Stricter Gun Regulations Need To Happen NOW
If we want real change everyone needs to reach out to their senators and congressmen.
In the fall of 2015, I was a freshman in college writing my final paper for my English class on why we need stricter gun regulations. In 2016 I wrote this article in response to the pulse nightclub shooting occurred in Orlando, Florida. In 2017, I wrote another article after the deadliest mass shooting in our countries modern history took place at the Route 91 country music festival in Las Vegas. I have been writing about this topic for ages, and I know that simply writing an article isn’t good enough. But it’s a start.
I wrote my first piece stronger gun regulations back in 2009 when I was in sixth grade. Little to nothing has changed since then. In fact, things may be getting worse. Just last week, there was another mass shooting which took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. The shooter, nineteen year old Nikolas Cruz, was a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school until he was expelled. According to an article from the New York Times, Cruz showed what the New York Times called “every red flag.” Some of these red flags included, but were not limited to, posting photos of himself with guns on social media, posting photos of animals he killed himself on social media, and a YouTube comment which stated, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” If all of these put together doesn’t alarm anyone then I don’t know what will.
The paper I had written in 2015 was an ethical argument paper about whether stricter gun laws in the U.S. could lead to a decrease in firearms related deaths or not. In that paper, I mentioned the gun show loophole. The gun show loophole refers to how easy it is to buy a gun at a gun show due to the fact that almost all states do not require background checks for guns purchased at gun shows. Currently, only six states require background checks for all guns purchased at gun shows, while three states require background checks only on the purchase of handguns from gun shows. That means that 41 states still do not require any form of background check for sales at gun shows. This leads to the related problem of bad apple gun dealers.
Bad apple gun dealers are gun dealers who knowingly sell guns to people with a criminal history or a history of mental illness. Sure, it is possible that gun dealers could unknowingly sell guns to people with a criminal history or a history of mental illness. However, there are bad apple gun dealers who knowingly sell guns to these types of people because they know that there will be zero consequences for them if the person buying the gun from them misuses it.
Students who were at Margery Stoneman Douglas high school during the shooting are rightfully not staying silent. In a speech by student Emma Gonzalez, the topic of congressmen being paid by the NRA to vote against stricter gun laws was touched. This is a subject I talked about extensively in my article after the mass shooting in Las Vegas last year. Gonzalez mentioned that president Trump has been paid thirty million dollars by the NRA. Gonzalez stated that the amount president Trump was paid divided by the number of victims in the month and a half of 2018 that has gone by so far comes out to about $5,000 per victim. However, she mentioned that this number would drop from $5,000 until it ultimately reached zero if we did not take action today.
In her speech, Gonzalez even mentioned how, just last year, president Trump rolled back a regulation put in place by president Obama which blocked access to guns for over 75,000 mentally ill people. Quite fittingly, Gonzalez and many on the internet blasted president Trump for calling the shooting in Florida a mental health issue when he himself made it easier for the mentally ill to obtain guns. Also, for anyone who says “guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” I think Gonzalez said it best when she said that Cruz would not have been able to kill or wound as many people had he been using a knife.
Furthermore, I find it interesting that people like to speak on behalf of the victims. They say that we should give the victims time to mourn instead of immediately politicizing the issue. They hope that the issue will go away after the period of mourning, and it does go away, but only until the next mass shooting. Also, I want all the people who say it’s about another lunatic and not about guns to realize it is both about mental illness and guns. Take this viral tweet from one of the students present during the mass shooting. She talks about how this issue is absolutely about guns, and I wholeheartedly agree with her. Everyone has to realize that guns give these shooters an added sense of security, as well as an added ability to to affect more victims.
I was watching a Netflix comedy special the other day called Tambourine by Chris Rock. In the special, Rock mentioned how these shootings are absolutely about guns. He made a joke about how there would have to be something seriously wrong with people if the shooter was able to stab the same number of people with a knife as they were able to shoot with a gun.
Finally, I would just like to mention how the AR-15 seems to be a common weapon of choice for the perpetrators of these mass shootings. An AR-15 was not only used at the shooting last week in Parkland, Florida. It was also used in the mass shooting at the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, the country music festival in Las Vegas, the shooting in San Bernardino, and the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut to name a few. According to an article by the Washington Post, the AR-15 is is common weapon of choice because it is lightweight, semiautomatic (meaning one bullet is fired each time the trigger is pulled), and easy to use. I for one, and many many of my fellow citizens, don’t see any reason a regular citizen should own an AR-15. After all, the AR-15 was created in the 1950’s for the military. I think banning possession of the AR-15 by regular citizens is common sense seeing all these shooters making it their weapon of choice massacre after massacre.
It is increasingly clear that we need stricter gun laws.
This is both a guns issue and a mental health issue. We need to ban semiautomatic weapons like the AR-15, and we need to make it harder for the mentally ill to obtain guns. We also need to eliminate funding of congressmen by the NRA. Simply praying for the victims of the mass shooting or debating this issue with your peers will not solve anything.
If we want real change everyone needs to reach out to their senators and congressmen.
Let them know how you feel. Make your voice heard. Make a difference.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
I said that writing articles isn’t enough, but it’s a start. If we all write, and if we share our opinions with our representatives, we will truly make an impact.
