Musings on America and gun control.

I write this blog less than a week after the Sandy Hook massacre, in which a gunman, Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people in an American elementary school : 20 children and 6 teachers.

In the wake of this horrific event, many people on the American left (and to a lesser extent the right) have called for stricter gun regulations, while most (but not all) on the right have accused Democrats and Liberals of politicising a tragedy. As a British/Scottish/European I find many of the arguments against gun control in America staggering. But I'm not going to attack the NRA. Instead, let me list the ways I agree with the National Rifle Association, and then give reasons why I believe stricter gun control in the USA is necessary.

1) The Second Amendment to the constitution of the United States of America gives civilians the right to keep and bear arms.

True. The second amendment of the US constitution states: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Some contend that this means that some sort of governmental agency or security force has the right to bear arms, rather than the average American. From what I can understand, the text states that "the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It does not say that the rights of the militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. This is the first point on which I agree with the NRA. The US constitution clearly does give civilians the right to own guns.

Where I disagree, is that the NRA seems to believe that this means that there should be no restriction on what type of weapons civilians should be allowed to own. Should a civilian be allowed to own a nuclear bomb? An F15? It's hard to imagine any reasonable person would say yes to those questions. Is that in itself not a form of gun control? Why then should it be that the average American can own a Bushmaster M4, a semi-automatic rifle which Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children? A weapon such as this has one purpose: to kill people. Especially when equipped with (legally purchased) bullets which fragment upon impact to make removal or treatment more difficult. What possible reason could there be for allowing civilians to possess such a weapon? To hunt? Only if you want to be spitting lead out of your venison as you eat it. The only thing such a weapon is designed for is to kill people.

2) If the teachers at Sandy Hook had guns, less people would have died.

Again, this is probably true. A teacher with a gun may have been able to take out the shooter.

That being said, would arming teachers really be a good thing? All it takes is one psychopathic teacher (as in the Dunblane massacre), or even a careless one for something tragic to happen. The USA has a population of 300 million. Are we to believe that not even one teacher, in one school would be capable of murdering the children in their classroom? Or that one teacher in one school would be careless enough to leave their firearm lying around, to be picked up by a young child who, in play, could accidentally fire it on a classmate? In addition, Columbine High School had armed guards, but that didn't stop Dylan Harris and Eric Klebold from murdering 13 of their peers before turning the guns on themselves. Nor did having guns help Lanza's mother, who he shot with her own guns before embarking upon his terrible killing spree.

Furthermore, what is the logical conclusion to this argument? Give toddlers a gun?

3) You can't stop bad people doing bad things.

Certainly true.

However, you can limit the impact of the bad things that bad people do. On the day of the Sandy Hook massacre, a man with a knife wounded 22 children in a Chinese school. There are bad people in the world. They will do bad things. The difference is that the man in China did not have a gun as Adam Lanza did. No-one died in China. 26 people died in the USA.


It seems to boil down to two Utopian ideals. The NRA and its supporters want everyone in America to own a gun. This, they contend, would mean that criminals would think twice about acting outside of the law knowing they could be shot and killed for doing so by ordinary civilians.

The other is that no-one would own a gun.

Clearly, both these ideas are impossible. But shouldn't America work towards one, however impossible? Shouldn't we, as human beings, strive for perfection even if we know it's unattainable?

So which one?

I'd put it this way: if the teachers and staff at Sandy Hook had firearms available to them, the deathtoll would have still been at least 1: Adam Lanza.

If no-one in the building, including Lanza, had access to guns then the death-toll would probably have been zero.