Recently, amidst a dramatic increase in mass shootings across the country, the controversy of gun rights versus gun control has circled through the media and the minds of Americans. Gun control laws and regulations exist at all levels of government in the United States, with the vast majority being local codes which vary between jurisdictions. So the question is: How strictly should the buying and selling of guns be regulated?

by Mandy Stussman ’14

PRO-

On August 5, 2012, congregants at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin were interrupted from their worship by a terrifying  burst of gunfire, and within moments, seven lay dead. Just a month earlier, viewers at a midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Colorado fled for their lives amidst a chaotic, gruesome scene, at the end of which 142 lay dead and nearly 60 were injured due to a gunman. A year before that, U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords stood upon a podium in a supermarket parking lot, when, moments later, a stream of gunshots fired through the air, injuring Giffords along with 13 others and killing six. The list does not stop there. Tragedy winds through our history from border to border. Virginia Tech in 2007, Columbine in 1999, University of Texas in 1966. Though the date, situation and victims vary, all these events are connected through guns, and their counterpart, death.

Something must change. The solution? Gun control. With an increase in regulations, state governments could make it more difficult for non-law abiding citizens, like those with criminal backgrounds or mental illness, to obtain firearms. The United Kingdom has one of the strictest set of gun laws in the world and its system works. The proof lies in the statistics. In 2009, there were 0.073 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants; compared to 3.0 in the United States, which is about 40 times higher.

The right to own a gun should not be taken away, just restricted. Right now, laws provide for an irrational leniency. There were four weapons used in the massacre at the Colorado theater, including an AR-15 rifle, the semi-automatic civilian version of the U.S. military’s M-16, which can fire up to 60 shots in one minute. Additionally, in the 60 days leading up to the massacre, the shooter bought more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition at gun shops and over the Internet, and no one questioned him.

Military style weapons should not be available to the public. Citizens should not be able to carry concealed weapons on their person. Thorough background checks should be issued before purchase. How many people must die before we realize this? The government needs to protect citizens from the danger of weapons of modern warfare. It needs to keep guns off the streets and out of the hands of murderers. It needs to restrict gun usage, and as a result, save lives.

by Steffi Carrera ’14

CON

In light of terrible shootings, such as the “Batman” massacre in a Colorado movie theater, the call for restrictions on guns became louder. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is one of many who support gun control; he has proposed that background checks be done at gun shows so that no one with a criminal record or history of mental health issues is able to purchase firearms. Others have introduced similar ideas, like the United Nations which recommended a “Programme of Action” this past July that aims to combat the illicit trade and use of small arms by developing an internationally accepted set of standards for dealing with the issue.

However, gun control is not a sure fire way to decrease homicide rates. Placing restrictions on guns through legislation is not directly correlated to lower crime rates. In fact, the National Center for Policy Analysis reported that “among the fifteen states with the highest homicide rates, ten have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.”

Though the purpose of restrictions on arms may be to prevent guns from falling in the hands of felons and the mentally ill, its effectiveness is not ensured and comes at a steep price. Criminals can always find ways of obtaining weapons, especially guns, and restrictions would leave law-abiding citizens defenseless. James Holmes, the gunman who killed 12 people in the Colorado theater last summer, was seeing a psychiatrist and seeking help from the school where he studied before the shooting. This evidence of his insanity is a testimony to the fact that even mentally deranged people can obtain firearms if they are determined to do so, making the efforts of the restrictions seem futile.

Since it is absolutely impossible for guns not to fall in the hands of the wrong people, the concealed weapons laws in states across the country have permitted law abiding citizens access to some sort of individual protection instead of relying fully on authorities. The right to carry a concealed weapon is decided at the state level, and 49 states have passed laws allowing citizens to carry certain concealed firearms in public (only Illinois has completely banned it). If a person had a concealed gun in that movie theater last summer, things could’ve ended very differently for the deceased and their loved ones. Gun control isn’t going to stop people from killing each other, it will only limit the individual protection people have.