EDITORIAL - A tough challenge for the Biden administration

The United States is famous for many things, but one claim to fame it doesn’t want is the country with the most number of mass shootings.

It has a long history of people just inexplicably picking up a gun and going on a shooting rampage, usually going after people they have no connection to or involvement with. The latest two incidents happened within just within a week of each other. The first was in Atlanta, Georgia, where eight people were shot dead by suspect Robert Aarong Long last March 16. The latest was perpetrated by Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissam who shot dead 10 persons in Boulder, Colorado, just last Monday.

While we can blame the person who instigated the shooting, we can also lay a large part of the blame on their gun control laws.

While laws in other developed nations strictly forbid ownership of any type of firearms to those who are not qualified, the US allows even civilians to own certain types of firearms that should only be used by active police and military personnel in carrying out their duties.

Now Biden wants Congress to pass stricter gun laws.

It will be easier said than done. For centuries the US has had a gun culture. There is no other way to say it. For right or wrong, it has indeed become part of their culture, when you take into consideration their history of living in the frontiers of a then-expanding nation as well as their struggles to free themselves from a colonial power.

Make no mistake, at a certain time in US history it was really useful, or even a matter of survival, to have a gun. However, that gun culture is no longer as necessary today as it was in the days of old.

Now more than ever the US needs to better gun control laws. Have you noticed there seems to be more hate crimes in the US than ever before?

People are becoming more and more polarized and some of them are now more than willing to take action, even deadly action, against what they perceive are social injustices.

If the US Congress doesn’t take any action to revise their gun laws, we can only expect even more incidents like these to happen.