Earlier this summer my wife, daughter, and I spent a little over a month in Australia and New Zealand attending Women’s World Cup matches and experiencing the countries’ arts, culture, and history. Overall, it was a fantastic trip.
But within minutes of our July 20 arrival at Auckland Airport, reports of a mass shooting in the city’s Central Business District started blowing up phones. Wielding a shotgun, a 24-year-old man killed two and wounded seven at a construction site where he had previously worked.
Police said the gunman used a type of shotgun not banned under New Zealand’s strict gun ownership laws. They added that he didn’t have a gun license and so shouldn’t have had the weapon.
As I watched the evolving news coverage, I was struck by how shocked the locals were. Mass shootings are rare in New Zealand. When news outlets reported that the shooter had a history of mental health issues and had assaulted his girlfriend just a few months before, New Zealanders were stunned. How could he have gotten any gun? Why hadn’t he done jail time for beating and choking his girlfriend? Why wasn’t he getting the help he clearly needed?
Politicians and average citizens called for tightening gun laws. Some argued for more severe penalties for violent acts while others urged ramping up spending on mental health resources.
Meaningful Change, Swift Action
New Zealand’s tight gun laws were imposed in 2019 after a shooter killed 51 Muslim worshippers at two Christchurch mosques during Friday prayers. It was the country’s worst mass shooting. (1)
It’s not as if New Zealanders don’t own guns. At the time of the Christchurch massacres, there was a gun for about one in every four of the country’s five million people. But the vast majority of the weapons are utilitarian in nature, used mostly by farmers and hunters.
The prime minister at the time, Jacinda Ardern, vowed to ban most semiautomatic weapons within a month. She did, with only a single member of Parliament voting against the ban.
Under the new law, gun owners had six months to sell the newly prohibited weapons back to the government. More than 60,000 guns were turned in. Three times as many gun components, including high-capacity magazines, were also surrendered. It cost the government about $65 million New Zealand dollars, equivalent to about $100 million US. Gun laws were tightened further in June 2020, with additional weapons banned and a new registry set up to better track gun purchases.
In May, 2022, when a gunman murdered 19 students and two teachers, and injured 17 other innocent people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Ardern said, “When I watch from afar and see events such as this today, it’s not as a politician. I see them just as a mother. When we saw something like that happen, everyone said never again, and so it was incumbent on us as politicians to respond to that.”
The New Zealand government acted to ban assault-style weapons and better track gun sales after one mass shooting. We were in Australia and New Zealand for 34 days. In that time, there were 67 mass shootings in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Registry, which defines mass shootings as “any incident in which four or more people are shot and wounded or killed, excluding the shooter.” Those 67 incidents resulted in 55 dead and 281 injured. (2)
We’ve become inured to the daily carnage and it’s fanciful to believe the current crop of politicians will act decisively to take all the steps needed to quell it, as those in New Zealand did just four years ago.
Most of the gun deaths in the United States don’t involve assault-style weapons and school shootings, like the one in Uvalde, make up a small fraction of gun violence incidents. But I had to wonder, as reaction to the Auckland shooting unfolded, how many more would have been killed or wounded if the gunman was wielding a weapon of war like those so readily available in the USA, instead of a shotgun.
The “debate” over gun ownership among our elected officials has devolved into routine, performative expressions of grief and outrage. Republican candidates at every level must bend the knee to the most extreme gun-owning absolutists, lest they be pilloried and primaried, even though most Americans—including most NRA members—support common sense gun laws.
In a recent appearance on the PBS Newshour, New York Times columnist David Brooks, noting the current political environment, hoisted a white flag on prospects for progress, even if new laws are passed.
“We have hundreds of millions of guns in this country,” Brooks said, “so I have low hopes that some gun control legislation will reduce people’s ability to get guns.” Brooks rightly pointed out that suicide by gun is much more common than mass-shooting incidents, and he called for red flag laws that would give concerned relatives and friends a way to alert law enforcement if someone appears to be unstable, so that their weapons can be taken away before they harm themselves or others. Such laws could be helpful, but they’re not enough.
The Ripple Effect
Toward the end of our World Cup tour, I received an early-morning text message. A good friend and colleague had died suddenly. A teacher of “education that is physical” Susan was a passionate champion for kids and educators. She was on the Board of Directors of our local union, active in political campaigns, a strong supporter of women’s sports, an advocate for human rights, and a music fan. She was only 59. She wasn’t a gun violence victim. Cause of death was most likely a dislodged blot clot that caused cardiac arrest.
As news of her death spread, reminiscences and tributes poured in from the many people whose lives she had touched. Former students and their parents, colleagues, elected officials, coaches, teammates, family, and friends shared their shock and grief.
One death. The news of one death rippled through so many communities. One death left a hole in so many hearts. When we tally the “victims” of gun violence, we don’t include the ones who witnessed the carnage, or sheltered in place. We don’t include the loved ones who suffer through minutes or hours of wrenching anxiety, wondering if their son or daughter or spouse or colleague or neighbor or teammate or friend is dead or alive. If we did, the already staggering numbers of “victims” would grow exponentially. The question seems to be, when will those numbers be large enough to spur real action? New Zealand offers a roadmap. Can we follow it?
https://time.com/6182186/countries-banned-guns-mass-shooting/
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org