When my editor asked to write a piece on gun control I internally groaned. Every article ever written about the subject stretched before me in an endless progression of ‘yes’ ‘nos’ and ‘maybe sos’. Gun control has been the topic of discussion for years and for years we haven’t gotten anywhere. It’s an issue that most publications will stay away from, instinctively knowing that it’s a proverbial dead horse.
Something that I notice is that most of the people who write this don’t know much about guns and how we obtained them. Lest we feed into ignorance, I decided to do some research and looked into the arguments pro-gun people have to present for their side as well as the type of gun legislations we already have in place.
Without getting too technical there are three main types of guns, automatic which fires several bullets when you pull the trigger, semi-automatic, which only fire one bullet per pull of the trigger but automatically reload between shots and single shot which don’t reload.
By law automatic firearms (such as machine guns), short-barreled shotguns, and short-barreled rifles are heavily restricted. Because of the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, it is generally illegal for civilians to own these weapons. The vast majority of modern guns sold and collected legally in the US are semi-automatic.
The shooting that happened at Pulse was done with a semi-automatic sig sauer mcx rifle, and a glock 17 ( bullet comparison). A quick google search will show you just how small these bullets are-they’re used to kill vermin. While this proves that the guns we fear aren’t exactly deadly machine guns, it should also be kept in mind that the worst shooting to happen in us history happened with the minimal amount of guns we allow and with some of the smallest bullets, so maybe we should be a bit wary about what could happen if we become more lenient.
Obtaining a gun is also a lot harder than people might have you belief. You need a background check, a waiting period and a license, all of which take time. If you have a criminal record or a history of violence, you don’t -legally- get a gun. Regardless of what anti-gun people would have you believe, no one, not even in America, can just walk into a store and ‘pick up a gun’.
Another argument used by pro-guns is the ever famous ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’.This argument becomes trickier when you realize that if people want to kill you they will kill you. Whether they drive a truck in a public place or burn down a building to ‘stop the gay agenda’ things like these have a way of happening. It should also be noted however that in countries such as Britain who have much more stringent gun control laws, the death by firearms stands at 58, with the U.S. weighing in at 8,775 deaths a year. Statistics also show that crime has gone down in those countries, although whether or not there’s a correlation between that and their attitudes towards firearms remains unknown.
Perhaps the biggest argument against gun control is that guns serve for self-defense and banning them or even regulating them depending on who you ask, will only help those with ill intent have defenseless targets. While yes if you openly carry a gun you’re less of a target, and there have been cases where owning a gun has made a difference, they are overshadowed by the times a gun in a home has led to a tragedy. In an article published by motherjones.com it was stated that owning a gun has been linked to higher risks of homicide, suicide, and accidental death by gun.
As for gun-bans only leading to more death, that might not be too far off the mark. Making guns illegal or outright banning them, would probably lead to chaos. There are up to 310 million privately owned guns in America, there is simply no way each and every one of them will comply, they will keep the guns illegally. If they’d do that it could be even harder to keep track of who owns them and we’d have an entirely different problem in our hands.
The reason behind this is probably the only argument against gun-control that is not only completely true but also more or less unchangeable. Guns are a part of American culture, and if we know anything about cultures is that they tend to be change resistant. While it may be true that we as a nation with police brutality and racial issues shouldn’t be given liberties with guns, it’s about 226 years too late. We were born as a nation with the right to bear arms. Yes, we could change the constitution but in order to do that we need Three-fourths of the state legislatures must approve of the amendment. That’s simply not feasible.
We can and should look at the restrictions that we have now and make them stronger. Bring back the ban on assault weapons, do something about the fact that a man who beat his wife and had known homophobic attitudes was able to get his hands on two guns, but thought that we can be a nation free of guns is just not option.