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Gun Violence
By Francis Horan
Our nation is infected by a cancer of gun violence. The recent epidemic of mass shootings is the most jagged tip of a vast iceberg that claims 31,000 Americans a year through homicides, firearms accidents and gunshot suicides. Some individual states, counties and cities have attempted to tighten their own regulations regarding access to firearms, however, given that we enjoy the ability to freely travel around our country, local efforts can only have limited results. After all, every illegal gun started its existence being legal somewhere. We need a national solution.
“Common sense gun regulation” is currently on the lips of many lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, but those hearing it should be cautious. It is a phrase can hide an intent to do nothing. We need to speak in terms of actual legislative goals.
Background checks must have the ability to stop those who fail from ever touching a trigger. Universal background checks are needed, and indeed have enjoyed massive public support for years. Currently, private sales and transfers allows a quarter of all gun transfers to happen without any oversight.
Assault weapons is another often heard term these days, defined as semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use. Assault weapons are tools for killing—plain and simple. Any argument in favor of guns for defense or hunting cannot account for easing the ability to kill large numbers of people quickly and effectively. The previous U.S. ban on these weapons expired in 2004 due to a built-in expiration date, and so it needs to be replaced.
However, assault weapons are only a small part of our gun problem, just as mass shootings are only the most visible form of gun violence. Handguns, cheaper and easily concealable, account for a majority of gun crimes, both against private citizens and against law enforcement. Any large-scale solution to our large-scale gun deaths problem must focus on limiting more than the narrow subset represented by assault weapons.
Opponents of gun regulation like to point to that number of 31,000 gun-enabled deaths per year and call it misleading as two-thirds of those deaths are gunshot suicides. That clarification does not make the number any better.
The Harvard School of Public Health research shows that access to lethal means is a serious risk factor for suicide. Many suicide attempts take place during a short-term crisis, so it is important to consider a person’s access to lethal means during these periods of increased risk. Reducing access to lethal means saves lives, and guns are the most easily and definitively lethal suicide method in America.
Concealed carry laws are another problem. Gun advocates claim guns are needed for personal defense, however, defense implies the ability to deter and deterrence is undone by concealing the gun. Concealed carry laws, permitted or otherwise, have allowed “safe spaces” for a toxic gun culture to grow and expand, hidden from public sight.
It turns out most people, understandably, are nervous around individuals who choose to walk through society prepared to kill. If we as a country choose to accept the risk of guns among us, it should at least be an informed choice. Let us easily see how bad this private arms race of people getting guns to defend against people with guns has gotten. Concealed carry must go.
The Second Amendment reads “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This was written back when the 13 states wanted to reserve the right to violently resist the new U.S. government. The Civil War taught us what the resistance of those state militias would look like and what insidious causes they would spill blood for.
Today, we have wisely decided not to rely on state militias as a necessity to our security, choosing instead the common defense of our country’s armed forces, though the militia laws remain. The U.S. Supreme Court has established over the centuries that there are many circumstances under which the right of an individual to keep and bear arms can be infringed upon. The amendment still stands as law of the land, but clearly there is room to work within its confines.
It is true that any potential solution to our gun violence plague will take years to show any effect. There is no legal switch to flick. Even if all private gun ownership was banned tomorrow, the existing gun supply would likely continue to exist in its current overwhelming numbers for decades at least, if not a century, with all its associated crime and violence.
Issues of mental health and culture have no quick fixes. However, that cannot be allowed as an excuse to do nothing. No big problem can be solved in less than 50 years, and even then the best you can generally hope for is a reduction in severity. But we must do something. America is bleeding and we need action, even if all we can manage is a band-aid. Every step, no matter how small, moves us forward.
Right now we are standing still, and right now we are dying.
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