Human Control or Gun Control?

10/16/2017

In a world of offended feelings, rashful conversations, and mudslinging there is a topic that causes more conflicts than others. Not surprisingly, gun control has caused a lot of chatter- which is leading to a lot of unfriending on Facebook.

On the first of October America witnessed its most recent of mass shootings, the Vegas shooting. This national atrocity resulted in 59 deaths. Instead of focusing on the victims, many have decided to focus on the perpetrator and the gun and try to come up with solutions to stop it.

There is one question that needs to be faced when coming up with solutions. Whose fault is it? Is it the gun’s fault? Or is it the person wielding the gun’s fault?

Some claim that the shooting is the gun’s fault. Gun’s give humans too much temptation. Holding a weapon that can do enough damage to end someone’s life is an insane thought. Arguably, the most powerful weapon is a person’s brain. The temptation of guns clouds the thoughts and then people make a reckless decision.

But how can you blame a gun? That’s what others ask. An inanimate object can’t do anything unless a person interacts with it. Therefore, people are to blame for mass shootings. A gun, without a holder, will stay put. No bullets will be shot, nothing can be reloaded, and a trigger can’t be pulled. It is a person that shoots the bullets, reloads the gun, and pulls the trigger. It is a person that aims the barrel at another human life, it is a person that decides to take a human life.

Depending on where the blame lies, what else can you do? Plenty of public areas- restaurants, zoos, malls- have put up signs claiming that the place is a gun free zone. At first glance, this rule looks like a good idea. If there are no guns, then there can’t be any shootings. However, it is against the law to shoot civilians unprovoked and yet people do it anyway. So who’s to say that someone won’t disregard the gun free zone and start picking off people one by one? And if there are no guns allowed, doesn’t that mean those under attack will not have the means to fight back?

If you can’t put laws on people, then you have to put laws on guns. Laws that put some sort of control on the type of guns that can be sold, the tests and qualifications required to purchase and own a gun, how thorough these qualifications should be, and laws that consider how necessary these guns are for citizens.

People believe that the license and registration should be stricter or even the reevaluation process should be repeated. The limitations should be placed on who gets a gun. If a person is mentally unstable, then they should not have the opportunity to wreak havoc on a city.

There are multiple ways to go on about gun control, and yet people go on about it like it is the battlefront of Saratoga in the Revolutionary War.