Mass shootings have become so frequent it is difficult to keep track of them. With the San Bernardino shooting, the U.S. has seen 355 shootings this year according to The Washington Post. What distinguishes this shooting from the rest of them is the shooters’ association with the terror group Daesh.
Shootings happen all the time, and even the slaughter of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School was not enough to prompt Congressional action on this issue. But perhaps this time, any action taken won’t be prompted by fear of death by lone wolves, but rather by Islamophobia.
Because these shooters were Muslim, their actions will be seen as part of a bigger pattern of Islamic terror. While this may be the case, that doesn’t mean the ease of gun availability did not play a role in facilitating this tragedy. This might be the shooting that prompts action, because it is being viewed as terrorism and not an isolated incident with a mentally ill shooter, as the typical narrative on TV pushes forward.
Of course, white male shooters are widely considered to be mentally disturbed. Something must be wrong with them; it’s definitely not their easy access to guns, because true bad guys will get to the guns anyway.
However, this has proven not to be the case. Earlier this year, CNN reported the families of the Sandy Hook victims were suing the estate of the perpetrator’s mother — herself a victim of the shooting — because she had acquired the weapons legally, and they believe her negligence enabled the shooting.
So many shootings involve legal guns that were either misplaced or used by the owner in ways that were deemed unanticipated. It’s true as it stands now, it would probably be impossible to regulate all guns — many who want to get a gun illegally can find one.
In the New York Times' coverage of the San Bernardino shooting, it wrote the guns used were legally acquired, even though California is widely considered to have some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
There has to be a way to prevent these shootings. While some are trying to shift the focus from how the guns were acquired to the shooting’s connection to international terrorism, this is not the correct approach. The U.S. doesn’t have an ISIS-related gun problem: It has a gun problem — period. Each time there is a shooting, the urgency to prevent these incidents should increase. There should not just be prayers and empty hope that this will not happen again. These will not prevent future shootings: Gun control will. Not everyone who owns a gun will use it for nefarious purposes. But, everyone who does purchase a gun needs to go through some sort of screening to ensure they bought their weapon legally — this could decrease the amount of shady characters who purchase guns.
Despite the fact that the shootings were potentially inspired by ISIS, our pathetically relaxed gun laws allow such mass shootings to occur. Our laws enable shooters to acquire weapons easily, even with gun-control laws becoming stricter. Gun violence still happens, and the incidents this year alone are close to outnumbering days in a year. Not being able to get guns legally may very well act as a deterrent.
The fact that these shooters were Muslim should not discount the impact of their actions. It doesn’t explain it, and their ties to ISIS did not make this an inevitability.
Nicole Dan is a UF political science sophomore. Her column appears on Mondays.
