Brainy British comedian Eddie Izzard, in his show Dress to Kill, expresses my gun control sentiments exactly: “The National Rifle Association says that ‘Guns don’t kill people, people do.’ But I think, I think the gun helps, ya know? I think it helps. I just think that just standing there going ‘Bang!’ that’s not gonna kill too many people, is it? You’d have to be really dodgy on the heart to have that.” Izzard also addresses another valid point: “Stalin died in his bed. Well done there. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest, age 72. Well done indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people, and we’re sorta fine with that.”
Is the U.S. “sorta fine” with killing its own people, the next generation? Is our generation “sorta fine” with dying, not for a noble cause, but in a classroom because someone else has an ax to grind?
On Feb. 14, a student armed with a shotgun and three handguns walked into a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and opened fire, killing 5 students, injuring 15, then shot himself. This hit a little closer to home for some than the massacre a little less than a year ago, on Apr. 16, at Virginia Tech. There, a student armed with two semi-automatic handguns opened fire on two parts of the campus: 33 (including the shooter) died and 23 were injured. My first reaction was to worry for a friend that was there. My second reaction was that Columbine had followed us to college. On Apr. 20, 1999 at Columbine High School, two students used two shot-guns, one semi-automatic rifle and a semi-automatic handgun, to wreak havoc on their campus, killing 12 students and a teacher and injuring 23 more before turning their weapons on themselves.
The emphases in these cases tend to revolve around the mental health issues these students suffered from. Considering the world we currently live in, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have some kind of mental health issue. School security has also been brought up in these cases. Specifically regarding Virginia Tech and NIU, campus security can only go so far on a public access property. Response times can be improved and the attempt to provide better notification to students is definitely worth a try, but there’s always going to be a response time, and notifications don’t help students who are already stuck in a room with a gunman.
Better gun control policy should be a huge issue right now. Gun violence is not limited to school campuses. Malls, women’s clothing stores, City Council meetings and even political headquarter offices are being targeted. Unfortunately, the repercussions of these situations will cause many more people to go out and purchase firearms.
So what do we do? Any effort is better than merely offering condolences and raising money to bury our nation’s future. Gun owners are supposed to be licensed, and every registered firearm serialized. Obviously, these precautions aren’t working. How about more thorough criminal and mental background checks for licenses? The elimination of firearm sales on the Internet? Regulating or prohibiting the type of weapons that are being sold, especially semi-automatic weapons? Mandatory education sessions for all registered gun owners? The 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms but does not prohibit the government from protecting the rest of the population. The government could regulate possession by providing state-issued weapons to those with licenses if it wanted to. There’s no mandate in the Constitution that guarantees the right to a Glock-9 or any other weapon of our choosing. This is all merely up to interpretation.
If every other law, amendment or government passed policy can be re-interpreted, amended or reformed, then why can’t gun control? Stricter punishment for gun use has become pointless seeing as most of the offenders are killing themselves. This is efficient in not having to burden tax payers with court dates, appeals processes and the ever-so-controversial life sentence versus death penalty. However, justice is found lacking in consideration of the innocent people who died just so this person could kill themselves and make the news. I met the father of Rachel Scott, one of the Columbine casualties. There’s no justice for him and his family. There was no debate over a life sentence or the death penalty, or whether the gunmen were mentally stable enough to stand trial. His daughter died because everyone has the right to bear arms and good decision-making skills are not a prerequisite to buying, manufacturing or getting a license for firearms. We need to show that we’re not “sorta fine” with the needless deaths of those that have so much to live for.