VOA常速英语:好了伤疤忘了疼：枪支管控支持率下滑

Hundreds of weapons enthusiasts attended the nation’s gun show in Chantilly Virginia recently. In this Washington DC suburb, vendors offered visitors the chance to buy, trade and sell all kinds of guns and ammunition. And I like to shoot and I like to shoot different weapons. Some here believe owning a gun is not just a constitutional right. In their opinion, it’s part of being an American. The gun culture in America is pretty much that it’s purely American. Americans love love our country. People that fool with this stuff like myself. They love, I guess, just the appeal that it has for preserving our heritage. Pakistani-American Abid Ghafoor who is selling guns here says gun ownership is primarily about security.

If someone points a gun at me, I can be ready to go, too. I can protect myself, because I have a gun. But gun control advocates say it’s too easy to purchase a weapon and argue that strengthening gun laws will prevent mass shootings like the one in Parkland in Florida. Last February when a gunman opened fire at a high school killing 17 people, survivors of the shooting jointly call for tougher gun laws, including requiring universal background checks. Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s child. Just this week, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee forwarded a bill mandating those background investigations. But the demand for gun rights is just as passionate in America where the FBI says gun sales have increased 83 percent over the past 20 years. Gun Show Organizer Annette Elliot says current gun laws suffice. They are coming and they found a gun that they like, and then they fill out the paperwork turned into the state police and they do a background check on the individual. They do a state background check which covers the mental health aspect of it more severely and then they also do a federal background check with FBI.
Certain aspects of gun regulations like Legal Size of Gun Clips do vary from state to state and while support for stricter gun laws increased after the Parkland shooting. The spike did not last long. Polls one year later show support for more regulation has dropped several points to just more than 50 percent, the same levels as before the massacre.
Near Morgan VOA News Chantilly, Virginia.