Connor is a member of the Junior State of America (JSA), a student-run political awareness organization for high school students.
In light of recent shooting tragedies in Aurora, Colorado, at the Empire State Building and at Perry Hall High School in Maryland, there have increasingly been calls to pass stricter gun regulations to try to prevent similar tragedies in the future. The thinking behind these calls for stricter regulations, however, fails to acknowledge the simple reality that greater regulation of guns will not help prevent future tragedies.
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" and the Supreme Court has affirmed the Second Amendment's protection of individual gun ownership in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), ruling in Heller that "the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms and that the [District of Columbia]'s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for self-defense, violated that right." However, the court left leeway for varying levels of gun regulations at the federal and state level, and the debate comes down to the wisdom and effectiveness of having stricter gun laws, especially in light of shooting tragedies in recent years.
In understanding this debate, one simple fact has to be acknowledged: anyone desiring to use a firearm to commit violent acts will use almost any means, legal or illegal, to obtain a firearm to commit those acts. Congress, state legislatures and city councils can pass all the gun laws they want that restrict access to firearms to the absolute limit of constitutionality; however, criminals will still find a way to obtain firearms (while, notably, upstanding citizens cannot) and will still be able to commit acts of violence against innocent people. Something lost in the argument over stricter gun laws is always the fact that to every degree access to guns is reduced for potential criminals, the degree of access that honest, law-abiding citizens (who, when armed, can help prevent shooting tragedies) have is also reduced. The fact that, in a state with concealed carry laws for instance, any public place could have many armed citizens able to foil any type of violent plot is a much better deterrent than a section of the U.S. Code to criminals. And in many cases, perpetrators of violent shooting massacres can be so illogical that nothing can prevent their drive to commit violent acts.
Tragic and violent acts like the Aurora theatre shooting and the Virginia Tech massacre make us wonder as a society what we can do to prevent events like them from happening ever again. Sometimes, hysteria sets in and unifying and emotional tragedies become polarizing political battles over how to best address the oversights and mistakes that allowed them to occur. In cases like these, however, stricter gun laws simply aren't the answer, which is why increased gun regulations nationally and at the state level aren't likely to be seen in light of these tragedies.
Keep up the good work.
Odd, isnt it maybe the liberal gun law passing goof balls will eventually figure out how to get CRIMINALS to follow laws and turn in their illegal guns.
Anyone KNOW WHY THE UN WANTS TO END PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF FIREARMS? Go take a look at the American Revolution, cause at that time English people could keep their guns, or collect them as King was afraid the oppressed might shoot him and take over England.
If we have no guns, and some how the UN could get all of the US troops to follow UN treaties, then the PEOPLE would be subjugated by the UN or who ever controls the military might of USA. THINK. Who is most dangerous to a group or entity trying to take over USA, the guy with a 30-06 in a tree, or the guy who loves his country with a pistol or shot gun. THINK people. @nd amendment is there for a reason.
-- "Something lost in the argument over stricter gun laws is always the fact that to every degree access to guns is reduced for potential criminals, the degree of access that honest, law-abiding citizens (who, when armed, can help prevent shooting tragedies) have is also reduced."
Mr. Pfeiffer, this quote from attorney Jeff Snyder supports your point about gun control advocates using the criminal behavior of the likes of James Holmes and Jared Loughner to push for laws that infringe on the rights of the law abiding, thereby allowing criminals to set the parameters under which the law-abiding must be limited:
"But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding!" Jeff Snyder 1994
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