In 2019 there have been over 255 mass shootings in America, this is what makes a mass shooter

Another day, another mass shooting in the United States of America.

A total of 53 people were killed by mass shootings in the US last month alone, marking the 38th tragedy of its kind in 2019, according to recent New York Times data.

When it comes to gun reform, Australia is often cited as a shining act to follow: We passed gun reform legislation shortly after the Port Arthur massacre of 1996, and — up until June this year — we hadn’t seen a mass shooting since.

Just six days after the Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern similarly announced a ban on “military-style” automatic rifles.

How is it, the world asks, that countries like ours were able to achieve gun reform so successfully, while the US continues to struggle with this measure despite having had more mass shootings than days of the year in 2019?

Gun control advocates have called for universal background checks, the disarming of domestic abusers, “red flag” laws permitting family or friends to temporarily remove guns from dangerous individuals, and the banning of semiautomatic rifles.

Here are some of the key reasons that’s easier said than done.

THE POWER OF THE NRA

The National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful and influential lobby groups in the US — so much so that it’s been described as America’s “third political party”.

The multi-billion dollar corporation boasts a massive global influence. You only need to look at the One Nation scandal that unfolded earlier this year, where hidden camera footage revealed James Ashby and Steve Dickson’s attempt to secure millions of dollars in political donation funds in exchange for bolstering support for looser gun restrictions in Australia.

The NRA spends millions of dollars on political advocacy and direct contributions to pro-gun politicians in America.

That’s not including the millions of dollars allocated to educational programs, membership events, sponsorships and legal advocacy for bolstering gun support.

During the 2016 election, the organisation spent a record $US54 million on 86 Republican candidates, producing ads in support of the Republican who criticised their Democratic opponent.

Why do they care so much? Profit, of course, is a key part of it. Firearms are a multi-billion dollar global business.

But the issue goes deeper than that. The NRA fears popular gun regulations are the first step in potentially ending all private gun ownership in America, which they view as a violation of their constitutional rights. This is why you’ll often hear the NRA refer to the Second Amendment in its defence of guns.

Some politicians, in turn, fear what losing the support of the NRA could mean for their careers. In 2013, a retired Republican congresswoman told The New York Times: “That was the one group where I said, ‘As long as I’m in office, I’m not bucking the NRA’.”

Or take former Texas senator Ted Cruz, who in the lead-up to the 2016 election posted a campaign video of himself literally cooking bacon with an AR-15 rifle — and then eating the bacon. Of every politician in America, he was the top recipient of gun-rights money that year.

Or still, take President Donald Trump, whose 2016 election campaign received $US30 million from the NRA and who later said the organisation “has a true friend in the White House”.

Whether you support the NRA or not, there’s no denying its influence in American politics is rampant.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT

Those opposed to gun reform will often cite the Second Amendment of the US Constitution in their defence — even though it’s arguably open to interpretation.

The Second Amendment says “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”.

Gun activists will say this is proof Americans have the right to bear arms for self-defence. It’s a fundamental American right.

But legal scholars and gun control activists have debated the Founding Fathers’ intended meaning for decades.

Bear in mind that was written in 1791. The country’s War of Independence had ended less than a decade prior, and its people were expanding west. People quite justifiably wanted security and to be able to protect themselves from government overreach.

More than 200 years later, the Second Amendment continues to be upheld. Just today, Texas passed a series of new laws to loosen gun restrictions and make it possible to have a gun at public schools and places of worship.

The NRA, which feted the laws, argued they were necessary to “protect your Second Amendment rights”.

Some gun control activists would argue the Second Amendment needs to be overhauled — that the historical context on which it was built doesn’t hold up in 2019.

“If we wanted to honour the true understanding of the Second Amendment, we would begin by requiring gun registration and mandatory firearms training for all gun owners,” Fordham University professor Saul Cornell wrote in The New Republic.

A fundamental difference in interpretation continues to play out heavily on both sides of the issue of gun control.

AMERICAN LIFE AND CULTURE

The debate over gun reform is often reduced to one of “progressives versus pro-murder hicks” or, conversely, the “American patriots versus evil lefties”. But the data reveals America’s relationship with guns is far more complex.

America has the highest rate of gun violence in the developed world and the highest number of privately-owned guns in the world. There is a ton of research out there linking the prevalence of guns to the prevalence of mass shootings.

But the data suggests, ironically enough, that American gun owners actually do support measures to restrict firearms. According to the Pew Research Centre, most people in the US support universal background checks, bans on assault-style weapons and a federal database to track gun sales.

But the same research has found gun owners — the vast majority of whom are not members of the NRA — are reluctant to actually push for greater regulation of guns, viewing this as another example of Washington bureaucrats seeking to infringe upon their personal rights.

“As dangerous weapons, guns offer a form of direct power in a world where trust and civic belonging are in short supply,” wrote political science experts Austin Sarat and Jonathan Obert in Politico last month.

They argue guns tie their owners on multiple fronts — to their “deep American roots”, to their gun hobbies, to their shared commitment to armed citizenship.

Three-quarters of American gun owners say doing so is essential to their personal sense of freedom, and half say it’s important to their overall identity.

Two-thirds of gun owners cite protection as their main reason for owning a gun, with roughly one in seven saying they have fired or threatened to fire a gun to defend themselves, their family or their possessions.

These ties, combined with the weight of the Second Amendment (no matter how misinterpreted it may be), make successful gun reform all the more difficult.

GERRYMANDERING

Gerrymandering is the process by which state politicians divide American states up into electoral districts.

Those in charge of dividing where these district lines are drawn have quite a lot of freedom to do so, which essentially means states can be manipulated to give one political party leeway over another.

Both parties are guilty of gerrymandering, although experts say historically the Republicans have done it more and been much more prolific at it.

What does this have to do with gun reform? Well, in part thanks to this process, the House of Representatives veers towards the Republicans. And Republican leaders — many of whom hail from rural states where gun ownership and gun culture are front and centre — tend to skew against gun control measures.

This explains how you get a country where a majority of its population can support something like gun reform and not see this reflected by their representatives.

THE US SENATE

In American politics, if a piece of legislation passes the House of Representatives, it then has to pass the Senate.

Most major pieces of legislation need the backing of 60 out of 100 senators to pass.

The problem for gun control here is that states dominated by big-city voters, which tend to favour gun reform, are outnumbered by the more “pro-gun” conservative states.

In the Senate, less populous states in the deep south and Midwest have the same representation as far larger states like New York and California. This contributes to an unbalanced ratio where most Americans can favour stronger gun control law but again not see this reflected by their representatives.

The closest the Senate ever came to achieving gun reform legislation was in 2013 after the Sandy Hook school shooting that left 20 children dead.

The bill received 56 votes in its favour — four votes short of the necessary requirement for gun control.

In the wake of more recent mass shootings, like El Paso and Odessa, Sandy Hook is often used as something of a sobering benchmark.

If the mass murder of innocent primary schoolchildren couldn’t spark change, nothing will.