Sadly, once again, our country is experiencing the pain of domestic terrorism on a large scale once again. Actually, according to New York Times, mass shootings occur AT LEAST (typically the number is more than one) once every day in the United States. Once a day is too many; one mass shooting is too many; one life lost is too many. These statistics make me question how important lives really are in the United States.
In Australia, where the wilderness is much more deadly than ours, there are strict gun regulations that have been in place since the mid-1990’s that truly aided the country’s overall decrease in gun-related crimes. Correlation does not mean causation or direct causation, but more emphasis should be put on statistics that demonstrate an increase of gun presence in a country will generally increase likelihood of gun-related crimes to increase, as well. (here is a video simplifying the problem).
Now, yes, Australia is a different country. No, they do not have a constitution providing the right to bear arms. However, these differences do not, in my opinion, care to approach the reality of our country today. First of all, Australia’s “birth” is similar to the United States in the fact that most people sent to these countries were not the best and did not follow the United Kingdom’s religion (Catholicism). In addition, the people arriving to both countries were faced with unknown natives to the land, had to survive in unknown, undeveloped territory (the wilderness), and thus, the core foundation to building each country was independence and hard work. Therefore, I find it a little distracting to focus on the countries being different in the discussion of gun control since both countries relied upon weapons for colonization and held similar ideals. Pointing out the differences negates from the problem we are faced with– we have a gun problem (too many people dying from the hands of people with machine guns) and there are solutions in the world and we are refusing to acknowledge and/or act upon these solutions to find one to aid our issue.
Secondly, why do we keep defending our constitution as if our country’s government and set-up is not built to change and be dynamic to keep up with our current social realities? I understand the need to keep consistency and not continue to change so much where there’s total anarchy. Nonetheless, our constitution was written when our country was still thriving within the wilderness. The need for self-defense was necessary, and the right to bear arms is actually written as a back-up plan in case the government becomes an oligarchy. The right to bear arms was written in by anti-federalist George Mason, whose reasoning for this clause was to allow the citizens to maintain “A well-regulated militia (not to be confused with the national guard), composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defen[s]e of a free State.” I do not feel like the purpose in mind was to allow everyone who does not need to defend themselves to acquire weapons of mass destruction; thus, our gun control need to be reformed to fit our current social situation: a country not entirely in the wilderness (although there are certainly unexplored parts) where self-defense should not end in the loss of life.
*Site note: also, do not start that bullshit “self-defense” argument. If you’re being robbed and your gun is safely put away (according to gun regulations), you will not have time to unlock your safe to defend yourself. furthermore, this arguments implies that your life matters more than another (i.e. the life of someone stealing (or doing whatever crime) is worth less than yours). I am not condoning criminals; however, even though I’m agnostic, I love the ideas and implications of using the Golden Rule: “Treat others how you would want to be treated.” By allowing citizens to kill in self-defense, we are at the same time justifying murder of another person (based on their immoral standings, i.e. criminals). This self-defense claim has so many problems with it.
There are other arguments for the right to bear arms, like Switzerland’s government allowing everyone in the country to carry an armed weapon (also, I love that we can’t use Australia as an example when it’s the most similar to us as a country, but we can use a country not very similar to us as justification), but almost all of these arguments can be debunk just as the previous arguments were. Gun control does not mean an extreme sweep of gun collection by the government, but rather it means reforming our legal means of buying and operating and storing fire arms.
As a country, I feel we should stop solely praying for victims and start praying for change and reform in addition.