Shortly after the Aurora, Colo. shootings that took place July of last year, discussion regarding tighter regulations on gun control were quickly criticized with calls to avoid “politicizing” the tragedy.
Since then, Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the Kansas City chiefs, took his girlfriend’s life before takings his own. In Oregon, Jacob Tyler Roberts entered a mall holding a semi-automatic rifle, yelling, “I am the shooter.” And, Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members after opening fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
When the Columbine Massacre took the lives of 12 students and one teacher in 1999, proponents to loose gun control laws stated that it was “too soon” to discuss regulations. Eight years later, when Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, discussions regarding tighter regulations were once again avoided.
Nearly 14 years after the Columbine High School massacre and six years after the Virginia Tech massacre, the familiar ring of “too soon” once again fills the air in response to those pushing for stricter gun control measures.
But discussing how to put an end to mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings should not be considered “too soon.” In fact, it is much too late.
According to CNN, there are an estimated 270 million guns in the hands of civilians in the United States, placing Americans at the top of the list for the most heavily armed people in the world per capita. Yet, according to GunPolicy.org, the United States may also be considered a nation with relatively loose gun control policies.
“You [the United States] are basically the only country in the developed world that doesn’t license gun owners across the board and you are almost alone in not registering guns across the board,” Philip Alpers, a firearms analyst at The University of Sydney and runner of GunPolicy.org said.
According to the Coalition for Gun Control, adjusting for population, the U.S death rate by firearms — which includes homicides, suicide and accidents — was 10.2 per 100,000 people in 2009; Finland, the closest developed country, followed at a distance with a death rate of 4.47 per 100,000 people in 2008.
In addition, according to Time, 15 of the 25 worst mass shootings that occurred in the last 50 years took place in the United States. Finland once again took second place, with two entries.
While, Israel and Switzerland are often brought up in defense of the notion that high rates of gun ownership don’t necessarily lead to high rates of gun crime, it is important to note that these two countries have very different takes on their gun control regulations in comparison to the United States.
“For instance, in Israel, they’re very limited in who is able to own a gun.” Janet Rosenbaum, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the State University of New York said. “There are only a few tens of thousands of legal guns in Israel, and the only people allowed to own them legally live in the settlements, do business in the settlements, or are in professions at risk of violence. Both countries require you to have a reason to have a gun. There isn’t this idea that you have a right to a gun. You need a reason. And then you need to go back to the permitting authority every six months or so to assure them the reason is still valid.”
According to the Washington Post, while most killers in the last three decades obtained their weapons legally, states with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.
While the disclaimer here is that correlation is not causation, it seems reasonable to say that maybe it is time to re-examine our current procedures.
Perhaps, the most critical place to start is to first recognize that guns, as a creation, do in fact fundamentally change the dynamic of violence, whether positively or negatively.
“That’s the weapon effect. It’s not clear that guns cause violence, but it’s absolutely clear that they change the outcome,” Dr. Garen Wintemute of the University of California, Davis, Medical Center said.
To state that merely having a gun is all that contributed to the recent tragedies is certainly an oversimplification. And the enactment of tighter regulations would not have necessarily prevented them. However, it is important that we not shy away from having such discussions regarding gun control again.
The question of how to address gun control is a hard one to answer. Even more difficult is the task of coming to an agreement that will likely please both sides.
“We’re not going to get caught up in the notion that unless we can do everything, we’re going to do nothing,” Vice President Joe Biden said. “It’s critically important that we act.”
It is time for us to realize that now can no longer be considered “too soon.”