March 20, 2018

In lieu of the recent shootings in Florida, there has been an outcry over whether or not guns should be heavily controlled in the United States, more so than they already are. It is understandable how some may feel about these recent attacks and are in frantic search of a solution. But is it a good idea to regulate one of America’s rights in order to prevent further attacks? Will it truly solve anything? The problem is that regulating such things and hoping that the numbers will begin to fall is a false assumption.

Gun control is not a non existent action in our modern society. In the state of Washington, for example, there is an age requirement of 21 years or older to purchase a firearm. Other examples include mandatory US citizenship, no pending trials, warrants, or criminal record, and no use of narcotics in the past year. A number of firearms are also restricted through legal sale such as machine guns and short barreled shotguns and rifles. There are some people who truly believe that putting these kinds of regulations on guns is an infringement on the Second Amendment right to own guns and keep a well regulated militia in the event that a tyrannical government must be overthrown or foreign invaders threaten the security of the country.

America’s strong gun culture stems from it’s past history of revolution and frontier expansion. Most should know by now of the American Revolution and how it affected both parties (the Colonialists and the British Empire) but frontier expansion is what the contemporary gun culture can be contributed to. The uncharted landscape that the Manifest Destiny was created to unearth as well as the unknown dangers that the new frontier held involved the use of guns to survive. Tasks such as hunting game and protecting oneself from the Native population were all dangers of expansion and there was a necessity for armed individuals.

Of course, in our modern society, the necessity to hunt for food and survive off of the land is practically non-existent and not required. So why would guns be necessary if we are not using them for practical purposes such as these? The answer lies in the desire to defend one’s family from danger and stand against tyrannical governments and foreign invaders. Hunting to survive is not necessary but crime and violence still exist and having a firearm to protect yourself and your family makes sense.

Taking guns out of the hands of the American people to avoid mass shootings and decrease the murder rates will not solve problems. In fact, it will create more. Just because something is illegal does not mean that it will cease to exist. Murder is illegal yet the murder rate in Detroit is 59.3 per 100,000 people, the highest in the United States of America. Rape, theft, assault, arson, and even tax evasion are all illegal yet they are still carried out by dangerous individuals. From here the argument can be made that guns are the cause of the high murder rates in Detroit. Guns do not make choices. It is in fact, the choices of the people that use them. We must not look to guns as the cause of evil but instead look at the cultural environments that choose to use them with malicious intent. Certain cultures in the United States are responsible for a majority of the crime in the United States and instead of trying to over regulate our country and turn it into something out of a George Orwell novel, we should look to fix the problems in these communities.

The point is that regulating firearms will not stop mass murder. Seventeen people in Florida killed by an AR-15 can be easily matched and exceeded by a car ramming into a crowd of people or the bomb going off outside of a federal building in Oklahoma. 168 people died in the bombing in Oklahoma in 1995 with 680 wounded. That bomb also killed a number of children at a nearby daycare. While it is already illegal to make bombs (even though there are still people who make bombs) should the government start regulating cars? Should the government start regulating kitchen knives? Or scissors? We must gather together and instead of using the bodies of the seventeen dead in Florida to push an unnecessary agenda, we should try and help the mentally ill and others who could potentially do further harm to our society.