A Texas Department of Homeland Security official is found in front of crosses with the names of victims of a school shooting at a memorial outside Robb Elementary School, two days after a gunman killed nineteen children and two adults, in Uvalde, Texas, USA on May 26th. , 2022. REUTERS / Marco Bello
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May 26 (Reuters) – Texas elementary school shooting kills 19 children and two teachers reactivates push for new gun safety laws in the United States, which have more firearms than people and more laws permissive than many other high-level ones. income countries.
More than 200 mass shootings have been reported in the United States in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group. More than 45,000 people have died from gunshot wounds, including suicides, in the United States in 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Stricter gun laws have been introduced in the U.S. Congress after past mass shootings, but have been defeated by Republicans, independents, and some moderate Democrats.
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This is how other nations have reacted after similar shootings.
CANADA
Following the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre, in which 14 women engineering students were killed in their Montreal classroom, the new legislation required security courses, background checks, and increased sanctions for some crimes with weapons.
In 2020, shortly after a gunman killed 13 people in Portapique, Nova Scotia, Canada, he banned more than 1,500 models of firearms and “assault-style” components and set limits on how destructive bullets could be. .
The rate of homicides with firearms in Canada is 0.5 per 100,000 people, compared to the U.S. rate of 4.12, said the Institute for Health Metrics and Assessment (IHME) of the University of Washington in a 2021 analysis.
AUSTRALIA
After a gunman killed 35 people in a cafe and a tourist spot in 1996, Australia banned all semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and bomb shotguns. Thousands of unlicensed firearms were handed over under a gun amnesty program and licensed firearms owners were forced to take a security course. Read more
The chances of being killed by a gun in Australia fell to 0.15 per 100,000 people in 2014 from 0.54 per 100,000 people in 1996, a 72 per cent drop, Reuters analysis of the figures showed of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
UNITED KINGDOM
A gunman killed 16 children and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, and sparked a public campaign that led Britain to adopt some of the world’s strictest gun controls. In two years, the new laws effectively banned civilians from possessing weapons.
The rate of gun homicides in the UK is 0.04 per 100,000 people, the IHME estimates.
NEW ZEALAND
Following the shooting of Christchurch mosques that killed 50 people in March 2019, the Prime Minister of New Zealand banned the sale of assault weapons in a few days. Parliament later voted to ban the circulation and use of most semi-automatic firearms, parts that convert firearms into semi-automatic firearms, magazines with a certain capacity, and some shotguns.
Gun-related killings were rare in New Zealand and continue to be so; the country had 12 in 2018 and 11 in 2021.
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Report by Heather Timmons, Anna Mehler Paperny and Lucy Craymer; edited by Jonathan Oatis
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