'Arrow's Stephen Amell Speaks out About Lack of Response to Mass Shootings

There were multiple mass shootings in the United States on Monday, the one most reported on being [...]

By Nicole Drum

There were multiple mass shootings in the United States on Monday, the one most reported on being at Chicago's Mercy Hospital, and now Arrow star Stephen Amell is speaking out about the issue of gun violence and the American response to it -- or the lack thereof.

In a post to Twitter today, Amell noted that while his daughter and wife are both American, he is reconsidering becoming an American citizen himself due to what he called a "lack of response to the epidemic of mass shootings." You can check out his tweet below:

"I have admired the United states for my entire life," Amell wrote. "My daughter is American. My wife is American. Their lack of response to the epidemic of mass shootings, makes me reconsider my desire to get my citizenship."

Comments from his fans and followers on Twitter were mixed, with many on both sides of the gun violence debate offering their opinion on both the issue and Amell's comments, but no matter the "side" of the issue, Amell isn't wrong in the sense that there have been a significant number of mass shootings in the United States in 2018. While there is no broadly accepted definition of mass shooting, according to The Gun Violence Archives -- which defines mass shootings as a single incident in which four or more people not including the shooter are shot or killed -- there have been 316 mass shootings in the United States at the time of writing. That is nearly one mass shooting per day so far in 2018, and there are still 41 days to go.

It's a sobering statistic, one made even more challenging considering the wide gulf of opinions on how to approach the issue and while Amell's comments are coming from his own personal opinions on the matter, this isn't the first time that the actor has been involved in the gun control debate in some fashion. In Arrow's fifth season, The CW show took on the issue of gun violence in the episode "Specter of the Gun". The episode sees a masked man shooting up the Star City City Hall, killing multiple people and sparking a debate on how best to handle gun violence in the fictional city. The episode sees Amell's then-mayor Oliver Queen come up with a solution in the nebulous "Star City Firearms Freedom Act".

It was an ambitious episode, one that then showrunner Marc Guggenheim said at the time felt like the "right topic" for the show both because of real life and the general gun violence depicted on Arrow.

"Well, we went into season 5 wanting to do an episode about an issue," Guggenheim said. "I'm old, so what does this mean? It means that I grew up on St. Elsewhere and Picket Fences and LA Law. I grew up in a time where it was commonplace, like literally every week, for a one-hour drama to tackle the issues of the day. Somewhere along the line we got away from that -- like, the whole industry got away from that. And now you've got like Blackish and Carmichael Show, but as far as network dramas are concerned? Really not tackling current events, current issues."

"So we went into season 5 with the desire to. It's the fifth season; we've hopefully earned the freedom to, in 23 episodes of television, you can have 22 episodes of candy and one episode of vegetables. We sort of felt that gun violence felt like the right topic, because of its topicality but also because of the level of gun violence that's on Arrow. We could have done an episode on abortion, but that's not really where the show lives, so gun violence sort of felt like the right thing to tackle."

Arrow airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.

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