America’s way of dealing with massive tragedy is a juxtaposition to the rest of the world;. In 1996, Thomas Hamilton shot up a Scottish elementary school killing 16 children, one teacher, and then himself. Public response was swift and efficient; gun restrictions sprinted through legislation taking tens of thousands of weapons off the streets with a gun-buyback program. With most countries, including Austria and Norway, these shooting usually mean tighter laws.

 America has dealt with mass shooting in a different way; On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza murdered twenty elementary school kids, six staff members, himself, and his mother. This is only the second deadliest shooting in American history. The first occurred in 2007 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, or Virginia Tech. The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people. Now six years later, gun laws have yet to noticeably change, unlike Scotland Austria and Norway. In the Small Arms Survey, a report released by a post graduate university, Graduate Institute of International Studies located in Geneva, Switzerland there are 875 million known weapons and 270 million of them are located in the hands of the Americans.

In a recent survey, “USA Today” and Gallup collaborated to find that 58% of Americans say they want tighter gun laws while the majority oppose the ban on assault weapons. Seventy-four percent oppose a ban on assault weapons, Tom Oury, junior, says, “ Leave them. Even if gun laws were to get far stricter, someone who is willing to commit such terrible crimes, as we have seen in the past year, will not be stopped by the legality (or lack thereof) of the weapon they choose to commit the crime with.”  Only 24% are in favor including Sydney Beltz, senior, “Obviously something isn’t working when mentally unstable people can get semi automatic weapons with no questions asked.” This makes gun laws another complicated issue on the American agenda.