The list is unfathomably too long. From Columbine, to Sandy Hook, to Las Vegas, to Parkland, to Pittsburgh, to Thousand Oaks. And so many more. Just this year, there have already been 311 mass shootings in America. After a decade that saw gun deaths in decline, in 2016, they reared their ugly head again, and increased. Something must be done to fix this horrific, deadly, problem. What’s perplexing about this, is that no other developed country in the world has this problem. What has led to this problem for us? How can we save lives and fix it?
We have approximately 265 million guns that are currently owned in the United States. Guns aren’t going to disappear, and progress will therefore be incremental. Regulations to who gets guns, and how people get them, is how we can begin to solve this problem. In “What We Can Do to Stop It” by Sean Wilson, motor vehicle deaths is used as an analogy for how we can curb this epidemic. “Safer cars, stronger seat-belt laws and fewer teenage drivers have helped reduce car fatalities, which dropped from 33.5 deaths per billion miles traveled in 1975 10 11.8 in 2016. Gun deaths have increased steadily since 2009 and are now nearly as lethal as traffic accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).” The reason why one fatality is going in one direction (decreasing), and the other is going in the other direction (increasing), is because common sense regulations have been put on one, while the other has been left alone, non-adjusted, and not improved whatsoever.
Speaking of the CDC, it has only received 5.3% of the funding for gun violence as it has for motor vehicle accidents. So us, as a nation, are already fighting an uphill battle on this issue. There are several ways to regulate guns without taking them away from lawful gun owners (99.9% of gun owners are obviously good and law abiding). One idea that needs to be put forth is that if someone has the police called on them a certain numbers of times, they need to be barred from having any weapon whatsoever. Also, there also needs to be a law where any family member can legally get a waiver to prevent a family member who they think is troubled from accessing a firearm until further notice. Additionally, “What We Can do To Stop It” brings up an idea, offered by President Obama that we can use a fingerprint to access our guns in a similar way that we use a fingerprint to get onto our phone. Expanding already in place laws of keeping guns out of the hands of people with known domestic violence, or with a history of legal trouble, needs to be done as well. Unfortunately, as long as the NRA refuses to compromise on these types of ideas, congressional and senate leaders are going to need to step up and push legislation forward.
“Suppose we granted (incorrectly) that this assumed right is a basic moral right. It would not follow that it must be free of moderate limits or regulations.” In “The Case For Moderate Gun Control” by David Degrazia, gun control is suggested, not as a way to take away rights, but instead to channel them in a way that minimizes risk for society, and maximizes pleasure and reward for gun lobbyers. Degrazia makes it clear that you cannot simply do anything you want, as you cannot abuse your right to do something to such a degree where it’s limitless. There is always a line to be drawn, and it is imperative that we put the safety of citizens first, before the hobbies of others. This ideology doesn’t just apply to guns. “The right to freedom of movement—a plausible candidate for a basic moral right—does not permit me to walk onto private property or into another person’s body without her permission. These are significant limits on my right to free movement. Even basic rights may be subject to significant restrictions.” Without limitations, people can take their rights to an extreme, and can facilitate devastating criminal behavior.
Straight Shuster 