Gun Control and the Sandy Hook Shooting
With all of the talk about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary and the opinions on Gun Control, I can’t help but to express my opinion- even if people disagree with me.
I am outraged that a man EXACTLY MY AGE, went in to an Elementary School filled with students who were making gingerbread houses and handmade Christmas presents and took their innocence away. 20 children were murdered. 20 lives. 20 possible future Presidents of America, 20 beautiful children who could have done something wonderful with their lives and made a difference in this world. It breaks my heart to think of their parents who instead of buying Christmas presents this year, are buying caskets.
I think it is absolutely ridiculous that people have access to assault weapons and semi-automatic weapons. If someone wants to carry a gun for protection, that is their prerogative, but do they really need more than a hand gun? There have been seven massacres this year in America alone. The definition of a massacre is at least four fatalities, not including the gunman. Let’s go back to the Aurora Movie Theatre shooting for a second… James Holmes was armed with an AR-15, a Remington 870 shotgun and a 40 caliber Glock handgun. An AR-15 is a semi-automatic weapon, depending how it’s configured. The firing power of the AR-15 — a version of the M-16 assault rifle – is enormous. Holmes had a 100-round rifle drum and the weapon’s firing capability, according to Chief Oates (Chief of Aurora Police Department) who said he did not know whether the rifle was fully automatic or semi-automatic but “even if it was semi-automatic, he could’ve gotten off 50 to 60 rounds within one minute.”
Adam Lanza, Gunman of the Sandy Hook Elementary Massacre in Connecticut used a Bushmaster .223-caliber, Glock 10 mm and a Sig Sauer 9 mm, all three belonged to his mother, whom he chose as his first victim and shot on the morning of that fateful Friday. I read that Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy, had an obsession with collecting guns and frequently enjoyed shooting her guns at a shooting range as a hobby, where she often brought her sons along with her to participate. Her boys were introduced to shooting at a young age. Her son Adam also spent hours playing violent video games, like so many young boys. This seriously makes me ask “Should we be introducing our children to guns and violence at such a young age?” I say, no. It’s the over exaggerated and over saturated violence in today’s society that could be programming young minds that guns are OK. The amount and caliber of guns that Nancy Lanza had in her possession cannot be justified as ‘protection.’
I also disagree with the argument that if teachers were trained and given a hand gun to keep with them for protection in their classroom, maybe they could have stopped this shooting. A hand gun against the consumer equivalent of US Army Weaponry (this is what Lanza used) is like David against Goliath. We need to prevent unstable people from obtaining these guns in the first place, rather than worrying about how to arm ourselves against them. If we arm teachers, what’s next? Doctors, Nurses, Priests, Rabi, Postman?
It is a proven fact that countries with stricter gun laws have lower gun violence rates. Even within the United States, the states that have harsher gun control laws have lower crime rates. Some people argue that criminals will not respect the law even if the US does place stricter laws on gun control, but statistically speaking, places with stricter gun laws have fewer incidents of gun violence.
We need to address the issue of guns immediately, openly and honestly, without using constitutional politics as a smokescreen to finding the cure.
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