I'm not gonna lie, I don't know much about guns. I've never held one, never heard one and never had one pointing in my direction. In fact, outside of a military exhibition in a museum, I've never even seen one. Perhaps it would be a different story if I was living in America.
Much like my gun knowledge, my stats knowledge lacks too. I don't know how many people have access to them, how many crimes have been committed or the legislature surrounding them around the globe. But despite this, I have formed an opinion on the licensing of guns. I was recently left distraught by the news of a former student returning to his school in Florida to gun down students, teachers and anyone else that crossed his path. The disaster caused an uproar across the internet. Some blamed the travesty on the perpetrators mental illness whilst others stood firm in their beliefs that easy access to weaponry allowed the boy to commit his crimes. Others stated that they believed that teachers should be armed to defend themselves and their pupils against such attacks whilst the opposition claimed that doing so would do little to protect the innocent. Where do I stand on the matter? In that particular instance, I can recognise that there are mentally unstable individuals in society that have destructive urges. I can also see that there are also terrorists with a set agenda and violent nature. Male or female, stable or not, agenda or not, I believe that if we remove access to the weapons that allow these people to carry out such tragedies then we restrict the damage to the lives of innocent people. It is about mental instability, it is about terrorism, it is about destruction, but what it all comes down to is removing the MEANS that allows these people to destroy lives. I think of it like I think of nuclear warfare. All the powerful agents have this destructive tool at their disposure by means of defence, attack or otherwise. But why is it we need this weaponry? If we removed all forms of it then there would be no cause to house it and threaten our enemies with its power. The key to reducing gun crime is surely to remove the nucleus of the problem: the gun itself. Of course, we can't eliminate the individuals amongst us with the desire to damage, and it would be near-on impossible to remove all tools capable of inflicting injury. But surely if we limit what we can, restrict access to what is unnecessary in society, then we are sure to have an impact on the negative outcomes. Guns have become somewhat of a culture in certain places around the world and have become almost normalised to a number of demographics. Something so dangerous has become a part of every day lives and now, I fear there's no going back.
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Part-time student/bar-associate |