In lieu of the whole Colorado shootings, a youtuber I’ve mentioned before, Philip DeFranco, put up a video which focused on the question of gun control and the point of having guns in the US.
The question he poses is interesting because he asks about what’s okay in terms of arms ownership, and while I have my opinions, I’ll talk about them after I address some important facts.
The fact that the AR15 was made legal to own means that humans have access to the civilian equivalent of the M16 used by the military. Of course, this is relevant because the shootings in Colorado took place with an AR15 as one of the weapons. The question that needs to be asked is, would things have been this bad if the AR15 were still illegal. To that I would say that I’m not sure. Would the shooter still have had access to this weapon? I don’t know.
The second thing is a point that Phil mentioned from the perspective of pro-gun supporters, being that the second amendment means that it is possible to protect your family, and that everyone having guns will act as a deterrent. There are several issues embedded there; the first being that the second amendment was a civil war act that was meant to give protection to the families then. Congress and the senate just never got around to making that amendment null and void, and really, no one knows why. The second issue there is that of deterrent. The question of whether deterrents really work is about as big of a question as “am I pointing a gun at the Joker, or am I pointing it at commissioner Gordon?” if you happen to be pointing it at a single minded killer, it may not be enough to deter him. Essentially, the same thing happened throughout the entirety of the Cold War, just with bigger guns.
The third thing that I want to address, that Phil mentions, is the human element. The question of why it had to happen. I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t claim to know one way or another what the killer was thinking, but could more have been done? When I worked in security, I used to have a huge team, of about 8 to 10 people per theatre, present half an hour to an hour before a movie screening, doing a sweep of the theatre, and then using whatever means necessary to sweep for anything that may pose any kind of criminal risk. I’m not sure what measures were implemented here, though I would like to know if more could have been done.
So what do I think? In terms of gun control, I think that having weapons as deterrents is a bullshit excuse, and that there should be no weapons at all if you haven’t been trained to properly use them (i.e. police, military, SWAT), and if guns are used for hunting, they should be controlled by national park offices. Admittedly, it’s because guns are used “in defense” that they can be abused, and accessible at any time. If we could limit accessibility to special uses (such as hunting or shooting ranges), then we could control them better. No, it won’t stop people from misusing them, but then, no system is perfect.
