October 1, 2015 seemed to be like any other day. People went to their jobs, Choate students did their homework, and Christopher Harper-Mercer walked into Umpqua Community College armed with six firearms and murdered nine innocent people in cold blood.
No one was surprised.
As sickening as it is to say, it’s unfortunately true. We as a nation have become so numb to mass killings and gun violence that we’re no longer fazed by incidents such as the ones in Aurora and Charleston. And it seems like no one cares. As I write this, there have been 40,398 shootings in the United States in 2015. That’s about one shooting every ten minutes.
And yet, we do nothing about it. We blame video games, mental health—everything but guns. Guns, we insist, are ingrained in American society, and they’re not going away anytime soon. Our right to bear arms is essential to our rights as Americans.
We do not have to abolish guns to make American society safer for everyone. However, stricter gun control is essential to America: it will make America safer without the government infringing on the rights of its people.
The recent shooting in Oregon has sparked conversation about gun control in the government, and President Barack Obama is once again calling for gun reforms.
While the most publicized instances of gun violence may be mass shootings, they aren’t the main issue. Nearly all gun violence comes from small shootings commonly perpetrated with illegally bought handguns. Opponents of gun control argue that these guns are bought illegally and that gun control would do nothing to stop these transactions that don’t require background checks.
President Obama’s 2013 gun control plan called for “background checks for all firearm sales, with limited, common-sense exceptions for transfers between family members and temporary transfers for hunting and sporting purposes.” Furthermore, the President’s plan suggested increased prison sentencing for possession of illegal firearms and selling firearms without a background check. These measures would greatly reduce the number of guns in illegal markets throughout the United States and would stop convicted felons and others who fail the background checks from getting guns—reducing the amount of gun violence in the United States greatly.
Besides making it harder for criminals to get guns, the President proposed that assault weapons and magazines of 10 rounds and larger should be banned. In the Aurora, Newtown, and Umpqua mass shootings, the gunman had an assault weapon; in the majority of shootings that occurred in the United States this year, the gunman has had a magazine of 10 rounds or more.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need an AK-47 to hunt pheasants. You don’t even need an AK-47 to defend your home. The fact that assault weapons are legal is mind-boggling. It’s a no-brainer. They were banned from 1994-2004, and since legalization they’ve only hurt people.
What’s more, as Obama proposed, magazines of 10 rounds or more should also be banned, as this will reduce the rate of mass shootings and gun violence as a whole. This is just another part of the ‘common sense’ gun control that Americans refuse to accept.
Lastly, these laws will not inhibit law-abiding Americans from buying guns for recreational or defensive purposes. While it may seem inconvenient that you can no longer buy an automatic weapon with a drum magazine and go full “Rambo 2” next time at the range, it will be well worth it in the eyes of the 10,000 families of gun murder victims, as well as those who will inevitably be saved by this legislation.
Gun control isn’t unconstitutional or un-American. It’s about caring about those who are hurt and those who can still be saved. To me, that’s as American as it gets.
