opinions | 05
Feb. 21, 2018
OPINIONS POLITICS
Florida shooting: discussing the practical applications of gun control
GUNS killed over 35,000 Americans in 2017. The issue of gun control has resumed its place in the national conversation after a man killed 17 people, including 14 students, at a high school in Parkland, Florida. GRAPHIC BY IVY BECKENHOLT | GRAPHICS EDITOR
Parker Klyn
Opinions Editor parker.klyn@drake.edu @parkerklyn The United States’ latest mass shooting – it’s horrible that so much violence can be phrased like that, but that’s reality – took place last Wednesday in Parkland, Florida, where a former student murdered 17 students and faculty before being apprehended by police. The perpetrator, according to various police and anecdotal testimony, was mentally ill and developmentally disabled: he was reported to have depression, autism and ADHD. He had also been reported for threats of violence multiple times. The shooting has, yet again, raised questions regarding gun rights in America: How did items capable of inflicting such extensive death and destruction fall into the hands of someone like him? What can be done to stop mass shootings? Do we truly deserve the right to own firearms? Last October, after the horrible Las Vegas massacre, I outlined the basic immorality of owning a gun. The point of that editorial was to discuss why, even outside of the highly publicized mass shootings, I still believed guns to be terrifying and dystopian. The gist of that article was an attempt to show how ridiculous it is that items that essentially function as instant death buttons are so widespread and rapidly manufactured. It was to show that the mere existence of guns, from the unreasonably high number
of suicides to children’s exposure and occasional use of guns, is a constant threat of disaster and tragedy. That op-ed focused on principles; here, because I (and many of the incredibly brave survivors of the attack) am exhausted and fed up with gun violence, I will examine the tangible functions of gun control, and why limiting the existence and production of guns is the best, safest option moving forward. I will also attempt to engage with dissenting opinions and beliefs with good faith, because I do genuinely think that people who are staunch gun rights defenders generally are that way because it is truly the right thing to do; unfortunately, it’s clear to me that that’s not the case. There is literally one pro-gun argument that I believe to have a sliver of legitimacy: protection. In a vacuum, it would seem that owning a gun (while treating it with meticulous care and teaching your children and relatives gun safety) is an effective means of diffusing difficult situations, including self-protection and defense against home intruders. Aside from the surprising rarity of burglary while the homeowner is home (only about 3 people per 1,000 citizens reported burglaries occurring while they’re home in 2016), the reality is that this “protection” defense falls apart in practice. I have three examples to support this. The first occurred a few weeks ago; prominent Internet stars Gavin Free and Meg Turney experienced a break-in at their home from an armed assailant. This mentally ill man had become obsessed with Turney’s modeling, and according to police, entered the home with the intent of murdering Free or both. The pair hid in the closet, and the assailant left before he could inflict any harm. When police confronted him, gunfire was exchanged, and he died at the scene. Instead of confronting the assailant with a gun, the two hid, and the same result happened:
the man ended up dead. Another example is that of Bryce Dejean-Jones, a former Iowa State basketball player. After a late night argument with his girlfriend, Dejean-Jones returned to her apartment to visit his daughter. Unfortunately, he got off on the wrong floor of the complex and broke into the wrong apartment. The tenant retrieved a pistol and shot Dejean-Jones once, killing him. If that owner didn’t have a gun, Dejean-Jones would still be alive; a simple mistake ended his life and traumatized many others, due to the existence of guns. Finally, there is the example of Chris Kyle, a decorated military hero and the subject of the film “American Sniper”. Kyle was doing some volunteer work for other veterans who experienced PTSD, and he and a friend, Chad Littlefield, took Eddie Ray Routh with them to a shooting range. Despite the extensive list of red flags or diffusal options, including Routh having PTSD and refusing to take his psychotic medication, Kyle being as well-trained on guns as anyone, Kyle being the one to provide the guns, and a text exchange between Kyle and Littlefield that included the words “watch my six,” Routh was able to kill the two men before they even realized what was happening. If Kyle wasn’t able to protect himself, it’s difficult to imagine the average person being able to. No, arming teachers is not the answer. Aside from the impracticality of buying guns and gun safety classes for the hundreds of thousands of teachers in the United States, the mere existence of dozens of guns in a school is a recipe for disaster. All it takes is one teacher leaving their lockbox unlocked for a student (who might not have access to a gun otherwise) to wreak havoc. It can be debated, at least, whether gun control would limit the number of mass shootings (although, in my view, it clearly would). Something that doesn’t seem indisputable to me,
however, is whether gun control could reduce suicide. Again, I could bombard the reader with statistics (like how 60 percent of gun deaths are actually suicides), but the point of this op-ed is to show how things work in practice. Again, in a vacuum, it’s easy to say “If someone is suicidal, they’ll do it no matter what”, but the difference between the mere moments it would take to grab a gun and end your life versus the active actions like tying a noose or going to another location to do it is undeniably meaningful. All it takes is a message from a loved one for plans to change. In my opinion, gun control advocates should have a main goal and a backup plan. The first goal should not simply to be banning all guns (although that is the perfect scenario, in my eyes). No, the first goal should be a simple one: ban production of guns and ammunition. I think people underrate how difficult it would be to build new guns, as well as the ammunition that they require, on the black market. Guns are incredibly complex multi-functional machines, and they’re useless without ammunition and a firing mechanism. In addition, if production of ammunition is stopped, that means that American-produced ammunition is now finite, meaning every time someone fires a gun, there is less and less. Create buyback programs; they worked perfectly in Australia. I literally couldn’t care less about the finances of it. It has to be done. Give people an extensive grace period and don’t immediately criminalize it to prove that gun control is not an authoritarian removal of basic rights, but instead the actions of benevolent people. The backup plan should be smothering gun commerce in so much regulation and rigmarole that it becomes inconvenient to even begin to purchase one. Treat them like cars; make the finances require approval, create even more exhaustive background
checks, require written and practical tests, and a nationwide registry. Even more extensive measures like a database on ammunition purchases and stockpiling could save lives and prevent mass shootings. Look at how much people dread going to the DMV; imagine if guns were processed in a similar fashion. You’d be surprised the lengths people go to not be inconvenienced. I’d like to get away from sweeping arguments about the general identity of shooters (because most of them don’t seem to stick). I saw countless people on both sides digging deep to find proof that the perpetrator was either a MAGA gun nut or an antifa anti-cop warrior. Neither really ended up being true. If there’s one thing, identity-wise, that should be looked at it’s that 98% of mass shooters are male, and the vast majority of gun crimes, deaths, and suicides are done by men. But I’m not a sociologist – I don’t know what that means as far as gun safety, so I’m sticking to what I know. It’s easy to view the battle for gun control as impossible. The NRA is a filthy rich, seemingly insurmountable monolith with its hands in the pockets of countless legislators and lawmakers. It’s also easy to ignore the issue if it doesn’t directly affect you; “I exercise impeccable gun safety – why should I be punished for the actions of others?” To that, I’d say this: when you die, if your heirs don’t have interest in guns, that gun will be re-possessed. All it takes is one messed-up person to get their hands on that gun in an auction and decide to do something unimaginable with it. Maybe unimaginable isn’t the right word, as we can’t go more than a couple months without another mass shooting. But I’m not content with that, and, if you’re reading this, chances are neither are you. So we must organize, and fight, and make sure we do what’s right to keep ourselves and our children safe.