'It's actually normal everyday people' - 7 News reporter Angela Cox on accepting America's gun culture
In her five and half years as a US correspondent, 7 News reporter Angela Cox said she's "lost count" of how many shootings she's covered there.
Gun violence is so prevalent in the US that most shootings go unnoticed, she said.
"You lose track," Cox told Yahoo7. "And it actually gets to the point where if a shooting happens in a school or something, it happens so frequently and – it sounds heartless to say – but if there are only a couple of a fatalities it's almost not news anymore."
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That changed on Wednesday morning when a disgruntled former journalist opened fire and killed two of his colleagues during a live TV interview.
What is unlikely to change is America's view on enacting stricter gun laws in response.
"This is a dramatic one. It happened on live television. People see that, it gets people talking," Cox said, reluctantly accepting the talk would go nowhere.
America's obsession with guns goes back to the country's infancy in the late 18th Century. The Second Amendment to the Constitution enshrines the population's "right to keep and near arms" and even those in favour of gun control believe this won't change.
In Australia for a brief holiday, Cox spoke about the pathology of gun violence in the US where she has to be mindful of the possibility that interacting with the wrong stranger could get you shot.
Despite being "against guns" herself, Cox said she has learned to accept America's gun culture.
"Being in their country I have to be respectful of how they are brought up and their constitution … but it is very difficult to have a conversation with (gun enthusiasts) because they are so passionate about it and some of their arguments do not make any sense to me."
Cox recalled covering the National Rifle Association convention after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook primary school in December 2012 when a lone gunman killed 20 children and six adults. In spite of a public outcry, the convention went ahead amid a now-lost national conversation about changing the nation's gun laws.
"We went down to the NRA convention, the first national convention after Sandy Hook when all those kids died, thinking that if ever there was amore convincing argument as to why they change their gun laws – Sandy Hook was it," she said.
Cox said that while the gun enthusiasts at the convention were "even more frightening though than the shootings" she'd covered, she soon realised it was not the gun lobby that is blocking changes to America's gun laws but the American people.
"It's not just crazies. It's not just extremists. It's not just the weird gun lobby. It's actually normal, everyday people who feel that way," she said.
"And when you say to them we don't have guns (in Australia) because of what happened in Port Arthur they say 'what happens if someone tried to shoot you on the street, how are you going to defend yourself?' that's their argument."
When Martin Bryant killed 35 people in the Tasmania in 1996, the Howard government took little convincing to change Australia's gun laws. Yet Cox said it is entirely unlikely the US will make similar moves – even with reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward's killings broadcast live into people's homes. Their killer, Vester Lee Flanagan II, purchased his guns legally in the state of Virginia.
"Every time you see another shooting you think 'surely this is the one' and there's outrage and outcries from the public.
"And if Sandy Hook couldn't do it, when you saw all those beautiful faces I don't see a will. The will of the people isn't there."
News break - August 27
