By Kiran Damodaran ’17, Rakhi Kundra ’17, and Jocelyn Tolpin ’17, Editors-in-Chief

The numbers are impossible to ignore.  50 murdered in Orlando.  5 killed in Dallas.  4 in Baton Rouge.  5 in Reading. 4 in Austin-it doesn’t end there.  Between September 1st and September 17th of this year alone, over 300 people were killed as a result of gun violence in The United States.  Every day, 7 children are killed at gunpoint.  Over 2,500 kids are fatal victims of gun violence every year.  More US citizens are victims of gun violence than terrorism.

So, why do we let it continue?

This isn’t a new and upcoming issue that needs to be addressed.  You’ve heard the arguments.  So have we.  But how is it that in the most wealthy, developed, and socially progressive country in the world, people are being continuously brought to their death at the hands of a piece of metal?  At the hands of other people who were given that power? Our policing system has become heavily reliant on the use of guns, partly as a result of the training in place and partly as a result of the growing number of citizens with firearms each year.

Guns have become more than a tool of defense, as our forefathers intended in the second amendment – manifesting as methods of aggression, expression, and communication. It would be difficult to argue that those active in these shootings constitute a “well-regulated militia.” While one can debate the exact meaning of the second amendment forever, it stands that over 200 years have passed since its creation, and as a result it is necessary to look beyond this measure and understand the context of the issue of gun control in today’s nation. As Justice Antonin Scalia noted in 2008, “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” Change does not necessarily mean an overhaul of guns, but rather a re-evaluation of the role of and need for this type of weaponry in today’s society.

There are valid points on both sides of the political spectrum as to whether enacting gun control initiatives and legislation would be effective. Considering the current situation of the United States, however, any discussion on the merits of gun control must be preceded by acknowledging the major gun-related issues this country is experiencing; you cannot address a problem without first identifying the problem itself. One of the main factors that discourages an evaluation of the issue is the ban on the CDC’s ability to study gun violence in the United States. This type of restriction, advocated for by the NRA, prevents our ability to grasp the precise weight of the issue.

Nonetheless, it is time that we more than acknowledge that there is very clearly an issue of gun violence in our nation- we need to face it head on. The senseless murders of police officers and innocent civilians this summer remind us that this issue is not subsiding, but rather growing, as gun sales abound and any discussion of gun control is immediately blocked. Events such as those detailed in Caetano vs. Massachusetts (2016) represent an alternative approach to self-defense. While this same principle of effectiveness can be applied to firearms, in the majority of cases it is not. Firearms are in-fact rarely used in self-defense. According to recent studies, out of the 29,618,300 violent crimes committed between 2007 and 2011, only 0.79% of victims protected themselves with a threat or use of a firearm. While in 2010 there were 230 “justifiable homicides” in which a citizen used a firearm to kill an attacker, there were 8,275 criminal homicides (this is a ratio of 36 criminal homicides to every justifiable one). 

The intention of gun control is not to remove all guns from American society, but rather, as the name implies, to control them in a more effective way as to limit their negative effects. Whether this presents itself in a ban on higher capacity magazines and more combat-oriented (semi and fully automatic) weapons or increased background checks (many of the guns in criminal homicides are obtained legally), it is important that we harness a communicative dialogue at least; until then, police officers and innocent citizens will continue to be taken from us and our society and politicians will continue to pretend like they care until proposals for real change come. The only question is, how many more will it take before we act?