Yesterday, I sat back and watched, like most of us did, as the horrifying events unfolded before our eyes at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Phrases like “unspeakable tragedy” and “senseless violence” were tossed around like offers of condolence while people hugged their children close at night. But after any tragedy on such a massive scale, measures are typically put into place to ensure that such an occurrence does not and cannot happen again. That is, unless we are talking about gun violence. As a nation, we handle gun violence unlike any other disaster in modern times. Instead of taking swift, appropriate action, we push the incident aside, instead opting for vigils, public speeches, and funerals. Days and weeks pass, and as they do, so to do the memories and lessons learned from such events. The media cycle shifts, the cameras go away, and we ultimately trade in our anger for ignorance. The necessary solutions gather dust on the table while all we are left with is hope, putting the lives of more innocent people into the hands of fate. We blissfully expect that such an “unspeakable tragedy” won’t occur again, when, in fact, they’ve become commonplace in our society. So no, it’s not time to talk about gun control. That point passed us by long ago. We were past the point long before the tragedy in Columbine. We were past that point long before the shooting in Virginia Tech. We were past that point long before Gabby Giffords was shot, long before the massacre in a movie theater in Aurora, long before any of the multitude of examples in shopping malls. This is the pink elephant in the room that has somehow, inexplicably, stood for decades while we continue to ignore it. And now, after twenty children and six adults were gunned down inside the walls of an elementary school, we are once again forced to confront the stark reality of gun culture in our society, and the devastating results of our own ineptitude. The time now is for action. Simply put, it is too easy for someone to obtain guns in this country. Someone on the terrorist watch list can obtain a gun in the United States. In 2010 alone, 247 people on the terrorist watch list legally bought guns here, in this country. Yet the very mention of stricter gun laws and tougher gun control stirs people into a frenzy of misguided beliefs and logical fallacies. Let’s take a minute to examine some of them.
- Guns are for protection – No, they are not. Do not confuse protection with retaliation, because they are not the same thing. Bulletproof vests offer some protection. Bulletproof glass offers more. Storm shelters offer protection from storms, shoes offer protection for feet, but guns do not offer protection from violence. Having a gun in your home does not make you any more or less likely to be the victim of an act of outside violence. In fact, studies show that carrying a gun makes you 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens.
- If a teacher had a gun, they would have prevented the disaster – Yes, of course, because the answer to gun violence is more gun violence. Just as the answer to cancer is more cigarettes, just as the answer to drunken driving is more booze for drivers, just as the answer to concussions are more blows to the head. These kinds of statements offer nothing in the form of viable solutions. The ‘John Wayne’ scenario of an armed victim leaping into action and taking out the assailant without injuring or killing anyone else isn’t plausible. Just this last August, New York City police officers—who are trained on how to use guns—shot nine innocent people trying to apprehend their suspect outside the Empire State Building. Two of the victims died. These were trained professionals responding to a situation with a gunman involved, and nine innocent people were shot. If trained police officers missed and shot nine bystanders, how are we to believe that ordinary citizens would do better?
- If you make tougher gun laws, people will just break them – This simply isn’t true. Japan has very strict gun laws, and as a result, they now have the second-lowest murder rate in the world. Comparatively, countries with tougher gun laws include Great Britain (8 gun related deaths in 2011), Switzerland (34), Canada (52), Sweden (34), and Germany (42). The United States had 10,728 gun related deaths in 2011. In 2008, the United States had over twelve-thousand gun related homicides. Japan? Eleven. And that’s way up from 2006 when they had two. How tough are Japan’s gun laws? Very tough. You have to attend an all-day class, pass a written test, pass a shooting range test, pass a mental test, pass a drug test, and pass a rigorous background check. Then, after all that, you have to register your weapon and provide the police with documentation on not only the location of your firearm, but also the ammo—both of which must be stored separately. Is this strict? Absolutely. Is it unreasonable? That’s debatable, but ask yourself if it’s reasonable to let someone on the terrorist watch list get a gun, or someone with a mental illness.
