The Aurora shooting, the Newtown massacre, and the naval yard tragedy, among several other recent public attacks, raise serious concerns among U.S. citizens. Such acts of violence baffle essentially everyone, which makes the task of understanding the cause of them very confusing. Because of the difficulty of identifying the reason for such acts, deciding how to prevent them also raises much debate. Commonly, people rush to brash opinions on preventing such acts. For many, a seemingly easy route of prevention is to simply take away guns from citizens. The popular stance seems to be that if the government took away guns from the people, either by directly doing so or by increasing the difficultly of acquiring them, these acts would stop happening. I disagree with such a claim. Increasing gun control would have no impact on the frequency or severity of these acts.
I think that it is rather naïve to believe that if the government tried to increased gun control, difficulty of acquiring guns, and so on, that these acts would stop happening. United States citizens have owned guns since the founding of the country. We all know the 2nd amendment gives us this right. Yet such attacks did not occur with the frequency and severity as they do today.
What seems to have changed in recent years is an increase in mental health issues. I am no psychologist nor expert on mental health, but from a laymen's prospective, this seems evident. Taking for example the naval yard shooting, it seems that Alexis' extreme mental health concerns and the inability of those around him to recognize and act on his issues more directly led the attack, than his ability to acquire a gun. I would argue he would have found a way to act violently regardless of how strict gun laws were. Whether he would have illegally acquired a gun or simply used one of the many other possible modes of conflicting harm on people. I do not believe there is a streamline way for the government to take away the ability of a citizen to harm other citizens, much more than what policies are already in place (background checks for guns, building security, etc.). What needs to improve is the ability of citizens to recognize when an individual has mental health issues, and what measures need to be taken to address them.
I very much agree with everything you stated here. Whenever a tragedy like this occurs, it is awful, however, there is nothing the government can do gun-wise to prevent it. Bad people will do bad things no matter what.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I did not realize when writing my own blog and reading the articles for the first time was that Aaron Alexis was on drugs for insomnia. I have also heard that the Columbine shooters, the Aurora shooter and the Newtown shooter were on some types of pharmaceutical drugs as well. Could there be a connection here? Could these drugs cause psychological breakdowns that lead these people to these points? After all, as you said, "United States citizens have owned guns since the founding of the country." I do not know this to be a fact, but I would imagine this didn't occur, at least with this type of frequency, back in those times.
Good framing of the issue in terms of the gun control debate. One way of moving past the impasse on gun control, I think, is to look at the issue in terms of the following question. Let's assume that many forms of gun control are ineffective. However, what if it were proven that a certain form of fairly restrictive gun control--meaning it would prevent substantial numbers of people from buying guns and perhaps take some away from those who already have them--would certainly reduce gun deaths by at least 50%. Should we do it? Why or why not?
ReplyDeleteIn the hypothetical situation that these tragedies could be prevented by some form of restriction, I doubt any states would have trouble passing such legislation. The same would be true for murder, theft, etc. If there is an effective way to prevent deaths/crime, of course such a method would be put into action. The fact is outlawing something doesn't prevent it. We outlaw drugs, yet many still use them. Would outlawing guns prevent people from owning/using them?
DeleteI certainly think outlawing guns would greatly reduce the number of people that own them. However I would argue that people that want to own/ use guns (for relatively harmless reasons or not) would still find a way to obtain them. Much in the same way that people still obtain drugs even though they are illegal.
I still lean towards a more passive way to prevent these types of situations. Background checks, security, and above all mental health awareness/ treatment would in my opinion be the more pressing issues than gun ownership.
It's certainly true that hypothetical situations are much neater and cleaner than actual reality. Sure, if people were convinced it would help, they probably would vote for more restrictions. But there is always doubt. of course, there is a separate debate about when and where it is proper to introduce doubt. That's a whole different question.
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