Tightening the grip on gun control

Graphic by Alan Li

 

There are people who have firm stances on which side they take when it comes to gun control and then there are few people that know about it well enough to take a stance.

The goal of gun control is to decrease gun violence, crimes and deaths from mass shootings.

During a midnight film screening of The Dark Knight Rises on July 20th of 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, a gunman stormed into the theatre setting off tear gas grenades and shot numerous people with multiple firearms.

12 people died and over 70 people were injured in the mass shooting. It was considered one of the largest mass shootings because of the casualties.

But then in December of 2012, a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and he killed 20 children, six adults and then took his own life.

Since Sandy Hook there have been more than 1,500 mass shootings.

In a recent incident, a gunman opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 people at a concert at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada on Oct. 1.

58 people died, 546 were injured and the gunman took his own life after the massacre.

The question remains on how gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, was able to smuggle several rifles into his suite in the Mandalay Bay hotel.

What the United States obviously needs is better gun control. This incident has become the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the States. Gun Violence Archive, a website that tracks occurrences of mass shootings across the states, has provided individuals with accurate information on gun related violence in the United States.

The website states that the total recorded number of incidents of gun violence in 2017 is  54,504 at the time of writing. The total number of deaths recorded is 13,745. The total of mass shootings is 321. There are also 655 deaths of children by gun violence and teenagers are up to 2,886. And the year isn’t quite over.

Something must be done to decrease the violence because ignoring the problem, not knowing about the problem and most importantly, arguing that gun control isn’t a good solution isn’t helping anybody.

Countries like Japan and England prove that strict gun laws work in lowering the number of homicides. Walter Hickey, a writer for Business Insider stated, “In 2011, the U.K. had 0.07 gun homicides for every 100,000 people; the U.S., by contrast, had 3 gun homicides for every 100,000.”

England and Japan are not the only ones, as Australia took action in banning and restricting access to guns. Australia proved a decline in homicides and decrease in mass shootings.

The problem right now is that anyone in the United States has the ability to buy guns online or at shows and swap meets due to the fact that background checks are only required under federal law for sales conducted by licensed dealers.

Background checks have proven over and over to be essentially important. Yet, this problem seems to never be fully addressed or tempted to be fixed.

The counter argument to gun control is that there are too many privately owned guns and there is too much history around gun ownership in the States  the United States is actually the biggest gun ownership country in the world.

Stephen Paddock had several guns with him and most rifles were fully automatic. Could this have been prevented with a background check? A gun control law? Other countries  like Australia for example  have proven gun control laws are a possible solution to gun violence.

Something must be done to decrease the violence because ignoring the problem, not knowing about the problem and most importantly, arguing that gun control isn’t a good solution isn’t helping anybody.

It is easy to argue against something rather than provide alternatives.

My only advice is to take action; there is information online and it’s all at your fingertips.

Leave a Reply