Gun Control in America

Gun violence and gun regulations are indeed hot topics in the United States. The Second Amendment, the American gun industry and a media instilled with violence and fear are all subjects in this national debate. While one side abrogates for stricter gun control laws to regulate who can acquire fire arms and to ban certain types of weapons, the other side insists that the guns are not the issue and that any form of gun control is a government attack against their individual liberties and the Constitution. Aside from side one choses to be, there is an undeniable reality: a substantial number of people die every year in fire guns related incidents (excluding suicides). Sadly, a part of this reality also involves teens and kids: many those deaths are related to gun incidents involving teens and kids, including school shootings incidents. By looking at how other countries have dealt with this issue in the past, one can find valuable lessons: following a mass shooting incident in 1996, the Australian government banned military style firearms, and a gun buyback program was started. This resulted in an effective reduction of mass shooting incidents and a reduction of murder rates.

An important part of the American people associates guns with individual liberties, as they believe is an unalienable part of preserving individual liberties against the tyranny of the State. Big part of this belief has its roots in the American Constitution: the Second Amendment explicitly 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” (Lund & Winkler, n.d.). This notion is, however, debatable, as there is still controversy whether this Amendment directly protects a private right of individuals to keep and bear arms or is more like a right that can be exercised only through militia organizations like the National Guard (Lund & Winkler, n.d.).

Using the Second Amendment as basis, there are also claims that the right to bear arms is an essential part of the American culture, as the tradition of armed civilians goes all the way back to the very Founding Fathers. Some evidences suggest, however, that the gun culture of modern America originated about 150 years ago, associated to the birth of the American gun industry (Various, 2018). The development of the American gun industry essentially meant the transit from the artisan methods of manufacturing to the modern mass production factories, effectively creating the means to fabricate thousands of weapons per year. To create the market needed to sell this huge amount of product, it was necessary to induce an artificial demand on the American public, and that’s how the myth of an armed individual as symbol of the truly independent American was born. Nowadays, the modern American gun culture myth is supported and feed by media, gun manufacturers and sellers and a powerful lobby association known as National Rifle Association (NRA), who constantly bombard the American society with pro-gun propaganda, making us falsely believe that American culture is essentially linked to owning guns and exercise a false right to carry them around indiscriminately.

It is not surprising then, that the number of guns currently in hands of American civilians was estimated at 393 million in 2017 (Ingraham, 2018). This means that in 2017, American made 4 percent of the total world population and owned 46 percent of the entire stock of 857 million civilian firearms. Keeping this in mind, is no coincidence that almost 16000 people died in 2017 alone in fire guns related incidents (excluding suicides). This number includes 3200 deaths related to gun incidents involving teens and kids, including 10 school shootings incidents (Gajanan, 2018). Many people resist to link the volume of firearms in civilian hands to such high death toll, echoing National Rifle Association chief Wayne Lapierre’s long-touted notion that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” (Keneally, 2018) . At first sight, this belief appears to be justified, as there have been several situations where the presence of a civilian bearing a firearm did prevented the loss of innocent lives (11 times a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy, saving lives, n.d.). Studies suggest however, that gun possession encourages an escalation in the level of confrontation because it provides a false sense of security and serves as an involuntary discharge vehicle of momentary anger (Keneally, 2018).

Part of this debate of “armed good guy vs bad guy” is related to school shootings. There are proponents that argue that armed teachers and/or the presence of armed guards in the schools could neutralize active shooters before the situation goes south. This could make things worse, though, as it would mean that now guns will be constantly present in a place where traditionally have not been allowed, increasing the chances that those guns end up in the wrong hands or that a violent confrontation of a guard or teacher with a student end up in an accidental or unintentional death. Moreover, treating the problem of mass shootings at schools as isolated and confined incidents, and ignoring its root cause as a manifestation of the more general gun violence problem that affects the American society, is not an effective way of dealing with this problem. There cannot be a solution to the school shootings while the root of the issue is not treated: we need more effective ways of dealing with civilian possession of firearms and the significant death toll associated with gun violence.
Coming up with solutions to the gun violence is severely hindered by the fact that we are limited in our means to investigate effective ways of dealing with it. There are active efforts to prevent research in the subject, with a strong current of opposition, leaded by the National Rifle Association (NRA), that systematically boycotts every effort in the direction of gun control. The clearest example of this is the Dickey Amendment. This Amendment, passed in 1996, effectively bans the Center of Disease Control (CDC) of using any funds to advocate or promote gun control (Keneally, 2018), meaning that even a simple study on the causes of gun violence can be fund deprived and shut down under the false pretense that is an effort to advocate gun control.

Seeing how gun control has worked in other countries, one can less but agree that this would be the real solution to our gun related problems. The case of Australia is an example of how gun control can effectively reduce the number of deaths associated with firearm. Australia, a country traditionally associated with tough rednecks and pioneers and with a long tradition of hunting and bearing arms, passed tough gun control laws following a mass shooting in 1996. A ban on the selling and importing of semiautomatic guns and other military style firearms, followed by a generous gun buyback campaign were enacted by the government. This resulted in an effective reduction of mass shooting incidents to zero and a reduction of murder rates to less 1 killing per 100000 people in 2014, showing that gun control programs can be effective in reducing deaths associated with firearms incidents (Leaf, 2018).

We need to deal with school shootings and gun violence in the American society in a more effective way. The modern American gun culture, a fabrication of the gun industry as a mean to create markets, needs to be controlled and the influence of pro-gun lobbyist in our government reduced. Our scientists need to be able to research more deeply and freely this issue, as we would do with any other issue affecting the American people, and we need to come up with solutions that involve some degree of control over who can own a gun and what kind of firearms should be in civilian hands. There cannot be a true solution to the school shootings and the senseless deaths of teens and children while we don’t address the gun violence that is deeply rooted in the American society.