Banning Guns Won’t Solve Our Problem — Here’s Why

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.

Banning+Guns+Wont+Solve+Our+Problem+%E2%80%94+Heres+Why

Shak Saidjanov, Editor

Many voices in the political theater and the media have been telling us for weeks that further gun control is the logical answer to our mass shooting problem. However, the facts don’t support their argument.

According to the Cato Institute, there were roughly 38,000 gun deaths in 2016. Two thirds of them were suicides.

Currently, it’s estimated that there are over 300,000,000 guns in the United States. Between 1993 and 2003, gun ownership increased by 56%; in that time, gun violence per capita decreased by nearly half.

According to the FBI, there are four times more murders by knives than by rifles.

A study conducted from 1993 through 2011 by the US Department of Justice found that handguns, not assault rifles, are responsible for more than 80% of total mass shootings. And since 1950, nearly all mass public shootings have occurred in designated gun free zones (for more on this topic see The New York Times’ article, “The Assault Weapon Myth”).  

The United States has the highest gun ownership rate in the world, yet ranks 28th in gun murders, and 31st in general gun violence; that’s less than 4 deaths per 100,000 people. Developed countries such as South Africa and Thailand are among those with much higher rates of national gun violence, even though Thailand has extremely strict gun laws and South Africa has banned private gun ownership altogether.    

Switzerland, a nation with a population of around 8 million, currently has around 2 million guns in circulation (roughly one gun for every four people), with little gun legislation. Switzerland’s overall gun homicide rate is practically non existent, and they haven’t had a single mass shooting since 2001.

Between 2013 and 2015, the six states in the US that banned the open carry of firearms (California, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, South Carolina, and New York) experienced higher rates of murder, especially police deaths. Out of 20,000 police chiefs and sheriffs surveyed by National Review, 86.4% support concealed carry, and all police, including those involved with response to mass shootings, are overwhelmingly against any further gun control.

Yet, many citizens continue to advocate for it.

Surely, it’s ignorant not to admit that the United States has a school shooting problem. This is why many of us, even Lasallians, have taken to the streets in a “March For Our Lives,” rightly emphasizing that enough is enough; the tragic and horrific massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland is being treated as a last straw. And I agree; it’s horrendous that over decades of school massacres in the United States, students have learned to accept school shootings as a reality.

In no way is an argument against gun control an endorsement of this violence.

We have a problem. But while recognizing our problem and working toward a bipartisan advancement of dialogue and solution on this issue is a noble pursuit, that is not what’s being accomplished in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting. Rather, what is being orchestrated is an ignorant and misguided crusade against gun ownership, gun owners, gun heritage, gun culture, and the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Naively, we have stopped fighting for our rights, and have started fighting against our rights.

A common argument in favor of stricter gun legislation is the suggestion that although our founding fathers may have written the right to bear arms into the U.S. Constitution, they didn’t foresee school shootings or high caliber assault rifles and machine guns. That argument is factually inaccurate. Not only were the first modern machine guns being invented as early as 1718, but school shootings have always been a sorrowful reality in America, with records dating back as early as 1764.

Consider watching this video, created by conservative personality Stephen Crowder, on our founding fathers’ understanding of high capacity weapons:

Although I may not agree entirely with Crowder’s rhetoric in this video, he does prove a point: our founding fathers believed in the rights of citizens to bear arms, not simply for sheer pleasure, and not strictly for hunting; rather, with the Second Amendment they solidified our freedom to hold ourselves in self government for generations to come, knowing the responsibility, liberty, and power that came for gun ownership. If we ban or restrict guns now, we will be trashing that legacy and punishing future Americans.

Ironically, the leaders of this gun control movement are the survivors of the Parkland tragedy, the future Americans that a gun ban would affect.

In a well written piece for The Guardian, editors from Stoneman Douglas’s student newspaper outline what they hope to gain from the movement; it is their ‘manifesto’, so to speak. I agree with some of the points they make in this guest editorial, including changing “privacy laws to allow mental healthcare providers to communicate with law enforcement,” and I encourage you to take a look at the piece. These fellow high schoolers have gone through what we at La Salle hope we never have to experience, and their activism is brave and needed.

But their activism is politically misguided. And their activism is factually ill informed. This is made clear by their emotional battle with gun owners and the NRA.      

Surely the NRA  is not without fault; it’s no secret that the NRA pours money into politicians in hopes of advancing their own agenda. But could the NRA be pouring money into various political platforms at least partly with gun owners’ interests in mind? And consider this: Planned Parenthood donates millions to politicians, which is equally as controversial, as one could argue that Planned Parenthood is in the business of systematically killing and harvesting unborn children.    

Consider watching this video from NRAtv on the National Rifle Association’s fight for civil rights:

To go as far as calling the NRA a “terrorist organization” or a group of  “child murderers”, as Parkland survivors have done, is a woeful misstep.

By calling the NRA a terrorist organization we are, in effect, calling its 5 million active members (and by extension all gun owners) terrorists. If calling the NRA a literal terrorist organization and advocating for bans that would affect all gun owners after the actions of a lone, mentally insane perpetrator is considered appropriate, I wonder if calling Islam a literal terrorist organization and advocating for bans that would impede all Muslims after the actions of a lone, mentally insane perpetrator is also appropriate.

The answer, of course, is no.

Calling all Muslims terrorists or immediately calling for bans or restrictions on people within Islam would today be considered discriminatory, racist, and divisive. But that’s my point — if Islam and our entire Muslim population cannot be held responsible for the acts of a sole, mentally deranged radical terrorist, then logically the NRA and our entire population of gun owning citizens also cannot be held responsible for the acts of a sole, mentally unstable radical shooter.

Especially when these proposed bans would have absolutely no consequential effect on gun violence in America. In fact, we have already tried a ban on “assault weapons” during the Clinton presidency; after a Republican majority Congress failed to renew the ban in 2003, a later study by the University of Pennsylvania in a report for the Department of Justice proved the ban was completely ineffective, and any fall in gun violence in those years was due to other factors.

We need to be focusing on the real issue here.

We need to be focusing on mental health. We need to be focusing on social structures and hierarchies in the school system. We need to be focusing on bullying. We need to be addressing the devastating fact that people are literally killing themselves and others simply because no one will talk to them. Addressing those issues is a sound, attainable, hopeful, and logical pursuit. It’s how Switzerland, with limited gun legislation, have had nearly no gun violence; they put an emphasis on mental health, not guns. They taught respect for their country’s gun-loving history, they relayed a sense of duty and power unto future generations and those future generations, armed with knowledge as well as guns, are now living in freedom. They addressed the real issue.

But it seems as though most of the teens behind the weapon ban movement, nationally led by Parkland survivor David Hogg, have no interest in that kind of logic. David Hogg was invited over the phone to the White House for an open dialogue with President Trump himself; David Hogg hung up on that phone call. His actions, and the broader movement he is leading, are immature, reckless, and compulsory.

But that’s what we teens are: immature, reckless, and compulsory. We need to stop ignoring the facts on guns and realize that the real issue is right under our noses. We need to realize that banning guns will have no effect on our school shooting epidemic, and that massacres will continue to happen regardless of how much infringement we place on the Second Amendment.

Facts don’t lie: we shouldn’t restrict guns. Let’s restrict insane ideas instead.  

Creative Commons photo source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mobili/40965029732/