US activists demand gun control on Sandy Hook’s anniversary

US activists have staged a protest against gun violence outside the National Rifle Association (NRA) headquarters in Virginia on the third anniversary of the Sandy Hook mass shooting.

Gun control activists in the US held a protest and vigil to mark the 3rd anniversary of the Sandy Hook mass shooting on Monday by gathering outside the NRA headquarters in Virginia and demanding more control over firearms purchasers and for a ban on sales to people on federal watch lists.                                     

Regarding the Sandy Hook incident, Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat attending the protest said, "It was a scene that has been repeated too often in the United States, and just as often, the response to these senseless killings has been inaction on the issue of gun control."

Connolly added that he also wanted Congress to overturn a long-standing ban on providing federal funding for research on gun violence.

This is while the US Constitution's Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms and gun-rights groups, including the NRA, arguing that restrictions on gun purchases would not improve public safety.

Meanwhile, Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice-president, defended the association, saying, “When evil knocks on our doors, Americans have a power no other people on the planet share: the full-throated right to defend our families and ourselves with our second amendment.”

On December 4, US President Barack Obama blamed the NRA’s “extremely strong grip on Congress” for the failure to pass a gun control legislation.

On December 14, 2012, twenty children and six adults were fatally shot by Adam Lanza, the gunman who later killed himself at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the town of Newtown in the US state of Connecticut.

Following the shooting, Obama pushed for gun reforms, including expanded background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines, but the powerful National Rifle Association of America and its people in Congress fiercely opposed the measures.

The dispute over gun violence has exacerbated as the country is gripped by a "pattern of mass shootings"as Obama has put it.

In October, a gunman opened fire at a community college in Oregon and killed 9 people before taking his own life.

On December 2, in the deadliest mass shooting in the United States in three years, 14 people were killed and 22 others were injured as gunmen attacked a center for people with developmental disabilities in San Bernardino, California.

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