- Tougher gun laws don’t work in the United States – This is one of those false positives. The biggest issue with gun laws in the United States is that the bar is set laughably low (re: terrorist watch list people legally buying guns). That being the case, when the low bar is raised slightly higher, people misrepresent this as “tough” gun laws. They’re not. Still, our version of tougher gun laws are having an effect in our country. Take a look at this map: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/07/gun-control-laws-and-gun-deaths-florida.jpg
- “He was crazy.” “He would have found a way to kill no matter what.” – Blindly stating that the gunman was crazy is too simple an explanation for too complex a situation. There are real, actionable issues here, and we shouldn’t ignore them. We should learn about what made him do this, any connections to possible mental illness, and anything that made this act easier—and yes, that discussion includes guns. Access to guns made this act far too simple, and much too deadly. Not access to knives or anything else. How ironic it is, then, that on the same day as the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, there was another school attack when a knife-wielding maniac halfway around the world in China injured twenty-two people. Yet no one died. Twenty-six dead versus twenty-two injured. The dichotomy is striking, and no, neither situation is decent or acceptable, yet the question of which weapon is more lethal is no longer a viable discussion in any rational forum. Finally, we cannot make the assumption that the gunman would have killed no matter what. We don’t know that. What we do know is that with guns, he killed twenty-six people—twenty of them small children. Without guns, we cannot say for certain what would have happened. It’s rudimentary logic.
- The Second Amendment gives me the right to own guns – You may or may not agree with me on this one, but the Second Amendment has nothing to do with private gun ownership. Not a single thing. Here’s what it says: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” In the Constitution, the “people” referred to the nation as a whole, not to be confused with the “person.” Furthermore, the term “bear arms” is strictly a military term. As the first part of the amendment clearly states, this is intended for militias. In other words, this was adopted to proclaim that the United States had the right to assemble a military. Nothing more, nothing less. Yet, of course, the interpretation of this amendment has been wildly mischaracterized and slandered so much over time, we are now left with the belief that it represents the right for the individual to own guns. And that’s fine, because oftentimes we interpret things clean from the purpose of the things themselves. But that doesn’t make it right. Just look at the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case. They said that corporations are people. That was their interpretation. We’re forced to live with that, too.
So, yes, for every bullet point I listed, there are many more on the other side that would attempt to refute what I have written in favor of more guns and looser gun regulations under the auspices of the Second Amendment, wrapped in the flag, hiding behind the Constitution. But as I stated earlier, the time for us to talk about gun control is long overdue, and reasonable people can agree or disagree on reasonable solutions. But what we can’t do—not anymore, not for a single second—is pretend that there isn’t an epidemic of gun violence going on in our country. We can no longer afford to stay inactive. There needs to be an open, honest debate about our gun culture and how to fix it (without resorting to the logical fallacies I listed above), followed by action that results in mitigating gun-related disasters. We can no longer afford to be like Michigan, who on Thursday (yes, the day before the shooting), passed a law that made it legal for people to carry guns in schools and daycare centers. This is not progressing toward a safer society. This is regressing toward violent tendencies and promoting more situations for tragedies to occur. Guns don’t make us safe. As Jason Whitlock astutely noted, “They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.” And he’s right. I cannot think of, nor point to a single situation where a room full of people were arguing, someone pulled out a gun, and everyone in the room suddenly felt calmer and safer. Out of all the creatures on the planet, we are tasked with the unique ability to reason. It’s what separates us from the animals. Yet when arguments escalate and guns are pulled out, that ability is nullified, and we become no better than the animals we hold dominion over. Our ability to reason is diminished by the gun—the power has been shifted to an inanimate object whose sole purpose is to kill. Now ask yourself if a mentally ill person would put the gun down. Would a terrorist? Like you, those people can legally buy guns in the United States. So, maybe we start by passing a law prohibiting people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns. Maybe we include people with mental illness as well. Maybe we ban assault rifles. Maybe we make background checks mandatory, and make them far more stringent in areas that already have them. Maybe we have citizens pass gun range tests, pass safety tests, drug tests and mental health tests. And maybe, just maybe, these things start working.
Or, maybe we do nothing. And another massacre happens at another elementary school.
A Pleasant Conversation 
