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When violence erupted at a demonstration in Charlottesville in August of 2017, the president not only refused to call it terrorism but went so far as to draw a false equivalency between violence-prone white nationalists and peaceful demonstrators, thus emboldening Neo-Nazis, Klansmen  and other like types. When a mass shooting took place in New Zealand last Friday, a first for that country, its Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, didn’t hesitate to call the attacks “terrorism,” or label as disgraceful an Australian lawmaker’s suggestion of a link between violence and Muslim immigration. She then visited members of the Muslim community the following day wearing a hijab as a sign of respect. Can we expect that kind of response from our Putin wannabe of a leader?

Ardern went even further, pledging to pay for the funeral costs of all 50 victims and offering to provide financial assistance to their families, many of them left without their breadwinners following the tragedy. And she promised swift action on gun control. Imagine such a response here, because that’s the only place you’re likely to see one as long as the NRA maintains its current level of influence over legislators.   

According to Prime Minister Ardern, her cabinet has backed changes to their gun law “in principle” and predicted that within the next ten days the government “will have announced reforms which will make our community safer.”

The deputy prime minister, Winston Peters, who had previously opposed changes to gun laws, said he was in full support of the prime minister on the issue, adding: “The reality is that after 1pm on Friday, our world changed forever and so will our laws.”

Background checks covering criminal and medical records are already required in New Zealand but current law allows anyone  over the age of 18 considered by the police to be “fit and proper” to legally possess a military-style semi-automatic weapon. This suggests a cultural acceptance of firearms similar to that which exists in the US.

While New Zealand is taking measures to ban automatic assault rifles following a single mass shooting incident, lawmakers in Missouri have introduced two bills that would require residents to purchase firearms—one requiring the purchase of handguns and the other mandating the acquisition of AR-15s—and both providing tax credits to help cover the purchase price. Just saying “different strokes” doesn’t come anywhere near explaining this absurd comparison of differences between governmental policies. On the other hand, a combination of trumpian faux-nationalism, bigotry, racism, naiveté, ignorance and fear go a long way toward understanding how otherwise assumedly intelligent people can veer so far off the rails in their thinking.

The government of New Zealand’s response thus far to the recent mass shooting that occurred there offers proof that it is possible for a country with liberal gun laws to transcend political interference in enacting meaningful gun reform. In this country, that will require some adjustments to attitude on the part of certain groups of individuals, but more than that, it will require a lessening, somehow, of the influence the NRA has over our elected representatives, both at the local, state and federal level.

We would be wise to heed the actions of the New Zealanders. It’s only taken them one mass shooting to produce a meaningful response on a federal level; how many re-occurrences of mass shooting events will it take for similar action to be undertaken here? Enacting meaningful gun control legislation might not conform to the credo “Make America Great Again,” but it would certainly make America greater.

Tim Konrad