Horse sense on gun control

By JP Kraal
Albert Einstein once said: “If you do what you did, you get what you got.” If the input is the same, the output will be the same too. In other words, if you want a different outcome, you have to do something different on the input side. It is logic, and it is common sense. 

In the debate over the last weeks following the tragedy in Sandy Hook many people have contributed their 2 cents. We have heard the same arguments over and over again: “it’s not the weapons that kill, but the people who pull the trigger”, “it’s the violent video games and Hollywood movies that make our society so violent”, “it’s not normal law-abiding citizens, but the mentally ill that cause these blood baths”, etc., etc.. 

There aren’t many explanations why massacres occur on a regular basis in this country, but there IS common sense and there are statistics. If one looks at the enormous gap in firearms related deaths between the US and other countries in the Western world, some interesting questions come to mind.

Questions as “What exactly is it that those countries do differently (better) to prevent these tragedies from happening on a regular basis?” Or “How is it that the US is unable to protect its own citizens from trigger-happy lunatics, whereas other countries seem to have considerably fewer problems doing that?” Another one: “Are people living in the US so much more crazy and violent than people living outside the US?” 

First off: Americans aren’t crazier than other people. As a matter of fact, this problem is not even exclusively a US problem. When we look at the history of some of those countries (e.g. Australia, and the UK amongst others), we learn that they too have struggled with this very problem in the past. The difference between the US and the countries that seem to be able to control gun violence so much better nowadays than we do, is not difficult to figure out. It is a matter of plain “horse sense.”

Let’s take a look at the facts. Children in other countries play the same video games as American children do. So that cannot be the reason, otherwise those countries would see massacres recurring as well in the same frequency that we do. They watch the same (violent) Hollywood movies as Americans do. So that can’t be the reason either. In conclusion I’d say it’s safe to eliminate “violent video games and violent Hollywood movies” from the equation.

Then how about the mentally ill? Very often the mass-murderer is someone who falls in that category. So doesn’t the rest of the world have mentally ill people? Of course they do. Then why don’t they cause blood baths on a regular basis in other countries? Well, they probably would too if they could. The difference, however, is that their mentally ill cannot get their hands on firearms. At least not that easily, because those are subject to tough gun control laws. That is the only BIG difference.

And of course some people will say: “But don’t you remember what happened in 2011 in Norway where madman Anders Breivik gunned down dozens of people?”  Yes I do. And here’s an interesting fact: unlike many other European countries, in Norway people are allowed to own firearms by law. 

It’s not the fact that people are mentally ill, it’s not the fact that people play ‘shoot ‘em up’ video games, and it’s not the fact that people watch violent Hollywood movies. Those factors are present in other countries too. The difference is the ease with which people can get their hands on firearms. 

However, from all of the above we can also conclude that stricter gun control laws alone will not solve the problem of recurring mass-killings in our country. It is just not that simple. Other issues need to be addressed too. Two big ones are the way we handle our mentally ill (or rather: the lack of handling), and the glorification of violence and everything military. The latter is another questionable phenomenon that needs to be addressed. And of course there are some more problems that we have not dealt with adequately.

Despite the fact that stricter gun control laws alone will not solve the entire problem, it would still be a very good start. Just look at how other countries have gone about this problem – no need to re-invent the wheel here – and compare their results with ours. It becomes painfully clear that the US is not doing a very good job protecting its citizens.

If we really want things to change, we have to change the input (i.e. making it harder to get guns) to get a different output (less frequent shootings). We have to get out of this rut in which we’ve been stuck for far too long now. It’s easy to predict that as long as every lunatic in this country has the “right to own firearms”, tragedies like the one in Sandy Hook will keep happening again and again and again: “if you do what you did, you get what you got”.

Live Free or Die Alliance

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