My Thoughts on Guns
Something has to be done about guns. After what happened in Orlando, I refuse to remain silent on this issue. Time and time again bills are brought to vote but shot down by lawmakers who have a conflict of interest due to being backed by the NRA. People often bring up reasonable solutions that are quickly shot down by nonsense claims.
Last year, two bills were proposed that could have prevented the shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. A bill was proposed to strengthen background checks for guns purchased online or at a gun show. That bill was rejected by a vote of 50 to 48. The other bill that was proposed would have prevented people on the FBIs terror watch list from buying guns. This bill was rejected by a vote of 50 to 45.
Why are such common sense bills being rejected? For starters, 48 of the 50 senators who rejected the bill to strengthen background checks had received money in some form from the NRA. We can keep proposing bills that will strengthen out gun laws and bring us out of the stone age, but nothing will truly be successful until we first deal with the NRA. We need to get the NRA to stop creating a conflict of interest for our lawmakers so that our lawmakers can vote to move our country in the right direction. Once we take away power from the NRA, we can not only propose but also pass new laws that will make our country much safer.
We have all heard that saying “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” used time and time again. People stating that the person is to blame for the act of violence and not their choice of weapon. However, the person and their choice weapon are both at fault. In the case of any mass shooting that has happened in the past, we need to consider why the choice weapon is always a gun. The answer, quite simply, is because they are so easy to obtain and extremely effective.
Take a look at 9/11. That was the worst terrorist attack on our country. After 9/11, we immediately ramped up airport security so that nothing like that would ever happen again. With guns, people often use that saying “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” That’s because the NSA creates a conflict of interest by supporting our lawmakers. If the views of the lawmaker’s conflict with the views of the NRA, they could risk losing the NRAs support. In the case of 9/11, we knew that the first step to preventing another 9/11 was more airport security, so why is it that in the case of these mass shootings we are not strengthening regulations against guns?
If you ask an Australian when the last major gun violence happened in their country, most will not know the answer. What is the answer? The last major act of gun violence in Australia was in 1996. After that, the Australian government instituted a buyback on guns, and they proceeded to ban many guns. The almost nonexistent rate of gun deaths in Australia since 1996 is directly related to the difficulty of obtaining guns. It is not a coincidence.
It happens far too often in this country where someone owns a gun but improperly stores it. The gun then finds its way into the hands of a child who, while playing with the gun, accidentally shoots a stranger, friends, or even a loved one. Someone had once suggested that we make it mandatory to have fingerprint scanners on gun triggers so that the only person who can use that gun is the person who the gun was originally issued to. Gun enthusiasts fought this and said, “What if someone finds a gun but is unable to protect themselves from an attacker because it has someone else’s fingerprint on it?” This is an invalid argument because the number of times someone had obtained some other person’s gun to protect themselves is far less often than the number of times a gunman wrongfully obtained a gun. In fact, the number of times someone obtained another individuals gun to protect themselves is virtually nonexistent.
Our constitution was formed under the limitations that our founding fathers had at the time. When the second amendment was written, it was written with the current guns in mind. Our founding fathers had no way of knowing what kind of guns we would create in the future. It is for that reason that as the types of guns available evolves and becomes more sophisticated, it is important for our laws to evolve to reflect such.
By enacting stronger regulations on guns, we are not trying to take away anyone’s second amendment right to bear arms. The regulations that are proposed time and time again would simply make it harder for guns to fall into the wrong hands. If there is no reason that one should not be able to obtain a gun, then these regulations would not affect them.
