By Hannah Fain and Joshua Sutter
A vital part of who we are as people is the natural inclination to try and find solutions when peril is afoot. A key part of the human existence, in our opinion, is desiring to make people’s lives better when these situations take place. When something bad happens, the solid response is assisting and comforting those who’ve been affected by the incident, and then to ask hard questions about why the bad thing happened, and what we can do to stop it from happening again in the future.
The idea that when an incident happens, we shouldn’t try and come up with a solution to help it from happening again is preposterous. If talking about gun control after a mass shooting isn’t the correct time to talk about gun control, we’re not really sure when a good time is.
When it comes to gun violence — suicides, homicides, and police shootings — somehow not much has been done. There are really interesting pieces out there on why citizens in America have become so attached to guns. That’s not what we’re writing about today.
In theory, writing a piece about America’s gun problem doesn’t solve anything. Voting during each election cycle — small and large alike — praying, emailing our local congressional leaders, and letting our voices be heard on the matter is what we believe leads to change. Some people would disagree with these actions, but we believe all four are vital. Talking about this issue is the first step towards any kind of positive improvement.
America has a gun problem, and it’ll continue to be a problem until things change. Staying silent when something like this happens is a position in of itself. So the “too soon” sentiment that is tempting to hold when something like this happens isn’t something we agree with. You comfort those who mourn, and then try and solve the problem so it doesn’t repeat itself, whether it’s gun violence or another tragedy.
There are plenty of places to find arguments for either side of the gun violence debate. Frankly, you could make any argument without facts, and it could stick if it is written or spoken about eloquently enough. So we don’t aim to flip you on how you think we solve homicide, suicides, and police violence. We just want to make one main point: some kind of gun control reform is absolutely necessary.
There is a common sentiment being expressed by pro-gun ownership individuals: “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” And while this is irrefutably true, how many fewer people would die each year if gun access was more limited? If less people owned guns, would less people die? According to this logic, gun violence will stop once people are out of the equation since guns don’t shoot people, people shoot people. People with bad intentions exist all over the world, and the problem of gun violence on this scale only exists in the United States amongst developed countries.
So, in light of our views, we’re just going to spend some time discussing why we believe that things need to change. This has been our view for quite some time, and the shooting Sunday night in Las Vegas only further points to the problem the United States has.
One of the most disturbing aspects to this discussion is how the United States is an incredible anomaly for the problem. A recent article published by CNN, another one by the Guardian, a third by Vox, and another by the Washington Post all make it pretty clear that Americans own more guns than any other country, and it isn’t even a close comparison. We’re the only developed country with guns at this scale. Yet one of the main arguments for stopping mass shootings is arming more people. That solution is one that we don’t think adds up.
A lot of people own guns. Some would pose the argument that they only own guns for good reasons. These reasons can vary drastically from one person to the next. Some would say they own a gun to protect themselves and their loved ones. Others own them for sport or pleasure- shooting at a gun range, hunting, etc. We doubt that many people would say that the reason they own or want to own a gun is to kill people. Regardless, every year thousands of people are killed by bullets. Bullets are shot by guns, and guns are shot by people. And when we see what seems like an increasing amount of mass shootings that injure and kill an increasing amount of people, we as a nation can’t help but ask why this seems to be happening more and more in our country.
The strange obsession with guns, and according to data, I think we can say it’s an obsession, in the United States is easily traceable back to our constitution. The most fundamental rights the United States offers are built on go back to this concept of freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to have the right to bear arms. Somewhere along the way, people are mistaking freedom for a guaranteed right. Sure, people are free to own guns and bear arms. However, people are not free to kill innocent people and abuse their freedom. The right to bear arms in our country is costing an increasing number of people their lives.
An interesting case study for these questions being raised is what happened in Australia in the mid 1990’s. When you read the overall study it’s pretty obvious it isn’t exactly replicable in the United States. The scale, continental economics, and more make the way that the United States would have to decrease guns vastly different. However, what is indisputably clear from what happened with Australia’s gun decrease was that less guns meant less firearm homicides and suicides. They were continuing to drop beforehand and kept doing so as a result of the law. It’s an excellent example of what can happen if gun ownership decreases.
We’ll likely never know why a lot of the perpetrators of these mass shootings did what they did. The mental health of those people is a completely different conversation and reform topic. What we do know is that it seems to be increasingly easy for individuals who are potentially unstable to purchase deadly weapons that they use to shoot and often kill innocent civilians. Any way you look at it, the increased loss of innocent life is a problem that we as humans should be burdened to help fix.
How to fix the gun problem is a debatable topic. There are drastic, unrealistic measures that could be taken, and then there are smaller steps. A big problem requires a big solution to mitigate the problem. But first, this issue needs to be something that is universally understood.
