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Why Gun Control is the Wrong Response to the Las Vegas Shooting

11/5/2017

1 Comment

 
By Shiam Kannan

    On October 1st, 2017, a gunman opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel onto a crowd gathered for a country music concert, killing 59 people and injuring hundreds of others. As such, it has become the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, having surpassed the death toll of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in June 2016. As seen with previous mass shootings, the Las Vegas massacre has sparked a push from the Democrats for tightened gun restrictions. However, the question we should really be asking ourselves is, are guns really the root of the problem? Will gun control actually help curb gun violence?

    The answer is a resounding “no.” Take the city of Chicago, for example. While we can all agree that the Las Vegas shooting had a terrible death toll at 59, the highest of any mass shooting, this number is either met or exceeded by the gun murder rate in Chicago, every month. In June of 2017, there were 84 murders. In September, there were 59, the same as in the Vegas shooting. And Chicago just happens to have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, on par with those of Los Angeles and New York City. And if that isn’t enough to dispel the theory that more guns equals more crime, according to a CDC report, between 1993 and 2013, gun ownership in the United States rose by 35 percent, however gun violence decreased by 50 percent during the same time period. These facts only further help to reinforce the claim that guns in the hands of civilians do not contribute to crime and violence.

The measures that liberal politicians have been calling for in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting include seemingly-sensible measures, such a ban on bump-fire stocks, devices used by the Vegas shooter to fire his semi-automatic rifle in the manner of a fully automatic one, dispersing multiple rounds per second. However, such regulations would be useless, as bump-firing is a technique that can even be performed using your pant’s belt loop. To make bump-firing illegal, democrats would need to ban pants and shorts with belt loops, which is just as preposterous as it sounds. Other measures that would either be useless or impossible to enact include the ubiquitous and infamous “assault weapons” ban, which would make semi-automatic rifles, self-loading weapons that only fire one bullet per trigger pull, illegal, nevermind the fact that there are over 3 million such weapons in circulation as of now, making them virtually impossible to confiscate.

Not only are gun restrictions ineffective, however, but they are also unconstitutional. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution quite clearly states that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Although there has been much bickering over whether the Second Amendment protects an individual or a collective right, due to its use of the word “militia,” the
Supreme Court has effectively nullified that argument by ruling in the landmark 2008 case, DC v. Heller, that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right of the people to keep and bear arms, unconnected to service in a militia.


Our Founding Fathers included this sacred right in the Constitution because they understood that the only bulwark against a tyrannical government was an armed citizenry. And to those voices that claim that tyranny can never arise in a republic, it is important to keep in mind that it has, at least twice, over the course of history: once in Rome, when Julius Caesar took power, and once more in Germany, where Adolf Hitler had the Nazi party elected to Parliament in a landslide in 1933, and then proceeded to slaughter 6 million Jews in one of the worst genocides in recorded history. It is also important to note that Hitler outlawed Jews from owning guns before he implemented the Holocaust. And God forbid a tyrant gets elected here, in the United States, even the liberals will be thankful for those 80 million American gun owners with over 300 million guns in their hands.
One major benefit of gun ownership that liberals seem to ignore is the ability to defend oneself. Indeed, in 2013, between 500,000 and 3 million gun uses were in self-defense, according to a CDC study. The same study also showed that in 2013, there were 11,208 firearm-related homicides and approximately 414,000 illegal gun uses. Even if using the lower estimation for defensive gun use, it is clear that guns are used much more commonly in defense than in offense. So when guns are used so much more commonly by innocent people to protect themselves, it is unfair and wrong to make it harder for law-abiding citizens to acquire firearms, due to the actions of a few.

All this leaves us with the question: if gun control won’t stop gun violence, what will? While we can never really eliminate gun violence (or any violence, for that matter), we can take steps to reduce gun violence casualties greatly, all while respecting our absolute right as individuals to keep and bear arms. Perhaps the most crucial step is to promote law-abiding individuals in public places to carry a weapon. This will deter potential shooters, and will also give citizens the ability to neutralize a shooter in the event of a mass shooting, thus preventing him from killing as many people as we have seen in recent examples. We should also push for the removal of all “gun-free zones” across the country. These places prevent law-abiding citizens from arming themselves, making them prime targets for shooters who seek an area where they are guaranteed to be met with no resistance. To prevent school shootings, we should allow for teachers to be armed on school grounds, so as to enable them to defend our children using deadly force if necessary. These common-sense solutions will keep criminals at bay, while allowing us to exercise our Second Amendment freedoms.

