COLUMBUS (Ohio), June 9: In the wake of a series of mass shootings in the US,
especially the horrific Texas Robb Elementary school massacre where 19 schoolchildren
were shot dead by a student, Republican-ruled Ohio State has come up with a
law to arm teachers with guns and training.
Last week, Republican lawmakers passed the legislation that will allow local
boards of education to provide teachers with firearm and 24 hours of gun training.
The board will have to inform the parents that teachers and school workers may
be armed.
The lawmakers also appropriated $105 million spending toward preventing school
shootings. GoP Governor Mike DeWine is expected to sigh both the Bills.
The move is in sync with former President Donald Trump's support to the gun
lobby. He had said that the US needs more guns instead of arms control!
Gun violence has killed more than 18,000 people so far in 2022.
There have been gun killings in 43 of the 50 US States in the two weeks since
the Texas school shooting. More than 650 incidents have resulted in 730 deaths
since 24 May, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. Twenty-three
of those who died were children, and 66 were teenagers. Last weekend alone there
were 12 mass shootings across the US.
Since Uvalde there have also been 34 mass shooting incidents in the US, where
four or more people are killed or injured in one incident. There have been 247
mass shootings in the US in 2022.
On May 24, 2022, 18-year old Salvador Ramos shot dead 19 students and two teachers,
and wounded 17 other people, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Earlier,
he shot his grandmother in the forehead at home before going to the school.
Miah Cerrillo, a fourth-grade survivor of the Uvalde mass shooting, told US
lawmakers in a pre-recorded testimony, "He... told my teacher 'good night' and
then shot her in the head. And then he shot some of my classmates and the whiteboard."
After the shootings she was scared the gunman would return. So, she dipped her
hands in the blood of a classmate who lay dead and smeared the blood all over
herself to play dead. The students were watching the movie 'Lilo and Stitch'
when the shooter came. It was one of the last days of classes before summer
break.
On May 14, a racist attack in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket grocery store
took the lives of 10 people. Payton Gendron, 18, is accused of gunning down
the shoppers at Tops Friendly Market using a an AR-15 assault rifle that he
had bought legally. Gendron, a White Supremacist, was wearing heavy body armor
during his alleged attack
A violent Memorial Day Weekend claimed 12 lives in Philadelphia.
Three people died in an Iowa church shooting after President Joe Biden's gun
control speech. The attacker fatally shot two women before killing himself in
the parking. In an emotional speech, the President said it’s time for lawmakers
to enact tough laws, including a ban on assault weapons to curb gun violence.
He also proposed a limit on high capacity magazines, secure storage laws, “red
flag” laws, universal background checks and the removal of protection laws for
gun manufacturers. He also said in his speech on June 2, "If we can't ban assault
weapons then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21," Biden
said.
A day before Biden spoke, a disgruntled patient fatally shot four people at
an Oklahoma hospital before killing himself.
Biden had said in his first address after the Robb Elementary shooting that
shootings like this "rarely happen anywhere else in the world".
Five were killed and two dozen wounded on weekend shootings - late Saturday
in Philadelphia and early Sunday in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In Philadelphia,
two men and a woman were killed in firing at a popular South Street nightlife
area. In Chattanooga 14 people were shot at, including two killed.
How did other countries do?
After 51 people died when an Australian gunman opened fire at a mosque in Christchurch
in March 2019, the New Zealand parliament passed within a month a Bill to ban
semi-automatic weapons. And since then there was no shooting incident reported
in New Zealand.
Norway enacted a similar ban after a right-wing extremist shot dead 69 people
in 2011.
Australia banned semi-automatic weapons soon after 35 people were killed in
the Port Arthur massacre in April 1996.
After the 1996 Dunblane massacre, something similar to Uvalde, the UK partially
banned private ownership of handguns. A man had shot and killed 16 children
and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, a small town north of Glasgow.
The Canadian Government has just this week announced a ban on hand guns.
In the US after the gruesome Texas shooting of children, the Congress is a
divided house. While the House of Representatives has just passed the gun control
Bill, it needs support of at least 10 Republicans to get through in the Senate.
One of the clauses in the Bill is a "red flag law". Nineteen States and the
District of Columbia currently have such "red flag laws." Under the law a judge
can issue an order to temporarily remove and store the firearms from owners.
The Republicans traditionally support the gun lobby and former President Donald
Trump unabashedly declared after the Texas school shooting that "we need more
guns" and not arms control.
Meanwhile, the first female Governor Kathy Hochul (Democrat) on Monday approved
a package of gun reform laws in New York that was passed by State Senate after
last month's shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo. The law raised the age
for buying a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21. Buyers of semiautomatic rifles
will now also have to obtain a permit, meaning undergoing a background check.
The new laws also ban most civilians from purchasing body armor, such as bullet-proof
vests. Democratic New York already has strict gun laws.
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