Bethel has little faith in Congress on gun control
After the Las Vegas shooting, student leaders and faculty agree that Congress should get rid of bump stocks.
For families who have gone through the trauma of the mass shootings in Las Vegas and Texas, this holiday season is hard.
Phil Aurich, a 1999 graduate of Minnesota high school Concordia Academy, was a victim of the Las Vegas mass shooting on October 1st. He was shot in his lower back and was in critical condition for a few days following surgery.
After 37 days in the hospital, Aurich has since then recovered and spent time with family and friends at home for Thanksgiving. Many other families of the shooting victims, however, are spending this upcoming Christmas holiday with an empty chair.
“Since 1970, more Americans have died from guns (including suicides, murders and accidents) than the sum total of all Americans who died in all the wars in American history.” — Nick Kristof, New York Times columnist.
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, argues for gun control. “When Australia suffered a mass shooting in 1996, the country united behind tougher laws on firearms. The result is that the gun homicide rate was almost halved, and the gun suicide rate dropped by half.”
“Since 1970, more Americans have died from guns (including suicides, murders and accidents) than the sum total of all Americans who died in all the wars in American history,” Kristof said.
Kristof listed some modest steps toward making a difference: universal background checks before buying a gun, banning bump stocks, imposing an age limit of 21 on gun purchases, banning guns from anyone subject to a domestic violence protection order, limiting the amount of guns purchased, adopting cartridges to trace guns, investing in a “smart gun”, requiring safe storage, and investing in more research to reduce gun deaths.
Junior political science major Samuel Krueger says that bump stocks should be illegal. He thinks that the change in gun control should be limited. “When it comes to hunting for sport and stuff like that I definitely want to see less regulation or at least no new regulations.”
The former College Republican student leader continued by saying, “I think the real issue is that, if what happened in Texas last week shows us anything, it’s that laws that directly affect guns themselves don’t have a great effect on what actually happens.”
Krueger does not think that Congress will do anything because of where they stand on the Constitution, but he does think that certain guns, like machine guns, should be illegal. “There’s a root to the problem. I think it’s mostly a cultural issue because people have less respect for other people’s lives.”
“If I were a betting person, and I’m not because it’s Bethel,” laughed Assistant Professor of Political Science Christopher Moore, “I would say that it’s unlikely that Congress makes a large sweeping change to gun control. That said, Congress has already made a couple moves, more modest moves, about gun control.”
He continued by saying that there are bills in process through the House and the Senate. One of these is “to limit the sale of bump stocks,” which is an attachment the Las Vegas shooter used with his rifle.
When considering gun control, Assistant Professor of Political Science Mitchell Krumm said, “The biggest issues that come into play are the issues of life.” Krumm has seen the issue of guns and life as a single problem. “A concern about life necessitates thinking about guns.”
The popular NRA slogan states, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Krumm said that guns are tools and regulating guns by increasing training and background checks are a few things that could help reduce the loss of life by these tools.
Senior Berit Turnquist, College Democrats leader and a double major in English and philosophy, thinks that Congress should be addressing gun control more than they are now. She said, “there’s a lot of rhetoric floating around that gun control means stripping away second amendment rights completely, and I definitely don’t think that that’s true.”
Although she does not think the amendment should be debunked, she thinks there should be a lot stricter regulations on who can have guns. This could be determined by different measures, for example, a mental health examination.
She, however, does not think that Congress should make it impossible to own weapons, but that the sale of automatic and assault weapons to the public and stricter requirements should be imposed for people to meet to be able to own a gun.
Turnquist said, “I think there’s a lot of people, from both sides of the aisle, both Democrats and Republican and everything in between, that are just really fed up with gun violence.”
She hopes that Congress will listen to the voices coming from both sides that just want to put an end to violent crime as a result of guns.
