Mass Shooting Summary

The op-ed piece “Mass shootings are an American problem. There’s an American solution.” was written in response to the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. On September 30, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada, a gunman opened fire on attendees at a country music concert, killing 58 and injuring well over 500. Published just four days later, at a time when emotions are heightened and people are searching for answers to the questions of how and why such a horrific event could occur, Chris Murphy appeals to that very emotion in this piece. Simultaneously asserting that America has been a world leader in many areas, he argues that it has nonetheless failed miserably in protecting its own people from this type of violence due to the gun lobby’s manipulation of the American political system. Murphy proposes that mass slaughters, such as this, are a nearly uniquely American experience and that a change in gun regulation is the sole and long overdue answer to preventing more of the same. Murphy was a state congressman in Connecticut at the time that Adam Lanza shot and killed twenty-six people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School. As such, his experience during that atrocity, together with statistical evidence …show more content…
It is chilling. The incidence of mass shootings in America has risen dramatically. Since 1949, there have been 32 single-day mass shootings and of those, 18 have occurred since 2000. The number of people slain is even more suggestive of this seeming epidemic: 307 of 480 people who were killed in all of the attacks, perished since 2000 (“Deadliest”). Murphy offers just one solution, that of gun control, without so much as a mention of any underlying issues that are manifesting in these attacks. Again, had he addressed these issues, even in simple acknowledgement, there would have been less of a feeling of political