Renewed attention to gun laws after Vegas; could other countries serve as model?

As the country mourns the 59 lives lost following a shooting in Las Vegas, renewed attention is being brought to the United States’ gun laws, especially since all of the 23 weapons found in the shooter’s hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino were bought legally, according to police.

Bridge, a Nepalese student at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, says his home country has problems with poverty, but not with guns.

“It’s not very easy to get a gun in Nepal, and if you have a gun, you have to record it with the authorities. Every year, you have to renew your contract with the government,” Bridge said. Other countries that have strict gun laws include Australia, Germany and China.

“In China, normal people cannot have guns,” said John Zhang, who is visiting the U.S. from China. “Any kind of guns, we can’t have.”

But would these types of gun regulations work in the U.S.? Political analyst Dr. David Anderson says the problem with using other countries as an example comes down to the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

“Other countries don’t have that provision to deal with, that political identity issue. They can deal with it on a rational, reasonable basis,” Anderson said.

For many years, the argument from gun enthusiasts has been to loosen restrictions because, they often say, a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun, but after the Las Vegas shooting, many are changing their tunes.

Longtime Second Amendment supporter Caleb Keeter, whose band performed at the festival whose attendees were shot, tweeted this the morning after the shooting: “I’ve been a proponent of the second amendment my entire life, until the events of last night. I cannot express how wrong I was. We actually have members of our crew with CHL [concealed handgun license], and legal firearms on the bus. They were useless.”

According to Anderson, Democrats will face an uphill battle when it comes to passing legislation in a Republican Congress. House Speaker Paul Ryan is instead focusing more on the issue of mental illness, though, there’s so far been no evidence that the Las Vegas shooter was ever diagnosed with a mental illness.