Mary Sanchez, writing for the Kansas City Star, wrote this.  I offer excerpts for all of us who welcome the newcomers among us.

New Zealand is a sliver compared to the United States in land mass. It is not a military superpower or an economic hegemon.  And yet by another measure — let’s call it political maturity — New Zealand has left the United States in the dust.

A mere six days after a gruesome terrorist attack that slaughtered 50 people as they gathered at two mosques for Friday prayers, New Zealand responded by banning the military-style semi-automatic guns the terrorist used in the attack.

Whatever cultural, historical and legal differences there may be between our society and New Zealand’s, our politics have been so deeply corrupted that we can’t take even the most basic steps to address gun violence. But the problem goes deeper than mere money influence.

We’d better start being far more honest and pragmatic about this truth.  Without it, the U.S. will never make inroads to the devastating way gun violence ends about 40,000 North Americans lives annually by suicide, accidents and homicide.

Consider the words Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern used to announce the bans, which includes all high-capacity ammunition magazines and parts that allow weapons to be modified: “It’s about all of us, it’s in the national interest and it’s about safety,” she said.  These words, by New Zealand’s Police Minister, would be blasphemy to many here: “owning a firearm is a privilege and not a right.”

In the U.S., the spirit of individualism holds sway.  It can be a strength, but at times it’s also the source of our folly. Even though the Second Amendment’s wording references collectivity and common defense — a “well-regulated militia”
many Americans love to see the right of self-defense and to bear arms as fundamentally individual.

Many of the dead in Christchurch were not native-born New Zealanders.  And yet their suffering moved that nation to act, swiftly and with authority.

Meanwhile, the mass murders of teenagers at a high school in Parkland, Fla., and of 6- and 7-year-olds at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., could not produce a similar reaction here.