Gun Control

I’ve been wanting to write about gun control for a while now. I was going to do this after Aurora. Then after the more recent mall shooting. Now there’s been another one just yesterday at an elementary school in Connecticut.

People often say that it’s not appropriate to have these types of conversations after such tragedies. Well, then when is it appropriate? The fact is that it doesn’t just seem like shootings are happening more often that they used to—they are happening more often.

 People love the argument that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Let me tell you what’s crap about this. First of all, yes—guns don’t act of their own accord. Someone has to pull the trigger. But there has to be a trigger to pull. I mean, really—hasn’t anyone ever played Clue? The three parts are the suspect, the location and the weapon. The weapon is one-third of the crime! Without the candlestick, Colonel Mustard wouldn’t have been able to commit the murder. Likewise, without (completely legal) access to powerful assault weapons James Holmes wouldn’t have been able to shoot 70 people in Aurora, killing 12. These kinds of guns used to be illegal until 2004. And maybe this ban didn’t spur a huge decrease in gun violence (although I think the above graph is pretty compelling) and maybe renewing it won’t make a huge difference. After all, people could still illegally obtain these guns and people of course will continue to do terrible things. But I don’t think it could make things worse than they already are.

These types of guns are not for defense. So don’t say that you need semi-automatic rifles to protect yourself from burglary. Because if you pull out a gun every time you hear a sound at night, you’re more likely to shoot your own granddaughter, as happened this past week in Minnesota. If the man had used something even more powerful, it’s likely she wouldn’t have survived.

So, I’m not saying we should violate anyone’s second-amendment rights here—but personal freedoms are limited all the time for the safety of society. Drunk-driving is illegal, and even though plenty of people still do it I don’t hear anyone arguing to stop trying to prevent alcohol-related car accidents. On average, 33 people are killed by guns every day in the U.S. Considering those numbers, we hear about gun related deaths very little. Maybe I’m just a bleeding heart liberal, but I think it’s time we do something about this.