Director Of Gun Control Australia Suggests To Boycott Non-Essential Travels To United States Over Nation’s Inaction On Gun Control
Ten people died and seven others were left wounded after a mass shooting at a college campus in southern Oregon on October 1. The 26-year-old gunman identified as Chris Mercer has four firearms, including a rifle, when the incident happened, USA Today reported on Oct. 2.
The incident at Umpqua Community College is the fourth mass shooting that took place at a US college campus since August. After the recent shooting, president Barrack Obama described US as "the only advanced country on earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months."
"It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun," Obama said, adding that he will go on with his plans for new gun rules to avoid this kind of incidents.
"And each time this happens, I'm going to bring this up. Each time this happens, I'm going to say that we can actually do something about it but we're going to have to change our laws."
Obama went on, "And this is not something I can do by myself. I've got to have a Congress and I've got to have state legislatures and governors who are willing to work with me on this."
Meanwhile, Gun Control Australia director Samantha Lee recommends to boycott non-essential travels to US until the nation fixes its gun control policies, Think Progress forecasted on Sunday.
"We have 2.1 million Australians visiting the US every year and over 200,000 expats in America," Lee said during an interview on Australia's Today Show. "So I believe we have a duty to respond to this tragedy in the US. And the way to do this is have a boycott of non-essential travel to the US."
Lee also calls for an international attempt to control this kind of incidents that have taken away so many lives.
"I believe America has reached an abyss, and we really do need to act as an international community to assist Obama to push these laws through Congress," she said.
On the other hand, University of Alabama associate professor Adam Lankford says "countries with higher rates of gun ownership recorded more mass shooters per capita," as noted by The Wall Street Journal on Saturday.
A research also showed that US tops the list for the highest number of gun ownership with about 270 million firearms.
