The recent fatal shootings of journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward near Roanoke, Virginia on Aug. 26 renewed the cry for stricter gun control laws. Unfortunately, those cries tend to fade with time only to resurface following the next inevitable tragedy. Has there been any drastic change in gun control laws since the Sandy Hook school shooting on Dec. 14, 2012? No. I am a staunch believer that gun control laws must be tightened to prevent further tragedies. We currently live in a country where gun control has become a political tug of war, with a dramatic increase in the number of Republicans opposed to stricter laws since the Obama administration came into power.
Gun supporters often cite mental illness as the cause of an increase in senseless killings. While screening for mental illness and past history of violence is crucial, there are additional crucial issues that need to be addressed. According to CNN, there were 90 mass shootings that occurred from 1966 to 2012 in the United States. Since then, the number of mass shootings has increased. However, the National Alliance on Mental Illness has also shown that despite the increase in number of mass shootings, the rise of mental illness has not changed significantly in the past several years.
The solution seems clear to me: We need to stop misdirecting blame and instead restrict gun access as a whole. I strongly believe that doing so will produce better results than repeatedly putting all of the blame on the same partial factor and then wondering why the rates of gun violence are not changing. CNN also reports that the United States currently has anywhere from 270 million to 310 million firearms. These are unthinkable numbers, especially considering that we are in possession of more firearms than any other country in the world. Clearly, we must reconsider why our nation believes that access to that many guns, or guns at all, is a basic human right.
This sense of entitlement is a direct result of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, something often touted by many gun enthusiasts as indisputable evidence that gun control should not be considered. I firmly disagree. Although the Second Amendment protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” unlike many defenders of the Second Amendment, I do not believe that the amendment can be used as a defense for those who possess firearms. When the amendment was adopted into the Bill of Rights in 1791, life in the United States differed greatly from life today. The country was only 15 years old and needed to ensure the continuation of its independence. At that point in time, it was important that the country adapt a method to ensure its safety and continued growth.
However, we do not face the same threats to our freedom today that we did over 200 years ago. Those who put the amendment into effect could not have anticipated the societal changes that the country would endure. The threats to our freedom that exist today, whether nuclear annihilation or terroristic acts, far exceed anything a gun can abate. Therefore, we should not look at the amendment in the same way that the people did two centuries ago when supporting it. Instead, we should evolve much like our country has, and realize that changes must be made in order to protect the safety of the people.
What’s more is that shootings such as these often breed more violent outbursts, something that has come to be known as “the copycat phenomenon.” The impact of this phenomenon was the subject of a study published on the Public Library of Science by Sherry Towers, Andres Gomez-Lievano, Maryam Khan, Anuj Mubayi and Carlos Castillo-Chavez. The study implies that mass killings have the ability to become contagious, which further strengthens the argument for tighter gun control. Additionally, CNN reports that Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, and other researchers believe, “One killing or shooting increases the chances that others will occur within about two weeks, an ‘infection’ that lasts about 13 days.”
Lankford also asserts that the United States’ greater access to firearms is “a significant predictor of these [mass shootings] incidents.” The fact that people without any documented history of mental health issues, such as the recent Virginia shooter, can easily retrieve a firearm is daunting. Often, those issues go undetected until after the tragedy occurs.
Gun violence can easily touch our lives. Surely, the tragedy at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, located in Fairfield County, impacted many of our peers and members of our community here at Fairfield University on a deeply personal level. The time has come to end the political stalemate that serves to perpetuate the notion that gun ownership is a constitutional right. The Second Amendment must be viewed from the perspective from which it originated and revised accordingly to reflect the changing climate of our country and our world. Until then, no one is safe from the horrors experienced at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Virginia Tech, Columbine High School and most recently, Roanoke.
As a journalist, Roanoke was the shooting that impacted me the most. I cannot fathom the idea that there are still a great number of people who either misidentify the problem, or choose to ignore the issue of gun control with the hope that it will resolve itself. Action must be taken on all of our parts to prevent further tragedies from occurring and if we choose not to do so, we are as much to blame for the perpetuation of gun violence.
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