Opinion: The Blood Price for Freedom
Please note that this is an anonymous opinion piece and does not reflect the opinion of the party
Another week, another school shooting in the US. This time we give our thoughts and prayers to the victims of Santa Fe. Victims that will never be able to voice their emotions for the act and families that will grieve for them instead.
This is America.
An endless conflict of freedom between left and right ensues, marred by the corpses of the deceased but unaffected in judgement. The filled body bags provide little in ammunition as they are flung over the wall at the opposition, but nothing changes. Unfortunately, nothing will ever change.
This is America.
You see, nothing will ever change because the second amendment stands in front of the first amendment. It stands in front of free speech and is in some ways a bastion of hope for those that fight for it, under the flag of liberty. It is unfortunate that America is truly the land of the free in comparison to the countries of Europe, where god given rights via an enshrined constitution simply does not exist. Indoctrinated in so many is the belief that utmost liberalism exists where men have the rights to bare arms, to protect themselves from each other, and formerly the state.
In the UK, along with many other countries, the state has the monopoly on violence, on military power and prowess. In the UK, we have no rights to a weapon of any kind, and may only acquire one with stringent criteria such as land and purpose, accompanied with a license. I will make no distinction here for assault rifles compared to mere shotguns and handguns, as Santa Fe was conducted with the later only. Only complete gun control will prevent these shootings from happening, or the removal of gun free zones. Trump wants to arm the teachers, and he’s not wrong with that as a solution, but does it not bring about even more problems?
Preventing the tyranny of the state was a viable feat during the conception of modern America, but it is not a reality now that the future has arrived. The modern states of the 21st century have an incredible amount of fire power at their disposal, and no armed militia will stop that. I make the argument that within a liberal society, an optimal society, the use of any form of violence removes dialogue from a debate, an argument, and instead brings about a new level of engagement, where only the fittest individual will win. The gun rights argument is to just go to training but I do not see how that is any different to going to the gym, the fight on this level always relies on physical might. This is the point at which we give over the ability to fight, enabling the state the monopoly on violence, taking this intimidating aspect of civil discourse and rationality out of the equation.
We have to accept however, armed citizens do prevent crime, even armed crimes. The statistic for successive raping drops by an order of magnitude when the victim is armed. Thereby, a gun compensates the states inability to become an all seeing, all knowing deity. Guns certainly do not level the playing field, but they narrow it, enabling noble citizens to protect themselves from bad actors in the world.
There is no right answer to this debate, but it is important to remove moral judgement from any decision that is taken with gun control. The removal of guns has consequences to a society, it monopolises the criminals that are able to obtain weapons, whereas in any society, there are those that clearly shouldn’t have access to weapons… those under the age, in stressful environments and without the mature rational to overcome situations peacefully, such as students.
I personally believe that if implemented correctly, schools should be gun-free, absolutely. But there is a cost to this, and the highest amounts of mass shootings are happening in these gun-free zones. Arming teachers has already had negative consequences. I can’t help but compare to the UK however, where guns are controlled by the state and seldom are people shot. In cities, we have rampent knife crime and now acid attacks on the streets, people will always find ways to attack each other, and the state has failed to protect us from this.
The state has failed in its promise to protect us from each other.
