So by now, everyone (hopefully) has heard about what Las Vegas massacre that occurred Sunday. While it’s important to know the shooter’s history (mental, emotional, physical, career, etc.) it’s equally important to note just how easy it is for people in Nevada to get a law in general.

I posted this information a few days ago on my Facebook, but it is extremely important to know. Nevada’s laws are a lot more lax than many states, but the point is that in order to prevent tragedies such as the one this week, measures MUST be taken.

Las Vegas suffered the worst mass shooting in US history. Let’s get down to one of the most serious roots of the issue: Nevada’s gun laws:

– no permit is required
– no firearm registration is required
– no license is required 
– concealed carry permits are only required for hand guns
– open carry is permitted
– there are no assault weapon laws
– no magazine capacity restrictions
– no NFA weapon restrictions
– background checks were deemed “unenforceable”

No, gun control will not prevent any and all possibilities of deaths related to shooting, BUT if you look at the countries who have much stricter laws on guns, their death rate (murder, suicide, accident) is significantly lower than the U.S. People who are able to conduct mass shootings are able to do so because they have so much access to guns in the first place. Guns have a lot of power and that power is easy to manipulate any situation because of the split second it takes to hurt someone from afar. Other weapons, like knives, require more one-on-one contact and it makes people reconsider their decisions more frequently, and even if they don’t, they can only cause harm to a few before being stopped rather than 50+ within a matter of minutes.

And mass shootings aside, more than 21,000 people in 2014 alone killed themselves with a gun, accounting for nearly 64% of ALL gun related deaths in the U.S. that year. Studies have found that many suicide attempts are successful because they are impulsive decisions based on large and complicated short-term issues; they’re usually not planned out. Mixing a split-second decision with an adrenaline-fueled impulse and a high availability of a weapon that has the ability to end life with a simple finger movement is a recipe for disaster.

This HAS to end. We cannot keep allowing people to purchase guns unregulated. Background checks, regular check-ins, documentation on documentation on documentation, and much more needs to be the norm for owning guns. It has to start somewhere and it starts with everyone taking it upon themselves to do the research and stop going by party lines and customs.

Just read. Pick up a book or open a new tab from the blog post and start educating yourself and others about the problem.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/guns-suicide/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/suicide-rates/