While West and Cohen’s documentary never discusses Highland Park, Uvalde, or any of the other 3,800 mass shootings, it is undoubtedly about them. Their anger is palpable, yet the documentary wisely chooses not to dedicate much of its runtime to the January 8 shooting, instead opting to focus on Giffords’ recovery, her family, and activism against gun violence.

The law showed favoritism to Smart Guns and personalized technology by only allowing the sale of Smart Guns in the state of New Jersey three years after the first Smart Gun went on U.S. shelves online and in stores. The law, supported by New Jersey Senator Loretta Weinberg, and passed in 2002 was called the Childproof Handgun Law. As a revolt the NRA and gun extremists proceeded to throw the biggest tantrum against gun manufacturing progress since the assault rifle ban. 

The recent shooting in Santa Barbara is a red flag in a sea of red flags: gun violence is America’s version of the African tragedy. Since 2006, there has been one mass killing nearly every two weeks in the United States, with 75 percent being committed by the use of a firearm. Firearm sales have set records every single year since President Obama has been in office; there have been four times as many firearms purchased as babies have been born in the U.S.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions in our national gun control debate. The issue is not whether we should have gun control laws in this country — or what they should be.The issue, really, is why so many white middle-American men view any effort to regulate firearms as an assault on their very identity – and thus fight sane and rational laws as if their lives and liberties were at stake.

Turns out the NRA’s logic is BS.  The facts are that from 1994, when the Brady Gun Safety Act went into effect, through 2010, background checks stopped 2,079,000 applications for firearms transfer through licensed firearm dealers.  In 2010 alone, about 73,000 applications were denied by the FBI and about 80,000 by state and local agencies.  47 percent of the FBI denials were because of felony convictions or because the applicant was a fugitive from justice; 31 percent of the state and local denials were to convicted or indicted felons.

Critics, including Martin’s parents, have called Stand Your Ground laws (contained in Section 776 of Florida Statutes) an invitation for vigilante violence and civilian racial profiling. Despite widespread outrage over Martin’s slaying, a 19-member task force assembled by Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has found no grounds to overturn the law. The findings of the Task Force on Citizen Safety and Protection report released on February 22nd boil down to this: The problem doesn’t lay with the law but with some people who have tried to use it. 

“The gunman is worse than the one at the theatre a couple of weeks ago because he targeted an entire community," said a worshipper who witnessed the tragic shooting at his local gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wis., Aug. 5. What matters more is what the two shooters shared in common: the possession of lethal weapons. The kind that allowed one individual to wreak disproportionate harm, take multiple lives in a matter of seconds, allowed him to live out his most violent fantasies. Focusing on the “hate” angle distracts from the far greater crime: the appalling state of gun laws in the United States.

The shooting that killed seven at a private Christian university in Oakland would never have happened in Korea, where owning a firearm is outlawed. That at least is the assessment of community members who point to America’s own thriving gun culture as a causal factor in this and other incidents. The shooting, the Bay Area’s worst mass murder in nearly two decades, occurred Monday morning at Oikos University, in a business park between Interstate 880 and Oakland International Airport. Another three were injured in the slaughter, according to police.