

There have been 307 mass shootings in the US. The number of mass shooting victims have been steadily climbing since 1966. Yet the government has done close to nothing to change the gun laws. Recently, there was a mass shooting in a New Zealand mosque. At least 50 were killed. It seemed grim for the bright, friendly people of New Zealand.

Shockingly, unlike the US, the Prime Minister of New Zealand banned all assault rifles barely a week after the shooting. The shooting was the first hate crime of recent years in New Zealand, and everyone in US assumed that there would be many more. Even more is that the Prime Minister declared any kind of semi automatic weapon used in the shooting will be banned.

The fact that this kind of huge decision was made so quickly seems to attribute to their somewhat simpler government structure. Unlike the US, New Zealand does not have the Second Amendment, which gives the US citizens the right to bear arms. This complicates the process if we want to take away the guns from the citizens.

The constitution has its weak points. Not including women, people of color, and anyone that didn’t own land was one of them. So why are we saying that we can’t tweak the amendment or even better, get rid of it? People say that taking away something or banning an item is taking away their freedom. Well, consider the family members of the person whose life was taken away by said item. Does freedom really outweigh life? I don’t think so. I believe that the government is always changing, and we’re almost overdue for some right now.