Essay: The Gun Debate Itself Makes Children and Society Less Safe

Mass shootings are among the most horrifying forms of terrorism employed by the mental and emotional underbelly of society. Following the Sandy Hook tragedy, the gun control debate, a competition for America's hearts and minds rivaled only by the battle over abortion, was reignited with a new passion. This debate is both dangerous and counterproductive.

America and her children are caught between two extremes, on one side dwells academics, lobbyists, and self proclaimed men and women of peace who demonize civilian gun ownership and wage a highly effective propaganda war against the hated National Rifle Association and its members, as well as the arms the organization defends and promotes. On the other side dwells the civilian gun owner, and the organizations that represent him, organizations that have created a situation that allows the average person access to a wide array of useful, but powerful firearms that can be very damaging - physically and emotionally - when used against innocents. The dangerous situation in this country is created not by any one of these groups, but by the fact that neither is winning.

America remains divided more or less in half on the issue of gun rights, a situation that mirrors our partisan split. While the anti gun forces in this country demonize gun owners and convince large swaths of the population that they will never need a gun and that no one else should have one either, the pro gun forces continue to loosen restrictions on firearms at the state level and block Federal level legislation. The anti gun forces cannot convince a majority of people to hand in their weapons and the pro gun legions cannot convince a majority of people to be armed to the degree that is necessary to survive in the gun-saturated society they helped to create. Total disarmament, including disarmament of the criminal element accompanied by an overall reduction in crime, would decrease mass shooting incidents to a large degree, as would high levels of concealed and open gun carrying and armed officials in high risk facilities such as schools and theaters. Since neither can be achieved, the gun debate creates a situation wherein half the population believes in being well armed and the other half believes in being an easy target. Unfortunately, it is the disarmament-leaning half that controls most public institutions, leaving them vulnerable by shunning all attempts to tap the vast defensive resource that is the armed, trained, and sane American gun owner. All it takes is one madman from the armed half (though madmen are not the norm in either half) to finally lose his grip on humanity and walk into one of the other half's entirely imagined, entirely unarmed mock-utopias to bloodily remind us all of the dangerous reality of America.

In a nation where 20 dead elementary school children barely shifted the polls on gun rights in either direction, one must accept that both sides of the issue are deeply entrenched. The solution then, is not to fight out the gun control debate one more time, which never leads to a resolution as both sides see it as a matter of moral principle, making compromise near impossible, but to circumvent the debate and improve public safety by making policies we can all agree on. Policies such as improving care for the mentally ill, improving the system through which parents seek care for their mentally ill children, reducing the side effects and increasing the efficacy of drugs which treat mental illness, improving police response times to shooting incidents, and physically hardening schools against attacks. Whether or not the solution to the overall problem is more or less guns is something that we will never agree on as a nation, so it must be made individually. If you choose to arm yourself, be a responsible gun owner, and by all means be well equipped, if you choose to shun firearms, learn other forms of self defense and make plans for violent encounters that may save your life and the lives of others. As a nation we must table the gun issue to address violence, as individual citizens we must make our decisions regarding firearms and act accordingly if we hope to survive in this divided land.

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Jorg said:

What is the source of this clearly biased and ill-conceived piece?

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Skribs said:

As to the quality of the essay, I think it's splendid. I'm going to comment on the content, not as suggestions for editing, but as comments to your position.

You seem to sway both ways in your article, but I'm taking that as playing devil's advocate (something I like to do, and I think leads to better answers).



I do not believe total disarmament would substantially increase public safety. If you look at the Faces of THR thread, you can see I'm not that big a guy (although I've put on weight since those pics...not muscle either). I'm 5'6, 165, and not a good runner. I don't want to be unarmed against an unarmed 6'0 200 pound mugger. I would much rather be armed against that mugger, even if he's armed. I also do not believe that, sans guns, mass murders would not exist. Arson, bombs, gas, even knives can be used by almost anyone.

As to your solution, (which I agree with, 100%, by the way), the anti's aren't going to like it. They don't want to just disarm themselves...they want to disarm everyone. Disarming themselves serves no purpose.

Overall, I like your premise. What I've been saying is that both parties should find what they agree is the problem and work towards that. The problem is, as you've pretty much said, 95% of the reaction to Sandy Hook is "we need to talk about guns" and only 5% seems to be about violence. How much could we accomplish if we stopped the gun debate and increased the focus on stopping violence by 20-fold?

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CmdrSlander said:

Yah, the total disarmament thing was a mental debate for me, but I feel that if we really disarmed everyone, including the criminals, through some vast campaign, society would be safer overall... That is however totally impossible and will always be such so I'll keep my firearms, and my concealed carry permit, thank you very much.

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Skribs said:

Well, you've got 734 posts here so you know the general opinion of THR as to whether a completely unarmed society would be safer. I'm not going to argue with you, but I do disagree with your point.

I know how you often have to do that in essays. One of my favorite projects in school was when we had to pick a contraversial topic, and then defend the opposite position. It really made me think. I did such a good job that people thought I misinterpreted the assignment

I understand that you don't want to ramble, but one possible solution that I don't see listed, that I would suggest, is fixing our revolving-door prison system to keep violent offenders from easily becoming repeat-offenders. Another point would be that focusing on guns instead of violence in general pidgeonholes lawmakers (my favorite recent example is the NY law that a physician must report if he thinks his patient will illegally use a gun...which means he isn't required by law to report if his patient will use a machete or release a deadly virus).

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CmdrSlander said:

I tweaked it again as I don't think I'm articulating my point as well as I want to. My point was meant to be that disarmament would reduce the kind of mass casualty shooting incidents we are seeing now but disarmament is impossible therefore other solutions must be sought.

I do not, however, wish for something as silly as a world without guns. We had that, it was called human history from the rise of man through the middle ages and it was no rose garden.

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