Twelve years ago, 32 people were killed in the deadliest school shooting in America — a country where gun rights are uniquely enshrined in its founding documents. Rhetorically, the response to such crimes is instant and widespread. The legislative response, however, is far different.

Tuesday marks the 12-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, in which 32 people were killed. Since then, two shootings have surpassed the death toll, and no federal gun control legislation has been enacted.

In contrast, a shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand recently left 50 people dead and lead to a ban on high-capacity magazines and “military style” automatic and semi-automatic weapons within six days of the shooting.

The response was lauded by U.S. Democratic leaders, but others have doubted the United States’ ability to respond similarly. Mack Shelley, chair of Iowa State’s political science department, said this kind of swift legislation is less possible in the United States because of a difference in governmental systems, as well as partisan gridlock.

New Zealand operates on a parliamentary system, which Shelley said often leads to legislators being “more on the same wavelength.” In comparison, Shelley said the United States system is a lot more “legalistic” and is “designed to slow things down.”

The most significant difference, however, may lie in each country’s founding documents. Unlike New Zealand, the U.S. is one of only three countries to constitutionally protect the right to gun ownership — the other two being Guatemala and Mexico.

The Second Amendment guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” but the amendment has come under fire in the wake of mass shootings in the U.S., with some saying the Constitution should be seen as a “living document” rather than an absolute one.

However, Jacob Minock, president of College Republicans, described the Second Amendment as part of the “fabric of America” and said gun ownership is viewed as “a fundamental human right” by many people.

Shelley said adapting for modern life around something so established in American culture can be difficult. This can be particularly challenging regarding guns, which Shelley said historically have a “heroic element … in resisting a police state.”

“To the best of my knowledge, George Washington didn’t use Facebook, and Benjamin Franklin never had an Android,” Shelley said. “Neither of them could have laid hands on an AR-15 because they didn’t exist then. So the philosophical question is: do you think about the Second Amendment … as something that’s engraved in tablets of stone for all time?”

The gun control divide falls mostly along party lines, though many Americans support some form of gun control legislation.

According to a 2018 survey from the Pew Research Center, more than 80 percent of survey respondents support measures preventing people with mental illnesses or on no-fly or watch lists from purchasing guns and mandating background checks for private sales and at gun shows.

Taylor Blair, president of College Democrats, said the lack of legislative response is because the Republican party’s stance on gun control is “a business model, not responsible legislation.”

“If the GOP legislated with facts and compassion instead of operating as puppets of gun industry lobbyists we would have had common sense gun reform legislation decades ago,” Blair said. “The Republican Party is owned by the gun industry, so it is unsurprising that their solution is not to limit the source of the problem — guns — but to instead to increase the number of guns in circulation. This puts money directly into the pockets of the gun industry over the dead bodies of Americans.”

The party divide becomes clearer in other proposals. Thirty percent more Democrats or Democratic-leaning voters support creating a federal database to track gun sales as well as banning high-capacity magazines and assault-style weapons than their Republican counterparts, according to the same study.

Blair said he believes this legislation would be as successful in America as it has been “in Australia and many other countries around the world.”

Minock disagreed, specifically acknowledging the subjective nature of the term “assault rifle” in its common usage.

“By definition, an ‘assault rifle’ consists of a ‘short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges,’ and the National Firearms Act of 1934 as well as Ronald Reagan’s ’86 machine gun ban have essentially removed all ‘assault rifles’ from the American population,” Minock said. “What we are seeing today can be called an arbitrary definition that simply gets modified by each individual who uses the term ‘assault rifle.’”

Minock said he believes a ban on high-capacity magazines would be difficult to enforce, citing an instance in which a Colorado sheriff refused to enforce such a ban on the grounds that it would be too difficult for officers.

The majority of Republican or Republican-leaning voters also support expanding gun rights in some areas. Nearly 70 percent support allowing teachers or other school officials carrying guns in K-12 schools and an increase in areas where “concealed carry” is allowed.

Minock said he believes the effects of such legislation would be “incredibly positive.”

“Right now there isn’t any sort of magical forcefield stopping people with guns from entering certain areas, other than security checkpoints,” Minock said. “Those who wish ill upon people can bring whatever they want into almost any location. Bad people are still going to be bad people and do terrible things. A deterrent, just as security checkpoints or the threat of a law abiding armed citizen will make certain individuals think before committing a crime.”

However, a Gallup poll of nearly 500 K-12 teachers in March 2018 found 73 percent of respondents opposed teachers and staff carrying guns in schools. In regards to teachers carrying guns, Blair cited the poll’s findings and asked if teachers were to be expected to “shoot into a crowd of running and screaming kids” and shoot the correct one.

“Is it now a part of the job description of a school teacher that they might have to kill one of their students?” Blair said. “The real problem is that in America it is way too easy to get a weapon of mass murder. Arming teachers is a terrible solution to mass school shootings because school shooting are are themselves a symptom of the original problem.”

As the debate around gun control has continued since the Virginia Tech shooting and its successors for the title of “deadliest mass shooting,” Shelley said the political divides can often be illustrated as deeper than they actually are, with political leaders on both sides dramatizing what the other side wants.

“We are pretty tribalistic now,” Shelley said. “It’s become really difficult to talk about issues like this … It’s just really difficult to get any kind of meaningful exchange of information going on.”