The killings that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut over the weekend were disgraceful. This is a simple fact that people on both sides of the gun debate would agree on. Over the past few days though as the remorse turns to anger we are seeing more and more people turn their attention to the gun laws in America and her desire to ensure that the sanctity of the 2nd Amendment is preserved. People immediately look at gun laws whenever horrific events like this take place which is unfortunate. Situations like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting do not take place because of America’s gun laws and in my view moving the debate immediately to the 2nd Amendment means that the real issues at play do not get discussed.

I will firstly preface my remarks by saying that this article is in no way suggesting that we should adopt America’s gun laws here in Australia. The laws we have appear to be working well enough, every Australian has a legal entitlement to own a gun if they so desire, they just must go through some safety and regulatory process beforehand.

However, as anyone who lives in Western Sydney will confirm, regulating guns does not mean that people who should not have guns do not have them. Rarely a day goes by when we don’t read about how one moron decided to drive to another moron’s house and shoot his front door down because he was selling drugs on the wrong side of the road. Gun crime is rampant in our society despite the best intentions of the law and it does not take a genius to tell you that the guns being used by gang members on the streets are not the same registered guns that you or I would use but rather guns purchased illegally on the black market.

Which leads me to one of the points I keep coming back to, people who want guns will work out how to get them. Mass Murderers like the kid in Connecticut do not just wake up in the morning happy, go to have some cereal, realise there is no milk, get angry and then go out on a shooting rampage. These situations are often thought about and developed over a long period of time. On July 20, 2012 when James Eagan Holmes put on a mask busted into a Century Movie Theatre in Aurora, Colorado at midnight during the Premiere Screening of The Dark Knight, threw tear gas grenades into a cinema and then started shooting the patrons he had planned the entire situation down to every last detail. It is wrong to assume that he would not have done this if he had to purchase the guns through the black market.

The other obvious example of this is Anders Brevik, the perpetrator of the Norway Attacks in which 77 people were needlessly killed. Norway has among the strictest gun laws in the world. The acquisition of firearms is heavily regulated by the state. Brevik, however, was on a mission. He was not going to let the fact that he could not buy the weapons legally stop him. He is credited with the largest death toll from a single massacre in history, despite living in a country with strongly regulated gun laws.

The issue that America needs to discuss is not gun control. It is a much deeper, much more significant problem. In a lot of ways, immediately calling for gun reform is the easy option. Americans need to ask themselves what is making their citizens, particularly the youth, get to a point where they feel they need to carry out a mass murder like this. There are serious psychological issues at play here. The guns are not the problem, at the end of the day somebody has to pull the trigger.

The Second Amendment has existed since The Bill of Rights was ratified in Virginia in 1791. The problem of Mass Murderers shooting up schools, universities and shopping centres did not exist back then. In fact, the Second Amendment had existed quite happily for a good 200 years until the relatively recent phenomenon of Mass Shootings became as prevalent as they are today. The real answer that America needs to solve is what has changed lately in the country to make so many more people mentally unstable compared to their forefathers.

To assume that tightening gun laws will automatically stop these shootings from happening is the stuff of fairytales. South Africa has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, stricter even than Norway. In fact the gun laws in South Africa are so strict that the legislature is looking at options to relax them because at present police are not able to adequately process them. Despite these strict gun laws South Africa has a higher firearm related death rate than America and any other developed nation.

Contrastly, Switzerland has what could be described as the most relaxed gun laws in the world. More or less every male between 20 and 30 has been conscripted into the militia. They all have guns and have all been trained in how to use that weapon for combat yet despite this the firearm related death rate remains low.

Situations like the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School are a tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers must go out to these families and to anybody who has lost a loved one unjustly in a tragedy. Events like this should not be a catalyst for a debate on access to firearms. The debate about firearms is a shortcut and a diversion that is not needed. There are some serious mental and psychological issues happening with many of the youth in America. We need to shift the debate away from trying to limit the rights of innocent gun owners and focus on how to identify these serious problems.