EDITORIAL: Gun control debate needs to end
Fuzzy Gerdes / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Mass shootings like the one which took 59 lives in Las Vegas Sunday night are senseless — born from ignorance and hesitance to confront the real issues at play; America’s obsession with guns and violence, and shameful reluctance to take mental health seriously.
October 4, 2017
It is time for America to think about guns.
Not to feel, argue or bloviate; it is time to think.
In reality, it is well-passed the time to think about guns. Truly thinking about them might have prevented countless tragic mass shootings in this country; at least 59 people died in Las Vegas Sunday night, setting a new record over the 49 that died in Orlando at the Pulse nightclub last year.
Thirty-two people died in the shooting at Virginia Tech University. Twenty-six people, 20 of them children, died in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
There are more. They feel countless, despite the exhaustively detailed counts. They feel endless, despite the knowledge that at one point in human history, guns were not considered a consumer product, and in many other countries in the world, they no longer are.
There is much hemming and hawing to be found after every mass shooting in America about the Second Amendment, its protections on gun ownership, and the simple fact that plenty of other things besides guns can kill humans, and often do.
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Another common claim is that the guns used in mass shootings are obtained illegally anyway, and that increased gun control won’t stop these shootings, and may in fact prevent the hypothetical hero from having their own gun ready to take down the mass shooter.
But it is a fact, backed by even more exhaustive reporting and data, that most mass shootings are committed by legal gun owners with registered handguns. These mass shootings are senseless, born from ignorance and hesitance to confront the real issues at play; America’s obsession with guns and violence, and its shameful reluctance to take mental health seriously.
Stephen Paddock, the shooter from the events of Mandalay Bay this past weekend, passed Nevada background checks and legally bought most of his 43 firearms from an assortment of gun stores in the state.
While automatic weapons were banned in 1986, those manufactured before that ban are grandfathered in as long as they are registered, and semi-automatic weapons can be legally modified to be fully automatic. It has been speculated but is not yet known that Paddock used automatic weapons in the shooting; most mass shootings do not feature automatic weapons anyway.
For too many right now, it is time to mourn. For even more, the mourning will never end. The oldest person to die in a mass shooting in America was a 98-year-old woman; the youngest was an 8-month-old boy who could be a 33-year-old man today.
Though certain further strictures on gun ownership seem logical, like continuing to limit the variety and amount of guns that citizens are allowed to purchase, mass shootings will not stop until America fundamentally improves its mental health care access, removes stigmas around mental health treatment and makes a concerted effort to end the popularization of gun use.
PrairieDog • Nov 3, 2017 at 3:37 pm
It is NOT lawful to convert semi-auto firearms to fully automatic operation. Get your facts straight before spewing your opinions in print.
Matthew Lee • Oct 5, 2017 at 9:02 pm
First of all, the mistake that every anti-gun activist makes when an incident like this occurs is to jump right to a political debate rather than acknowledge the memory of those we have lost. I read through 8 paragraphs of stating the need to consider more gun control before you wrote 2 sentences about mourning those lost. My I suggest opening a story like this with, “A nation mourns as a man opened fire on an innocent and unsuspecting audience of an outdoor concert in Las Vegas. Among those lost were teachers, doctors, police officers on and off duty, friends and family. Our deepest condolences to the friends and families of the victims, and our hope for a full recovery of those wounded.” So before questioning the moral scope of those who don’t support more gun control and/or to subtly suggest that law abiding gun owners are just as dangerous as those who intend to do harm to other people, you should check your priorities in your own articles.
Second, this was a story that was printed in a news article. Real news is not meant to be biased like CNN or Fox News. News is there to state the facts of an event, and perhaps provide the arguments on both sides of the debate and let the reader come to a conclusion on his or her own.
One thing you did not touch on enough in this article that I actually agree with you on, is the need to address mental health, but as a separate issue. Background checks are as thorough as they are going to be by asking someone who buys a firearm to state whether or not the individual has a court order to suggest his mental state is not clear enough to own a firearm.