School shootings are starting to feel like a seasonal occurrence, but according to some people the answer isn’t more gun control.
Here’s a summary of the arguments I’ve seen from people who don’t think more gun control is the answer (and please, correct me if I’m wrong or missed an argument).
Well frankly, there are less deaths from guns than the media would make it seem. Gun violence has actually gone down in the past several decades.
Um, that’s great. Tell that to the parents of the children who died in the most recent school shooting. I ask you, if there is something we can do to completely stop gun violence, why wouldn’t we do it? Why wouldn’t we enact more restrictions on gun ownership considering over 150,000 American students have experienced a school shooting since 1999?
Honestly, if someone wants to get a gun, they will, so there isn’t really any point in gun control. It might make it harder, sure, but they’ll find a way to carry out their agenda.
Okay, but if it makes it harder to carry out violence on such a large scale, why wouldn’t we do it? Like, doesn’t any bit help? Does it cost us a lot of money? Would that money be more important than the potential lives saved?
Listen, I have the right to bear arms.
Sure, but there shouldn’t be any limitations on the second amendment? There are restrictions on freedom of speech; you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater, for example. Does the right to own an AR-15 mean more than the lives of those lost in these mass shootings? Where does your right to own an AR-15 end? Where does the right of a person to go to school begin?
It’s not a gun issue, it’s a mental health issue.
Great, I can actually see that argument (even if I don’t 100% agree with it). So what should we do? Expand mental health coverage? Make sure everyone has affordable access to a psychologist? Or do we gut Obamacare without a fucking thing to replace it?
Cars kill more people than guns do.
True. That’s why we’re constantly trying to make cars and roadways safer. There is no such effort being made for gun violence, which is fucked.
Also, cars have a secondary purpose — transportation. Guns are literally a weapon. You can’t get to work driving your gun.
The problem is people, not guns.
Fucking. Great. Do. Something. Concrete. If your answer is “people should be better,” you are making a choice to refuse to take actual responsibility for a lack of gun control while at the same time patting yourself on the back for the most bullshit, asinine, worthless response one can come up with. Saying “people should step up” is living in a fantasy land, not reality, and does not give us any real, concrete solutions to the problem.
Well, as Betsy DeVos pointed out, teachers do have the option to carry guns on campus if they’ve had the proper training.
Lol ok that’s a weird, borderline insensitive joke, because the idea that in order to be an educator of children you should maybe learn how to operate a firearm is absur- oh. That isn’t a joke.
So. No ideas whatsoever for restrictions. Arm teachers. Anything else?
#thoughtsandprayers
I wouldn’t mind the “getting rid of guns isn’t the answer” argument if it came with legitimate, real solutions.
