Why We Need Gun Control

Sergey Podlesnykh/Staff Writer

Americans have seen and suffered from all kinds of violence in the last few decades. Some are driven by racial, ethnic and gender hatred.  Some can hardly be explained at all. We hopelessly struggle to solve different cases of violence treating them as standalone issues, but often fail to notice a common denominator, access to the tools of violence. Here is why we need to continue the conversation about gun control.

Each time a new act of violence happens, the previous one fades away. Recently, the shooting in Boulder, Colorado took over the national headlines, distancing us from the Atlanta shootings. We slowly forget about Dayton and El Paso in 2019. We barely bring up Sandy Hook anymore. Those kids would have been in high school now. All these sad pages in modern US history have different causes, but they all involved guns.

Before you throw the Second Amendment in my face, let me highlight the wording – gun control, not gun seizure and permanent ban of all guns. Americans do have the right to bear arms. However, this right alone does not mean any person can get their hands on weapons. You can smoke if you are eighteen. You can drink if you are twenty-one. You can drive if your vision and hearing are good enough and you have a good driving record. You can be a pilot for any major airline if you are licensed and have a certain number of flight hours behind your back. Some controlled substances can be purchased only with prescription, while others are not sold freely and can only be administered at a medical facility. These stand true for all states. Do you see a pattern here? Any right comes with uniform restrictions, responsibilities and liabilities. It only makes sense to have strict control over something that can take another human’s life.

During the Basic Training in the U.S. Army, we spent almost a month on shooting theory before going to a shooting range. Class instructions, safety briefings, endless assembling and disassembling of weapons, hours of handling the unloaded rifle – it all made sense. Importantly, every soldier went through weeks of extensive background checks, drug tests and psychological evaluation before enlisting. What does not make sense is why such arms education and a background check on the civilian side can take merely minutes. It is even more puzzling why we still don’t have universal background checks and leave legislation loopholes that make guns available for those who shouldn’t have such access.

If we look back, Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act that started federal background checks of firearms purchases in 1998 was introduced only after the failed assassination attempt of president Ronald Reagan. The bump stocks, essentially turning a semi automatic rifle into a machine gun were banned only after the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history in Las Vegas in 2017. We only start thinking about the dangers of the existing legislation after another shooting happens and the half-staff reminds us about the weeping families. According to the BBC, gun-related killings make up outstanding 73% of all homicides in the US. Today, only seven states have assault weapon bans.

Human Rights Campaign reported that 2020 was the worst year for transgender-related violence, taking 32 lives, mostly as a result of a shooting. Unfortunately, we did not have time to address it. We isolated this type of violence, and inevitably got side-tracked by new acts of anti-Asian, anti-Hispanic and anti-African American violence. Perhaps, it is high time we understood that violence against one group is just as bad as violence against another.

You could argue that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. Maybe, but a violent hateful person with a gun can do much more damage in a matter of seconds than a hateful violent person with a knife or bare hands. This approach sounds like an attempt to change human nature and eradicate all evil leading to violence. The recent Biden’s gun-control initiative sounds like a more realistic attempt to go after the lower hanging fruit and eradicate easy access to the tools of violence.

We need to get back to those self-evident truths and understand that all violence is equally bad and has a dangerous common denominator. It is a shame we keep reciting the Second Amendment but totally forget about the values of the declaration that started it all.

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The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of PantherNOW Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.

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