After every mass shooting, we hear those familiar voices from the left: we need to ban all guns! Confiscate on semi-autos! Abolish concealed carry! It is imperative that we don’t follow these knee-jerk reactions to such tragic events. We need to be smart about what we do as a nation to curb gun violence, rather than following those who lead using emotion rather than reason. Disarming law-abiding citizens is not the answer. Disallowing us from carrying in public for self-defense is not the answer. Instead, we should promote open and concealed carry in public, so that citizens can respond with deadly force if a mass shooting does arise. We should arm teachers to curb school shootings. But emotionally-charged reactions that have little to no basis in fact are not the way to go.
1 Comment
Ranen Miao
11/5/2017 10:13:19 pm

Although this is a well-intentioned article, the logic used is really flawed.

1. Correlation is not the same thing as causation, so your example of Chicago doesn't mean much. Also, it's wrong. Since McDonald v. Chicago in 2010, the strict reforms implemented by Chicago were scaled back and struck down.
2. But heck, if we wanna play an examples game, I'd show you Singapore, Romania, South Korea, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Oman, Canada, Finland, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, and France, all of which have less gun ownership and far less deaths. Most Western, developed countries have seen this work!
3. An assault weapons ban is not impossible to implement and the guns on the street are not impossible to confiscate! It literally worked in Australia two decades ago, I think we can make it work today. (You won't even need to ban bump stocks because they become useless!)
4. Even if the assault weapons ban doesn't take guns off the street like you say, we still stop putting semiautomatic weapons on the streets, which means less accessibility. That causes less death! The 1994 law, even with all of its flaws, saw 96 deaths and 15 mass shootings during its 10 years, compared to the 35 mass shootings and 195 deaths in the 10 years after.
5. The constitutionality of everyone owning a semiautomatic weapon is definitely debatable, and citing D.C. v. Heller as a reason to stop advocating for reform is ridiculous. The Supreme Court is not always right! (Plessy v. Ferguson, Dred Scott v. Sanford, Buck v. Bell, Korematsu v. US, and Bowers v. Hardwick are all great examples of Supreme Court decisions that were pretty awful, and which should not have just been blindly accepted.)
6. Even if the Founding Fathers wanted everyday Americans to bear arms, they didn't have semiautomatic weapons back then. Times have changed, so should laws.
7. Advocating for gun control is NOT the same thing as taking away all guns. Banning semiautomatic weapons doesn't suddenly allow a dictatorship to take over. The slippery slope you envision will literally never happen, not because authoritarianism can't happen in republics, but because guns will still exist even with restrictions on accessibility. (Also, I would argue that America's system of checks and balances separates it from Nazi Germany and the Roman Republic.)
8. More guns doesn't suddenly reduce deaths. It just makes America a more paranoid, dangerous place. More guns usually makes Americans less safe, not more. People who hold guns for self-defense are far more likely to successfully commit suicide or homicide. There is a reason for this: because accessibility to guns easily allows people to have a weapon on hand in moments of poor judgement. Women who want to protect themselves against rapists often have their own guns turned against them. While trying to be safer, they only become even more victimized by possessing a firearm.
9. Even if we assume that guns do allow good guys to kill bad guys, how do police officers tell who's a good guy or who's a bad guy when they show up to a crime scene when everyone's holding a gun? If you're shopping and hear a shot being fired, how can you tell if the person who fired their gun is a good guy or a bad guy? You can't. This is a ridiculous notion. The assumption that more guns means more safety has been struck down repeatedly. Here's an article with a lot of studies on it: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-stop-more-crimes-evidence-shows/

Gun violence is a huge issue, but increasing the amount of guns is literally the last thing anyone should advocate for to mitigate it.

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