On June 1 2016, an individual (who will remain nameless) went onto the campus of UCLA and killed one of his professors before taking his own life. It was recently revealed that the shooter had also killed his wife, having been found dead in Minnesota. But something is noticeably absent in the days after. Normally in the days after shootings in America, politicians make demagogic appeals and there's moral outrage over how such a thing could happen. In addition to this, everyone on Facebook and Twitter become experts on firearms and get into debates about the nature of the Second Amendment. But this didn't really happen after the shooting at UCLA. At this point you might be asking yourself: Why is this? And the answer is simple: California has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country. Challenging gun control after events in California violates the narrative that more laws will reduce gun violence.

A major problem is that politicians and "experts" have the capacity to shape public opinion, a public that has their perception of guns shaped by movies and TV and/or has no knowledge with guns. So you have policy on guns being shaped by people who are not informed on guns. This is the equivalent of a businessman trying to tell the military how to handle ISIS.

A fact that no one likes to admit is that gun laws will not do anything to curb gun violence. All they will do is punish the law-abiding gun owners. In addition to this, they influence the further creation of black markets, such as what goes on with drugs, etc. Stringent regulations will create the problem of "ghost guns", which refers to guns that are homemade or have serial numbers removed (which is illegal). The simple fact of the matter is that all gun laws will accomplish is drive people to online purchases on sites like Craigslist where as of now background checks are not required. This is not to be confused with the gun show loophole, which is true or false, depending on how you read it. The so-called "gun show loophole" is simply that federally licensed sellers are required to run background checks, but not all gun dealers are required to be federally licensed.

"The term ‘loophole’ suggests that it was a minor, unintended flaw in the design of the law, something inadvertently overlooked by lawmakers, when it was actually the very intentional result of a carefully worked-out political compromise between those who wanted background checks on all gun acquisitions and those who did not want any at all," (Gary Gleck, Florida State University)

People who want to hurt others will do so: with or WITHOUT a gun. The fact remains though, that in the wake of what happened at UCLA, Americans who want more stringent gun regulations are nowhere to be found. The logical inconsistency of Americans who advocate for gun laws is staggering. If they were so true in their beliefs, even one person being murdered should be enough. Their voices shouldn't only be active when politicians use dead children as a political prop. No disrespect to those who have lost children to shootings, but guns did not kill your child. A gun cannot do anything until acted upon by an outside force and the vast majority of these shootings they are perpetrated by legally obtained firearms, done in gun free zones, or done by assault weapons in places that have assault weapon bans. There are too many gun laws on the books to enforce and the United States government has said they do not have the time or manpower to enforce all of them. So how exactly will MORE gun laws change anything?

Gleck's remarks as well as information on the gun show loophole can be found here.