About 10-a-week. What could that represent? Perhaps it’s the hours the average person exercises, maybe how many cookies someone eats. Though plausible answers, the specific statistic correlates to the number of shootings that happened as of October 6th, 2024, in the United States—yes, per week. Statistics of gun violence have recently staggered, with 2021 consisting of almost 700 incidents that left 4-dead in mass shootings. Such disparities go unnoticed and rarely get covered by mainstream media; instead, there are bright colors to the notion that everyone in New York City should buy the newest drink at Blank Street or that Taylor Swift made another major music album. Incidents regarding gun violence that get posted quickly fade, and everything resumes, even though statistics are still rising. This cycle highlights the need for sustained awareness and action. The large amount of crises can be attributed to many things, namely the frequency of gun ownership.
Regulating gun laws is usually the first proclamation that people make when wondering how to limit gun ownership. Though obvious, in hindsight, the process isn’t as easy. Gun ownership is already at an all-time high; in fact, the United States is the leading country where civilians possess guns: 120.5 per 100 people. This means that if the government were to restrict or even take repossession of firearms, they would have to confiscate over 400 million and evaluate who is fit to own them. How can it be established who can hold firearms? A 10-hour safety course, maybe a city-issued permit, what about hunting exclusive guns?
There are 2-leading issues with these: parents making firearms accessible to kids and the ability to pass something like a mental-health screening or 10-hour course. Both of these are so concerning because they have happened multiple times. At Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Georgia, a 14-year-old student was charged with murdering 4 of his classmates because his father gifted him a gun. Alternately, on December 29th, 2010, two 13-year-old boys were playing with one of their parent’s guns. That was when the trigger accidentally went off, and Robert Harvell Taylor III got shot in the face. Though different cases, they both partially transpired from parental negligence and giving guns to children. On the topic of mental health screenings, well, there are already screenings for firearms. When analyzing statistics regarding gun-related deaths, the reliability of these screenings goes out of the window. Breaking down the fatalities from guns leaves a shocking statistic: 54% are suicides while 46% are murders. Thus, it’s never possible to decrease the number of deaths from firearms to 0 unless guns are strictly prohibited.
Now that it is established how to stop gun violence, the leading question is what rebuts people have against it. Well, for starters, people believe goes against the 2nd Amendment: The Right to Bear Arms, which means that people have the right to own firearms strictly to protect themselves. This, in turn, gives people the right to purchase guns and though some states have strict gun laws, others don’t set any. Additionally, since the 2nd Amendment is in the Constitution, there is a lengthy process to overturn it, if it were to get overturned. Specifically, to amend the Constitution, two-thirds of both houses of Congress must propose an amendment, and then three-quarters of state legislatures must ratify it.
There are many ways to strengthen gun laws, though, that are appealing: gun trafficking is one of the best ways to solidify citizens’ safety. Not all firearms are bought legally, and strengthening enforcement to find and restrict illegal weapons can greatly decrease fatalities. Moreover, without diminishing the 2nd Amendment, many scholars argue that there should be a ban on assault weapons–semi-automatic firearms. Assault weapons are extremely hazardous and allowing people to own guns like pistols will drastically limit the rate of mass homicides. To target the epidemic of gun violence in the United States, there must be strict gun laws that will be hard to bypass—improved from many laws that are currently in place.
Written by Michael Shohat
