Four days ago, in response to the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina that left nine dead, President Obama stood at a podium at the White House and declared: "At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency."
It doesn't have to be this way, says Charles Sennott, head of The GroundTruth Project. He pointed toward other industrialized, high-income nations that have been able to significantly decrease their rates of firearm violence, like Australia.
In 1996, 35 people were killed in a mass shooting at a popular Australian tourist destination. In response, lawmakers—led by conservative politician John Howard—initiated a federal gun buyback program and convinced individual states to ban the ownership and sale of automatic and semiautomatic weapons, as well as banning their importation nationally.
"A conservative politician was able to put this legislation forward, seize upon the tragedy, use that crisis to forge consensus, and get it done," Sennott said. "They now have effective gun control legislation."
Since that legislation took effect a decade ago, the firearm homicide rate fell by a staggering 59% and the firearm suicide rate by 65%, without a parallel in non-firearm homicides and suicides.
But, thanks to powerful lobbying organizations like the National Rifle Association, Sennott said the United States' gun violence rates makes it an anomaly among developed nations and puts it in a league with countries on the other end of the spectrum.
"The NRA has taken the Second Amendment and interpreted it with a fundamentalist fervor that is as aggressive and, I would argue, as dangerous as any Salafists we have out there," he said.
"It puts us within the range of countries in conflict," he continued.
To hear more from Charles Sennott, tune in to Boston Public Radio above.
