OPINION: The American Addiction

What place do guns have in American society?

Clementine Larrouilh, Horizon Editor in Chief| October 17, 2017

With every shooting there comes the same narrative. Terror, “pray for them,” make promises, forget, and repeat. The cycle has gone unbroken for far too long. It’s time to change the narrative, but to do this we have to first examine and understand why firearms are still acceptable, even after having seen their destructive effects.

With all the controversy surrounding guns and gun control, it’s important to go back to the original wording of the second amendment. The second amendment of the United States Constitution states that “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.” These words of the constitution have been interpreted by many across the US, but only once in recent years by the United States Supreme Court.

The last instance where the Supreme Court interpreted the words of the constitution regarding gun control was in 2008, in District of Columbia vs. Heller. This was a landmark case presided over by Justice Scalia,  with a 5-4 vote that ruled that the second amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm unconnected with service to a militia for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense. It also determined that mandating that lawfully-owned rifles and shotguns be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock” violated this guarantee.

In 2016, Obama signed an executive order designed to prevent gun violence. However, his actions did not last very long because barely a year later on February 29, 2017, President Trump repealed this executive order.

What if instead of ignoring the problem, the US started to mirror the gun control policies of foreign countries, whose solutions have actually worked?

We only have to turn to our neighbor,  the eighth most peaceful country in the world, Canada to understand why their policies have worked. While the United States was busy banning dangerous, delicious, villainous Kinder candies, Canada was banning guns. Well, not banning them entirely. Canada managed to devise a system placing guns into three categories: non-restricted, restricted, and prohibited. To even carry a non-restricted firearm, Canadians have to pass vigourous training, know as the Canadian Firearms Safety Course (CFSC). Once they’ve passed it, they need to get a licence that is renewable every five years. This may not seem like much, but branching over these requirements are the Firearms Act and The Criminal Code, which explains why Canada has six times less of gun related incidents than America.

Even though the right to bear arms is explicitly stated in the second amendment, it’s starting to become a problem. There have been 47,079 gun related incidents in 2017 alone in the United States. This has been cause for many to wonder if right-to-carry laws lead to an increase in crime. A research carried out by Stanford explains that the murder rate increased in the states with existing right-to-carry laws for the period 1999-2010. When applied to current statistics it’s easy to see why gun crimes are increasing. For example, the United States owns nearly half of the guns in the world. This can be amounted to approximately 88 guns to every 100 people. This explains why 73% of murders are done with a firearm and why the US suffers mass shootings at 11 times the rate of any other developed country.

What’s even scarier than the statistics stated above is that it’s currently very easy to get a gun in the United States. For example, looking at the state of Texas, where you don’t need a permit to buy rifles, shotguns, ammunition, or any firearm component, the minimum requirement to buy a gun is to be 18 years of age and a resident of the state. Nevada, as stated by the Independent, “does not require gun owners to have a permit to purchase or carry rifles and shotguns, according to the National Rifle Association. Carrying a handgun, however, does require a permit.” They elaborate saying, “Semi-automatic weapons, however, are legal in Nevada. Automatic weapons fire until the ammunition is used up; semi-automatic weapons require the trigger to be pulled for each shot.

There is no limit on magazine capacity, or the number of bullets a gun can hold, in Nevada.”

Considering this, it’s no wonder that terrorist Stephen Paddock was able to own over 40 guns. The worst part of this is that his acquirement of these weapons was completely legal.

Knowing this, it’s sad to say that the Las Vegas Shooting isn’t a surprise, but how the head of government is handling it is rather shocking. During President Trump’s visit to Las Vegas to express his condolences, he was asked by a reporter what he was going to do about gun control. Here President Trump did what he does best. He declined to answer.

In past years after mass shootings, presidents would rally to prevent repeats. However, President Trump may not follow in his predecessor’s  footsteps. In 2015, during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe he said “It’s the same old story. But what are you going to do? There are many people like that and what are you going to do? Institutionalize everybody? So you’re going to have difficulties.” In typical Trump fashion, he didn’t stop there.  After the Paris attacks in November of 2015, he stated at a rally “When you look at Paris — you know the toughest gun laws in the world, Paris — nobody had guns but the bad guys….You can say what you want, but if they had guns, if our people had guns, if they were allowed to carry, it would’ve been a much, much different situation.” Clearly, in the past, Trump was very pro open-carry, and it’s unlikely for this position to change.

It’s a sad day when Kim Kardashian is more involved in responding to a shooting than the president. Her tweet perfectly embodies the current problem in the law, “When the Founding Fathers wrote the 2nd amendment, guns fired one round per minute, Today’s rifles have a cyclic rate of 600+. Maybe it’s time we stopped using 18th century laws to regulate 21st century weapons.”