After the tragic shooting in Orlando, gun control is in the headlines again. And, for good reason. The loss of 49 innocent lives should be a lesson to politicians, lawmakers, and the American public. Here are several reasons we need gun control now.
1. People are more important than plastic.
Or wood, or metal. A living, breathing human being will, forever and always, take precedence over someone’s desire to own a weapon. In her Huffington Post article, Dominique Mosbergen tells us that between December of 2012 and October of 2013 more than 9,900 gun-related deaths were reported by the media. This number does not include the 2012 Aurora shooting, the Charleston Church shooting, the massacre at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, the San Bernardino tragedy, or the recent massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. That’s more than 10,000 innocent people who have been injured or lost their lives because of the United States' hesitance to put sanctions on gun use in America. If we have reached a point where a material object is more important than 10,000+ lives, than our problems are too big to be fixed.
2. Good things come to those who wait
Gun control does two things, and neither of them are getting rid of guns. The first thing it does is limit what kind of guns our citizens can own. No average citizen needs an M-16 assault rifle, grenade launcher, or any other tactical assault weapon. We’re not going to war and they’re illegal for hunting. And if you’re attempting to use them for self-defense purposes than you better be planning on an apocalypse of supernatural proportions. The second thing gun control works to do is to keep track of who owns those guns. For any guns other than hunting rifles, a background check and a 14-day waiting period is mandatory. Gun control is simply suggesting that we shut down retailers who sell guns online without requiring a background check and that we require the same background checks and waiting period for people buying hunting rifles. There is nothing so pressing that someone who wants to buy a gun can’t wait two weeks. According to the Brady Campaign, of the 465 mass shootings that took place between 2005 and September of 2013, 89 percent of those were done with altered hunting rifles. If we initiate these fail safes, we drastically cut down on the number of shootings that take place and we save the lives of thousands of people.
3. The “Right to Bear Arms”
For those of you unfamiliar with the Constitution, the Second Amendment reads, “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 short, the second amendment guarantees citizen the right to arm themselves and create a militia in the event that our government becomes corrupt and allows citizens to own guns in order to secure their wellbeing (i.e. hunting). Over the years, it’s been shortened to “the right to bear arms,” which ignores the true meaning of the amendment. Let’s stop worrying about violating the second amendment and think about the lives we’ve lost and the lives we can save. This amendment was never meant to be used as permission or means for people to massacre large groups of people-which is what it has been turned into. The world has changed and so must our interpretations of the Constitution. These heinous acts of violence may have been fueled by hate and bigotry, but by refusing to accept changes to or reinterpret our Second Amendment, we are arming the hate. We have to take responsibility for these acts, because it was our refusal to enact gun control that made it so easy for them to happen. If the Constitution isn’t working for the people we have an obligation to fix it. Given the current circumstances, I think the Founding Fathers would forgive us.
