In wake of the December 13th tragedy at Sandy Hook High School, the issues of mental health and gun violence are being brought into question. Many are asking, "Is the country responsible for the mentally ill?" However, the real issue is within the accessibility and unnecessary gun access that every citizen has. To take a "what if" scenario, if Adam Lanza, the shooter at Sandy Hook, did not have access to guns, he would not be able to attempt such a tragic shooting.
Some people are pinning the blame on the violence in video games. However, it is a simulation, and although it does seem to have a violent impact upon the children, it is not the biggest factor contributing to the death of many elementary school kids. Video games can be harmful in mental health but is only able to be a killing factor when combined with the real life materials. Gun rights advocates seem to be bringing up the 2nd amendment in every scenario possible to limit gun rights, but they fail to see that the situation has changed. When the second amendment was written by our forefathers, they did not anticipate that they could walk into a store and pick up a piece of metal that can kill hundreds of people in seconds to be part of the future. As the times have changed, so to must our laws. Guns should not be available to the public, because they simply are not necessary for anything. If you wanted a gun in 2012, what would you want it for? The police and army are protecting you both locally and globally, and the chances of a zombie apocalypse are close to 0%, we simply don't have the technology to reanimate dead tissue. Our chances of dying from a vending machine is higher than that.
The only reason that people want a gun in the 21st century is because they have the intention to kill. Even hunters don't use fully automatic guns as they are unwieldy and uncontrollable. The weapons used in Sandy Hook were designed for killing humans. Is that fully necessary to be releasing to the public? In fact, it is easier to obtain a gun license and buy those guns for yourself than to get a drivers license. The background checks and safety checks for buying a gun are very limited and not very effective, as proven multiple times. We are in an epidemic of shooting, with Sandy Hook and the theater in Colorado happening within a very short time span. These once-in-a-lifetime tragedies are happening every day.
Works Cited
Boehlert, Eric. "Why Won't Press
Put U.S. Gun Violence In Context?" The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 21 Dec. 2012. Web. 21 Dec. 2012.
"Preventing the next Adam Lanza
Requires Action Today." Fox News. FOX News Network, 18 Dec. 2012.
Web. 21 Dec. 2012.
"TRENDING: Obama Responds to
Petitions against Gun Violence." CNN Political Ticker RSS. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2012.
Zakaria, Fareed. "The Solution
to Gun Violence Is Clear." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 20
Dec. 2012. Web. 21 Dec. 2012.
I like the research you did to find out some of the statistics about gun regulations, like how more people die every year of vending machines than. However, a possible counter-arguement could be that while kids are playing the FPS games, they learn to point a dangerous weapon at other people, granted that it is still virtual. But when they kill a person and the opponent respawns, it can influence younger kids into belieing that in the real world. That if they were to kill someone, the person would respawn. You have a pretty good arguement, but I would suggest adding at least one more argument to make the entire blog more sound.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that guns should all be banned. The second amendment gives all citizens the right to bear arms, a right that has been crucial to the development of modern America. Even though we are not frontiersmen anymore, there are people out there that still hunt for their livelihood and survival. Also, with 310 million guns in the US, the logistics of taking all those guns away does not work. Just as with prohibition, a ban to guns will not work.
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