On March 22, 2021, a 21-year-old man opened fire inside a King Soopers supermarket in the town of Boulder, Colo., a suburb of Denver, killing 10 people, including a police officer. This is the second major mass shooting in a week. Last Tuesday, a gunman opened fire in three spas in the Atlanta area, killing a total of eight people. The shootings have once again brought the issue of gun control front and center onto the national stage.
On Monday, at around 2:30 p.m., a gunman, later identified by the authorities to be Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa of Arvada, Colo., entered the parking lot of a supermarket called King Soopers and started firing what was later identified to be an AR-15 assault-style rifle. The man then later walked into the store. A witness reported seeing the gunman shoot a woman at the front of the line for COVID-19 vaccines in the grocery store’s pharmacy. Many customers and employees ran for their lives, escaping through back exits.
Boulder Police were called around three minutes later, and nine minutes later, officers were being fired upon by the gunman. First responder Officer Eric Talley, who entered the building at 2:50 p.m, was fatally shot by the gunman. After a gunfight, the gunman was captured and taken into custody by the police at 3:28 p.m.
Witnesses reported hearing ten to 30 shots fired in rapid succession, and a total of 10 people were killed. The victims were aged between 20 and 65 years old.
The alleged gunman has now been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder. Alissa had previously been charged with third-degree assault in 2018 when he punched a classmate at Arvada West High School. He received two months of probation and 48 hours of community service. Reportedly, the gunman was known to the FBI as he had ties to an individual currently being investigated.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for the next 10 days. He said, “Never ever does it cross your mind that that trip to the grocery store could be your last minutes on Earth.” He said that his heart “ached” after the shootings. White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the shooting. The president also ordered flags to be flown at half-staff, almost immediately after they were raised following the Atlanta spa shootings.
These shootings have once again reignited the controversy surrounding gun debate, which by now is a complete partisan issue. Since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut killed 26 people, including 20 first-graders, 13 Democrat-controlled states have enacted tighter gun control measures, including expanding background checks. On the contrary, 14 Republican-controlled states have passed laws, including one in Iowa that was passed almost exactly the same time as the Boulder shooting, to make gun carrying more permissive.
As of now, gun regulation is completely left up to states, with Congress not having passed any major gun control bills since 1994. The Democrat-controlled House passed two major pieces of gun control legislation, one that would close all loopholes in bypassing gun sale background checks, and another increasing the time the FBI has to perform background checks from three days to 10 days so that no one is allowed to by a gun before a background check is conducted. The first bill, H.R. 8, titled the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, passed with all but one Democrat voting for it and eight Republicans voting for it. The other bill, H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021, passed with two Democrats in opposition and two Republicans in favor, underscoring the partisan divide over the issue of gun control.
Though the bills have passed the House as per expectation, like most other Democratic priorities, faces a deep uphill climb in the evenly divided 50-50 Senate, with Democrats holding the smallest possible majority. 10 Republican votes would be needed in order to allow for the bills to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate, which would be quite difficult to obtain. Despite this, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that conversations with Republicans are ongoing and he has pledged to bring the bill to a floor vote. “No more thoughts and prayers. A vote is what we need. A vote,” said Schumer.
Gun control remains a legislative priority for Biden. Psaki said, during a briefing last month, that Biden is “not afraid of standing up to the NRA—he’s done it multiple times, and won—on background checks and a range of issues. And it is a priority to him on a personal level.” The National Rifle Association, or NRA, is the largest pro-gun rights lobbying group in the U.S.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he was hopeful that at least some gun control legislation could pass the Senate. Connecticut’s other Democratic Senator, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, said there were “ongoing conversations” to get enough Republican support for the passage of the bills.
Unsurprisingly, research has shown time and time again that the reason why there are so many mass shootings in the U.S. is simple: the United States simply has more guns than any other developed country.
The investigation from The New York Times found that although the U.S. has a sky-high gun homicide rate—33 per million people in 2009, compared to 5 per million in Canada and 0.7 per million in the U.K.—Americans were no more likely to face crime than Europeans. It was just that crime in America is more violent. For example, a New Yorker and a Londoner have about the same chance of being robbed, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to die. And this is simply due to the fact that gun ownership in the U.S. is far higher than in any country.
And as it goes, compared to other countries, America has simply decided that the cost of these mass shootings is worth it in exchange for relatively unregulated gun ownership.