A great tragedy struck Newtown, Connecticut this Friday. 12 girls and 8 boys aged 6 to 7 were killed along with 6 adults between the ages of 27 and 56 at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a single gunman, 20 year old Adam Lanza. While people across the country have been offering prayers, condolences, and other forms of help, this shooting again brings up the issue of gun control.
It is in times like this, or when criminals rob a bank with high powered automatic weapons, when politicians and the general populous alike push for stricter gun regulation. I don't believe that this is the right answer. Clearly something needs to be done to keep people safe, something should be done, but not stricter regulations on guns. While such regulations might be necessary to prevent accidental discharge incidents, I don't think that limiting the second amendment is what will best help prevent tragedies similar to what happened on Friday, or heavily armed bank robberies.
The people who do these things are criminals. The Columbine shooters didn't own their guns, and although Adam Lanza might have owned his, I don't think strict gun regulation would have prevented him from doing what he did. Clearly if they're going to rob a bank, or shoot up schoolchildren, the law isn't an inhibition for them. This means that if they need a gun to break the law, they will break the law to get a gun. Therefore, gun regulation doesn't prevent such crimes, it just makes them more illegal.
In my opinion, something more appropriate would be to have tighter security measures at schools, be they security guards, metal detectors, police, etc. However, it is important to recognize that we can't totally prevent these terrible crimes, people will find a way. Therefore we can't create policies that are restrictive in the hopes that they will finally eliminate shootings.
In closing, I'd like to offer a prayer for the families and community affected by Friday's disaster.
In light of recent class discussion, I'd like to comment some more (and to some degree change) about gun control. While I think that it still is true that if someone wants to find a gun, they will, some gun control should be in place. To be clear: restrictions on the purchase of automatic firearms, taxes on bullets (or just bullets for those guns),and requiring that guns be stored in a certain way (i.e. disasembled/unable to be loaded or fired, locked in a safe) would be appropriate regulations, but not resrictions on firearms as a whole.
ReplyDeleteDavid- I think that your viewpoint on gun control is extremely accurate. The government can regulate guns, but they cannot regulate "crazy" and this is the problem here. I 100% agree with you that a change in gun control regulation won't make such a difference, but that a change in MIND will. I hope that this is the last time (for a while atleast) that America's attention is forced towards tragedies like this.
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