Monday's horrific school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee (USA), in which six people, including three nine-year-old students were killed, has once again brought to the fore the issue of gun control — or a lack thereof — in the United States.

This was the 131st mass shooting in the US just in 2023 — perversely, that is nearly 1.5 mass shootings per day this year. If one takes each of the past three years into account, that number goes up over 600 mass shootings — almost two per day on average. Gun Control Archive, a non-profit that tracks gun-related violence, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are killed, whether at home or outside.

The Nashville shooter, identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, walked into the school armed with three guns, including a semi-automatic rifle, while the police have recovered more firearms from the suspect's house. Hale was shot dead by the police.

According to multiple research outlets, gun violence is the top cause of death among children and young adults, while data from the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that more people died in the US in gun-related violence than motor vehicle accidents. This was an 8 percent annual jump over a year of record firearm-related deaths.

A significant number of these mass shootings occur at schools. According to the Sandy Hook Promise, a non-profit founded to spread awareness about gun violence in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, every day in the US, 12 children die from gun violence, while 32 are shot and injured. The non-profit adds that guns are the leading cause of death among American children and teens, with one of 10 victims aged 19 years or younger.

Since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre — in which 12 students and one teacher were killed — there have been 376 mass shootings at schools in the US, as per a report by Washington Post. Last year was the worst since 1999 — the US witnessed 46 school shootings last year alone. Sandy Hook Promise estimates that nearly 3,40,000 children have been exposed to gun violence at school since 1999.

And it's not just children. Firearm-related deaths include an alarmingly high number of suicides as well.

According to the BBC, which quoted Small Arms Survey, a Swiss-based research project, there are upwards of 390 million guns in circulation in the US — that's a ratio of of 120.5 firearms per 100 residents, the highest in the world. Yemen, with 52.8 firearms per 100 residents, is a far second.

While just the ratio doesn't automatically mean a high incidence of gun-related violence, in 2021, nearly 79 percent of all homicides in the US involved guns.

Untying the Gun Control Legislation Knot

Gun control legislation has always been a thorny issue in US politics. The conservative Republican Party has its feet planted firmly against any sort of gun control as it would purportedly violate Americans' rights under the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.

However, it is highly unlikely that the framers of the US Constitution meant for the Second Amendment to mean that every US citizen has a right to purchase a gun.

Here's what the Second Amendment states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Essentially, it means US citizens are allowed to keep and bear arms when required to defend the country as a civilian militia. Even the late US Supreme Court associate justice Antonin Scalia had written that the Second Amendment does not mean citizens have "a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues".

However, the Second Amendment has since been misappropriated into meaning a fundamental right for every citizen to own a firearm.

Further muddying the waters are state constitutions — 44 of the 50 states have a provision that is similar to the Second Amendment, and some even allow citizens licences to conceal and carry firearms.

The Republicans have stymied many a Democrat president's attempts to control the proliferation of firearms in the country, often gutting Bills until they are virtually ineffective. It doesn't help that one of the most influential anti-gun control lobbies in the US — the National Rifle Association, a guns rights advocacy group that boasts of a 5.5-million strong membership — is on the Republicans' side.

It also doesn't help that far-right conservatives, including members of the House of Representatives, like Marjorie Taylor-Greene, lean hard into calling some school attacks hoaxes, terming the survivors of school shootings "snowflakes" and make other derogatory remarks.

A federal assault weapons law, which included a ban on semi-automatic assault rifles, lapsed in 2004 and hasn't been enacted again. As of now, the only measure of gun control came last year through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which expanded background checks for gun buyers under 21 years of age to include juvenile crime records, but it is still mind-boggling that people who are barely old enough to vote can legally own a firearm.

There are exceptions — convicted felons, illegal aliens, those with substance addiction problems, to name a few, are not allowed to purchase firearms.

But given the massive scope for most people to purchase firearms, and the massive black market in which anyone can buy a gun, there appears to be no immediate end in sight to firearm-related violence in the United States of America.

Also read: Joe Biden signs executive order to expand background checks for gun purchases

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)