Gun Control - A Debate?

40,000 dead from gun violence in 2017 alone. One school shooting a week and 417 mass shootings in 2019. All in the United States. Yet, America has maintained its absurd obsession with guns, written into and ardently defended by the Second Amendment of the Constitution. A collective American fixation on guns as a means of protection of values such as freedom, individualism, and independence, while the weapons simultaneously kill tens of thousands of innocent citizens is one that requires cultural, political, and legal shifts.

The Second Amendment, the most common argument by pro-gun activists, is not viable in the context of gun control policies. It does not justify the devastating level of gun violence that occurs in the US. While it is true that the rights outlined by the Constitution are the foundation of America, the amendment regarding the possession of firearms is severely outdated, as it was written during the Revolutionary War, a time period that relied on the possession of firearms by colonial citizens. Society functioned completely differently than it does today in the 21st century. The Constitution also grants the right to life, which the frequency of gun-related deaths nearly directly opposes. Furthermore, gun control does not necessarily mean stripping Americans of all right to bear arms. It merely calls for universal background checks and restricting the type of firearms because it cannot be argued that people with a criminal record or history of mental illnesses should have access to lethal weapons, especially automatic rifles like the ones used in 2017’s Las Vegas massacre, which killed 58 people and injured over 850.

Along with the Second Amendment, many right-wing gun owners defend their right to carry firearms with the slogan, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This argument suggests that gun control laws will have little to no effect on the degree of violence in America because a killer’s intent is more powerful than the weapon itself. What this standpoint fails to consider is that mass shootings could not be executed without a gun. Guns are literally the means by which atrocious amounts of murder are carried out. While tighter restrictions on guns may push criminals towards other weapons such as knives (as seen in countries such as England), the fatality rate is much lower with knives than it is with automatic rifles. Regardless of a criminal’s resolve, it is nearly impossible to kill numerous people by stabbing. The reason that guns are able to kill tens of thousands people on an annual basis in America is that they are the most accessible way to efficiently murder people, so if this ease of access is reduced, we will not see mass murder to nearly the same extent that it exists in currently.

Besides providing invalid reasoning and lacking any initiative to prevent extensive gun violence in America, Republicans actively oppose gun control and endorse the National Rifle Association. This is blatantly ignorant and irresponsible because political parties convey their beliefs and facilitate advancements through their organizational backings. Both Democrats and Republicans benefit from their endorsements through lobbying, campaign donations, and whatnot, but the difference is the values that they each support. Democrats notoriously promote Planned Parenthood and, likewise, Republicans advocate for the NRA, both of which are associated with “murder.” Planned Parenthood assists women in extinguishing (not actually murdering) clumps of cells and allowing them autonomy over their own bodies. This advertises feminist, libertarian, and progressive values. On the contrary, Republican support of the NRA defends the literal means of the murder of countless Americans. In other words, Republicans are indirectly reinforcing the rate of gun violence in America through their imprudent, self-serving agenda.

The extent to which guns are present in American culture perpetuates the racism that we as a society should be trying to combat. A gun, besides having the obvious purpose of a weapon, carries a much more racially charged significance due to the fact that gun culture is very much entwined with “whiteness” and the act of carrying a weapon possesses drastically different labels depending on the race of its owner. Gun violence in the US, including the criminal justice system, has always specifically targeted African Americans and more recently, Muslims. In past centuries, guns were advertised to white buyers as a way to reinforce their masculinity or to defend against black people and Native Americans. During the civil rights movement, however, when African Americans such as Malcolm X began to exercise their right to carry guns, many white Americans began to question the validity of the Second Amendment. This discrepancy is not just historical. White Americans are deemed “patriotic” for parading through crowded cities and stores with guns, while black people have been shot for walking into an identical store with exactly the same weapon. Additionally, Ahmaud Arbery’s case has only just been publicized, and it underscores how guns grant modern citizens the ability to fatally actuate racist assumptions. 

Similarly, public perspectives on shootings in America distinctly correlate with race and religion. The September 11 attacks by Muslim extremists created a nationwide association of Islam with violence, and consequently a severe double standard. Muslims have since been characterized as terrorists, to the extent that, although five times more mass shootings are carried out by Christians, right-wing extremists, Neo-Nazis, and white supremacists than by Muslims, Christian shooters are labeled “mentally ill” while Muslims are “terrorists.” Regardless of religion, however, fear of terrorism has undoubtedly spiked anxiety among most Americans even though gun violence kills far more Americans than terrorism does. Between 2001 and 2013, an estimated 153,144 people were killed by guns, compared to the 3,046 killed by terrorism between 2001 and 2014. The most shocking takeaway from these numbers is that terrorism has sparked change, on both national and international levels. Besides the tightened airport security and other precautions, the cultural stigma regarding Islam has heightened immensely. So why exactly is the US incapable of or unwilling to implement similar legal and societal changes? Why can’t Americans view murder by guns the same way they so unfairly view terrorist attacks by Muslims? The answer is precisely that the American legal system is blinded by xenophobia and racism. 

Additionally, gun violence in the US has become so commonplace, and therefore normalized, that the American attitude towards daily mass shootings has descended to a few insufficient tears and GoFundMe donations. The reality is that pity will not solve the problem. As a country, we need to mirror other nations that have responded appropriately and adequately to their gun violence crises. Days after New Zealand’s Christchurch mosque massacre in March 2019, which killed 50 people, Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announced and implemented a gun buyback plan, removing over 50,000 guns out of circulation. In the following weeks, New Zealand’s parliament voted to ban all military-style, semi-automatic weapons. The United Kingdom has some of the world’s strictest gun laws, and the concept of gun control first emerged (and was quickly enacted) in the UK’s political scene in 1987, when a man killed 16 people with a pistol, hand grenade, and automatic rifle. The government promptly banned semi-automatic and pump-action weapons and it became mandatory for gun owners to register their weapons. 9 years later, in 1996, 16 young children (ages 5 and 6) and their teacher were shot at a Dunblane primary school, provoking a new law to ban all private ownership of guns in the UK. New Zealand and the UK each required one devastating shooting to revolutionize their gun control legislation. Since these laws, there have been very few (if any) mass shootings in both of these countries, demonstrating that the restriction of firearms undeniably reduces gun violence. On the contrary, the United States has seen hundreds of mass shootings annually and weekly school shootings, but is yet to create reform. 

The regularity of and numbness towards gun violence does not excuse decades of America’s lack of action. The urgent need for gun control expands beyond money, political parties, or an amendment. The decisions regarding restrictions of firearms in the US will directly answer the question of life or death for Americans. Whether or not we impose gun control will determine the fate of everyone, from kindergarteners to shoppers at Walmart.