Over the past few decades, millions of people in the United States have been affected by gun violence.
Seemingly every week, there is a news story about a mass shooting or killing that could have been avoided if a weapon had not fallen into the wrong hands. These stories leave all of us angry and confused. We want to know what we could have done to help, what we could have done to prevent these senseless killings. Sometimes we don’t know who to blame and our anger is misguided. We want to talk about gun violence and gun control, but our emotions get the best of us.
There’s one thing that we can all agree on, we don’t want to see any more killings that could have been prevented.
This means that American citizens need to have a genuine conversation about gun control and the violence that has occurred over the past few years. This is far from what we are having now.
Much of the problem comes from the fact that liberals and conservatives have not been able to reach a middle ground. This is because both sides have a skewed vision of what the other side believes.
Many conservatives believe that liberals want to install strict laws that will “take their guns away.” This causes them to be guarded about their guns and makes them worried about any legislation that expands gun control. Many liberals believe that gun owners are stubborn and will not be open to any legislation whatsoever. This causes liberals to dismiss any argument made by conservatives as self-interested or uninformed.
Both of these assumptions are mistaken. Chances are liberals are not trying to take your guns away, and most conservative gun owners don’t want guns for anything more than self-defense.
Believing in the second amendment and believing in some elements of gun control do not necessarily contradict each other. My entire life I have believed that the second amendment was necessary for purposes of self-defense, but recent events have caused me to realize that background checks and scale backs of certain types of weapons might be necessary to decrease these useless killings.
What is clear is that what we have right now is not working. Somehow, guns keep falling into the wrong hands and preventable killings continue.
None of us want to see this continue, so we need to have a genuine conversation with both sides about gun control.
Some believe that increased access to guns will help stop mass shootings. The logic is that if more law abiding citizens have guns, they will be able to stop in progress shootings.
Some people believe that increased background checks and weapons bans are the best way to prevent useless killings. The logic is that if less people have access to guns and we can monitor who has them, then it is more likely that guns will not end up in the wrong hands.
Most importantly, we as Americans need to start a conversation about gun control. Any death that can be stopped by any form of gun control is worth discussing. I don’t know what the best route is for gun control in America, but we at least need to talk about it. Killings will continue at high rates until we as a society make some tough decisions. The longer we remain in gridlock, the worse the situation gets.
As citizens of this country, we have the ability to shape the discussion on gun control. The decisions we make now could change the atmosphere of gun violence in the United States for years to come.