It seems like after every horrific mass shooting that’s taken place over the last couple of years there is backlash, and then backlash to the backlash. Some are wanting gun control reform and others are yelling about their second amendment rights while we wait for another mass shooting to happen. Debates and disagreements are not helping the problem, instead they are dividing our already divided nation further apart, making a unified solution even harder to come to.
Another aspect that makes this topic so overwhelming is that mass shootings and homicides are only part of the conversation. Firearm suicides are a big problem, and data clearly points to less guns meaning less firearm related suicide.
And back to focusing on mass shootings for a second, they just seem to be getting worse. The Washington Post put together a pretty comprehensive piece on that scary reality.
America’s deadliest mass and spree shootings
- 1949, Camden, N.J. 13 killed. Howard Unruh, a World War II veteran, walks the streets of Camden killing random people.
- 1966, Austin 18 killed. Charles Whitman fires from a tower on the University of Texas campus.
- 1982, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 13 killed. George Banks kills five of his children and eight other people.
- 1984, San Ysidro, Calif. 21 killed. James Huberty enters a McDonald’s and begins shooting.
- 1986, Edmond, Okla. 14 killed. Postal worker Patrick Sherrill kills 14 people at his workplace.
- 1990, Jacksonville, Fla. 10 killed. James Pough kills eight people after his car is repossessed. He killed two others earlier.
- 1991, Killeen, Tex. 23 killed. George Hennard drives his truck into a cafeteria and then opens fire.
- 1999, Littleton, Colo. 13 killed. The shooting at Columbine High School was the deadliest school shooting to date
- 1999, Atlanta 12 killed. Mark Barton kills nine people at brokerage firms in Atlanta after having killed three relatives.
- 2005, Red Lake, Minn. 9 killed. Jeffrey Weise kills members of his family and then students at a local high school.
- 2007, Blacksburg, Va. 32 killed. Until 2016, the 32 people killed by Seung-Hui Cho was the deadliest mass shooting in American history.
- 2009, Fort Hood, Tex. 13 killed. Nidal Hasan kills 13 people at Fort Hood.
- 2009, Binghamton, N.Y. 13 killed. Jiverly Wong murders 13 people at a small immigrant services center in southern New York.
- 2009, Geneva County, Ala. 10 killed. Michael McClendon kills 10 people, including a baby, in rural Alabama.
- 2012, Newtown, Conn. killed. Adam Lanza’s rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary including the murder of 20 children.
- 2012, Aurora, Colo. 12 killed. James Holmes kills a dozen people during a late-night movie screening.
- 2013, Washington, D.C. 12 killed. Aaron Alexis kills a dozen people with a shotgun.
- 2015, San Bernardino, Calif. 14 killed. Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik kill more than a dozen people during a holiday party.
- 2015, Roseburg, Ore. 9 killed. Chris Mercer kills nine in a shooting at a community college in Oregon.
- 2015, Charleston, S.C. 9 killed. Dylann Roof attends a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston before opening fire.
- 2016, Orlando 49 killed. Omar Mateen murders dozens at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.
- 2017, Las Vegas 58 killed. Stephen Paddock shoots at a concert crowd from a hotel room on the Las Vegas Strip.
This list is a good portrait of recent history, but certainly doesn’t compile the worst mass shootings in United States’ history that were racially motivated and committed by white supremacists in the early 1900's.
The evidence supports that when there are more guns present, gun violence is higher. The more guns there are in the United States, the easier it is to obtain guns, the easier it is for someone to have access to a gun when they decide to use one for evil intent. Limiting access to guns through background checks and other methods just doesn’t seem to be cutting it. There are too many ways for people to get around the rules set in place.
Even if you didn’t want to compare the United States the rest of the world, the states with less gun ownership have less gun death. That’s pretty cut and dry is it not?
There are plenty of very logical, fact based arguments to be made for aiming to decrease the amount of guns and putting far stricter gun control laws in place. On an emotions based level, it still makes sense. If the solution to saving lives from suicide, homicide, and mass shooting is to decrease gun ownership, do it. The “right to bear arms” seems tiny in the scope of saving people’s lives. Building a stash of weapons for the hypothetical government takeover or whatever reason groups of people may have for their love of guns is a hypothetical situation. Gun violence isn’t a hypothetical problem, it’s a problem happening now that needs a solution.
What we think is important to remember is that this piece, as well as others advocating for gun control or against it, are flawed. All published work is written by people with biases and agendas. Our goal and desire out of this discussion is for people’s lives to be saved. We know for certain that gun related violence is a problem, and it’s not a hypothetical one. We don’t know what the best way is to improve this situation. Less guns certainly won’t eliminate all suicides and homicides, but it would make a dent. We don’t know the exact legislative solution, and we’re not pretending to. The reality is that a solution to this ever present issue will probably never fully happen, but in our opinion, part of the problem with excessive gun violence is the amount of guns. Instead of arguing over rights to bearing arms, passing legislative laws would be a good place to start.
