Troy Bailey

3/2/18

Journalism 1

Due to the Florida shooting a lot of controversy stirred up about gun violence and how safe schools actually are. The government and Donald Trump the President of the United States had to come up with new laws and strategies to reduce the school shootings and gun violence all together. They came up with 6 different proposals to reduce the gun violence and also to reduce the shootings in the school and to make the schools of the United States safer for the students and teachers.

        A strategy to stop gun violence might be to introduce background checks  and make sure that the people purchasing the guns have no previous issues with violence and to check if these people have no previous mental problems. Like a lot of other proposals it is due to the school shooting in parkland that killed 17 students and teachers in one of the deadliest school shootings in history. The background check would aim to correct the failures in the National instant Criminal Background check system that allowed the shooter in Sutherland Springs, Texas in a church that killed 26 people to purchase a gun legally despite having a domestic violence in the air force. It should have been in the system if it had been updated but it was not and it caused the incident to happen. This bill would also provide funding to states to improve their background check system.

        Another example to reduce the gun violence would be to raise the age to purchase these guns. A lot of the school shootings were people that were under 21 and over 18 because they were legally allowed to buy these guns that are used in these horrific shootings. A lot of gun owners are against this but the NRA liked this idea. Even some senators are against this and show some skepticism so this would be a hard bill to pass if they are seriously considering changing the age to purchase guns. Changing the age to purchase these guns might help because the shooters are young usually and don’t have the right mentality to purchase guns.

        Another restriction for guns bans would to ban all assault weapons and not let anyone purchase the weapons and only able to purchase handguns. The assault weapons fire at a much higher velocity than most guns and do much more damage. There was a ban on the weapons in 1994 but expired in 2004 and the bill to be passed again is remote and not likely. The attacks on the school have prompted new restrictions for these guns and many don’t want them because of all these big attacks. Gun supporters say that this bill will not change much because then it will just cause a tweak and many will make similar guns. The gun supporters say  lower magazine would help and make it so there is less bullets in each one then it would make a difference for these mass shootings.