National Student Walkout: Preparation
As young people across the country prepare for the national walkouts in March and April, and other methods of Civil Disobedience, hereās a primer on gun control: common arguments offered by pro-gun advocates, and responses to disarm them:
Argument: Assault weapons arenāt an actual thing. Banning them wonāt make a difference.
Answer: There is not good answer to this statement because itās true. Classifying a firearm as an āassault weaponā is something people who know nothing about guns do. (Every gun is a weapon used for assault, after all.) Instead, talk about controlling semi-automatic weapons instead of ill-defined concepts like āassault weaponsā.
Argument: The Second Amendment guarantees my right to bear arms.
Answer: It does but there are limitations. In fact, the individualās right to bear arms has only existed for ten years. From 1787 until the DC v Heller decision of 2008, the Bill of Rights has never been interpreted to mean private citizens have a right to own guns. Even in Justice Scaliaās majority ruling, he states that there are limitations to the Second Amendment. United States v Miller establishes the precedent for limiting ādangerous and unusualā weapons. My argument is that semi-automatic firearms belong in that classification.
Argument: If a law-abiding citizens get rid of their guns, criminals wonāt follow the law and weāll be in more danger.
Answer: This is an argument against having law: Since criminals donāt obey laws there should be no limits on anything. Clearly this is absurd. Following the Oklahoma City bombing, purchase of large quantities of ammonium nitrate fertilizer were restricted, and there hasnāt been a single similar bombing since. We also outlawed fully automatic weapons, grenades, rocket launchers, etc in the 20th Century, and see no incidents of violence with those types of weapons since. Obviously, legislation does not have to be one hundred percent effective to be helpful.
Argument: If we ban guns, people will just use knives or baseball bats.
Answer:Ā Of course, they will. This happens all the time. But show me one case where a mass-knifing or -clubbing resulted in a loss of life as great as a mass shooting.
Argument: We need armed security guards in every school.
Answer:Ā Do you believe security guards canāt become mass shooters? The Texan church shooter was an Air Force vet, and the Pulse nightclub shooter actually was a security guard. Plus itās relatively easy to get the drop on a security guard. Shoot him while heās not expecting it, collect his weapon, then just keep going. Adding more guns to schools adds more risk. It cannot possibly reduce it.
Argument: Itās a mental health issue, not a gun issue ā OR ā Guns donāt kill people, people kill people.
Answer: The United States has the same rates of mental illness as other developed countries, but is the only Western nation with this type of violence. Mentally ill persons are less likely to commit crime, which many find surprising. In fact, those who are mentally ill are more likely to become victims of crime. Being a murderer doesnāt mean a person is mentally ill, which is why you hardly ever see successful insanity defenses in trials. And if āpeople kill peopleā then we should stop giving them guns, shouldnāt we? We donāt allow private F-22s or nuclear weapons. Why? Because as a society weāve determined that our citizens should not have access to private killing machines.
Argument: We, as a society, have turned our backs on God. This is why crime is getting worse. We need God/Jesus to heal peopleās hearts, not get rid of law-abiding citizensā guns.
Answer: Crime has actually decreased overall in recent decades. Things are getting better, not worse. Murder rates and violent crime overall have trended down as weāve advanced as a society. Mass shootings have remained steady though, because angry people ā many of whom considered themselves āright with Godā ā have access to guns.
Argument: We need guns to fight against the government in case it becomes tyrannical.
Answer: Do you really believe semi-automatic weapons will defeat a tyrannical government employing fighter jets, bombers, tanks, artillery, drones, advanced cyber capabilities, and nuclear weapons? If a tyrannical government decides to take you out, your guns will be worthless.
Argument: Gun registration makes it easier for the government to disarm us.
Answer: Registration is necessary to keep track of deadly weapons in the event theyāre ever used in a crime, or in cases where normally law-abiding citizens commit crimes that revoke their right to firearms. There are more than 300 million privately owned guns in the United States. If the government wanted to seize every gun, theyād do it in the same way with or without a registry: by going door to door and searching every home and business.
Source: Callista Kline, Twitter
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