Gun laws will not stop mass shootings

Gun control is a hot issue in today’s society, speculation and misinformation are more prevalent than ever in these arguments. Media outlets are coining ominous terms like ‘ assault rifle’ in order to cause panic and sway political opinions. Most of the blame is being placed on the inanimate objects that appear commonly in tragedies. The fact of the matter is; gun control laws will not eliminate violence and tragedies. Firstly, one of the big reasons that that gun laws should be abolished is that this way, there are more bad guys with guns than good guys. An example of this is the shooting of a church in Texas, United States.

This shooting killed twenty six churchgoers and injured twenty. A man in the church happened to have a gun and shot the shooter twice and neutralized him. This would have never happened in the US restricted gun laws because there would be less people like that brave man to shot back at the threats. A person that has the want to kill will get a gun no matter how illegal it is. But a man who wants a gun for defence or for hunting may not get it because of how hard it would be to get the gun, they may think it is not worth the time and the effort. If gun laws were abolished, than more good guys will have the abilities to get a gun to maybe help defend against these mass shootings. Another example of this is in a hospital in Philadelphia, a man meeting with one of the employees opened fire on the hospital. A doctor who had a conceal and carry permit shot the shooter and it was said but the chief of police,” he saved a lot of people in the hospital. ” This is just one reason why the gun legislations do not have an affect on the amount of gun violence. Secondly, in car crashes, people blame the driver for the accidents and not the vehicle so why do people blame guns for shooting done by people. If guns were as regulated as cars are, than there would be a lot less deaths due to gun violence. Provinces track every sale of a vehicles carefully. All drivers must take a written and drivers test to get a G2 license so they can drive alone, which they must renew around every five years. It can be suspended or revoked.

Also, severe mental illness and serious criminal offenses can prevent people from getting a licence. Cars themselves are also regulated, including VIN numbers, mandatory insurance, license plates, and safety requirements. Also, the making of cars have changed dramatically since they were first built with the insolation of airbags, non-metal dashboards etc. Another adaptation that was made to save lives was when people started trying to blow up planes with bombs.

They now put metal detectors in airports so that people can’t sneak bombs on the plane. The first plane bombing was by Jack Gilbert Graham. He brought a bomb on to a United Airlines flight and killed 44 people including himself. It was after discovered that maybe just checking the bags quickly did not work and that is when they started putting metal detectors in airports. I think, instead of banning guns for everyone so that someone willing to get a gun illegally will be the only one with one, we should just put new counter measures in place to prevent guns from being brought into unwanted places. For example, people could put metal detectors in the doorways of schools to prevent school shootings. If gun law does not stop shootings now because people are going to acquire a gun either way if they really want one, than trying something different like metal detectors in major buildings and having more regulations on guns might be a better alternative. Although the process for obtaining a firearms in the United States is generally less intensive and difficult as it’s Northern counterpart the types of firearms available for legal civilian purchase does not encompass the everloved term ‘ assault weapon’. The Merriam Webster definition of an ‘ assault rifle’ is the following: “ any of various intermediate-range, magazine-fed military rifles (such as the AK-47) that can be set for automatic or semiautomatic fire; also : a rifle that resembles a military assault rifle but is designed to allow only semi automatic fire” the key thing to notice in that is the term ‘ automatic’ which means consistent discharge of rounds during a period where the trigger is pulled and held, as opposed to semi automatic which is a single round being discharged per trigger pull.

Although fully automatic firearms are available to upstanding citizens who are willing to jump through all of hoops and the rigorous background checks to obtain a federal firearms license, no new fully automatic firearms have legally entered the country since 1986 when President Reagan banned the importation of fully automatic firearms with the Firearms Owners Protection Act. Regardless of the countless laws put in place to limit legal firearms, people are still talking about ‘ common sense’ legislation, understandably this sounds like a desirable concept, however if you ask the same person who says we should outlaw guns because of the crimes in which they are used what the definition of criminal is, chances are they would say ‘ someone who doesn’t follow laws’ so where exactly is the common sense in that? Mass shootings are becoming more and more mainstream as the tragedies increase in and it’s no secret that most if not all of the perpetrators are not in the right state of mind.

A large percentage of mass shooters were affected by psychological issues and drug use, according to Grant Duwe, an American Criminologist and writer for LA Times 59% of all perpetrators of the 185 mass shootings that occured between the years 1900 and 2017 either had a history of mental illness or were diagnosed with mental illness. Mass shootings are not only exclusively an American problem, in Canada (A country with significantly more strict firearms laws) mass shootings are not unheard of either, for example in 1989 twenty five year old Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 people as well as injured 14 people. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association spending in Ontario, Canada was approximately $3. 5 billion in 2017. In contrast in a paper written by Daniel Eisenburg and Richard Scheffler (both with PHD’s in mental health related fields) the estimate for total spending on mental health in the United States for the year of 1997 which has only decreased since was about $73. 4 billion which divided equally amongst all 50 states is about $1. 47 billion per state, almost half of the Canadian alternative per province, not to mention the US population is 9 times larger than that of Canada.

Conclusion

That is why gun control laws will not work in eliminating gun violence in Canada and why a loser policy on gun control might help. The arguments discussed are that there should be more good people with guns than bad people, cars kill people so why are not they ban, if someone intends on commiting a crime then gun laws would not stop them from doing so and finally mental health is a more prevalent issue then gun control. Gun control may make people feel safer but judging from the information provided, all it does is limits good guys from getting guns and allows the criminals to be the only one with the gun.