Can you imagine taking your kids to Walmart or International House of Pancakes (IHOP)
to go get some groceries or food, and you have to walk through metal detectors and be randomly
selected for a strip search? People complain about Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
at the airport so this couldn’t be any better. Over the past four years, the amount of fatalities
caused by a firearm has doubled (“Gun Laws”). This means four years ago if you went to
Walmart 100 times you had a five percent chance of witnessing a shooting (1). Now, you would
have a ten percent chance and in four years it would be twenty, but the scary one is that in eight
years you will have a forty percent chance of witnessing a shooting. This is super scary.
In American you will find a lot of so called “rednecks” that will do anything to have a
gun. You will even hear things like, “its my God given right to own this gun”, or “ haven’t you
heard of the second amendment”. The day that our founding fathers put in writing one of the
most controversial statements known to mankind. If you asked 100 Americans what makes
America great 60 of them would of course say freedom, but the other 40 would say the right to
Bear arms, and are they wrong for that. Before we dissect this question we need to look at the
history of this statement and see where things went wrong. When the American Revolution was
going on there was a lot of oppression from the Government ( “The Second Amendment”). In
order to stop the oppression Militias were put into place(1). Militias were equivalent to todays
freedom fighters, as they would protect their communities from the unwanted riffle men(1). The
founding fathers liked the militia so they passed the second amendment to protect the men and
allow themselves to fight back and this was the basics of the second amendment(1). Today this is
taken as oh we all get guns and thats what our founding fathers wanted and you cant take them
away because its my god given right and all that other ignorant remarks, but in all reality the
whole point of the amendment was for defense and not offense as it is being used as at an
alarming rate.
Since 2016 there has been an alarming 520 mass shooting in America (Ripple effects Of
Mass Shootings). This has struck fear into so manny Americans hearts, and America is starting
to revolt(1). There are huge moments for people to work together and get guns banned(1). The
only problem with this is the country is actually divided. Half wants gun laws/ Banned, and other
are willing to die before they give away there guns. Just this year alone I have experienced
walkouts, protest, Friends cutting up their guns and manny manny more. I have also seen fights
break out and leave some kids in the hospital just because of there opinion on gun laws. Crazy
Right? The point is this seems like a battle that there is no good answer for which is really really
difficult because one wrong move and we may see the next Civil War. This next part is going to
be tuff but we need to look at examples of these shootings to get a better understanding of the
situation. This most well known shooting would have to be Columbine High School back in
1999. The shooting took place in a small High School in Colorado, when two teens open fired on
the students killing 13 and injuring more than 20 before finally taking there own
lives(Columbine Shooting). Another example would be the Las Vegas shooting back in 2017.
This is known as the deadliest shooter EVER. During a Country concert, a man in the higher
floors of a hotel open fired on the crowd killing 59 people and wounding hundreds more(Bui).
The event was Such a huge factor for the gun laws being relooked at opon the country. The states
world investigate high capacity magazines and bump stocks came into question as well.
America has a very unique problem. Of all of the top countries in the world America has the
most homicides buy a long shot. In 2012 American homicides caused by firearms were 29.7
million. Switzerland was the next closest country in the world only had 7.7 million homicides
(Lopez 1). That's 22 million more! That is absurd. So how do we fix this problem you may ask?
Well one suggestion is just take all the guns away. But the question is will this work? Australia
has had a ban on firearms for a good while now (1). Compared to America's 29.7 million
homicides Australia only has 1.4 (Lopez). The numbers that sounds great, why don't we just do
this. If it works then it works, and here's where we get into the problem. We're talking about
America here. America the home of the brave land of the free. America is one of the greatest
country in the world what makes America so great is that people aren't scared of anything.
Naturally Americans can not have all the good with no bad. The ironic part is the thing that
makes America so great, is also the thing that makes America so horrible. because America has
so much freedom its hard to take things away from people.
Our founding fathers passing amendments is also a huge hurdle that the government
would have to find a way over. This amendment was of course the right to bear arms. During the
time this was necessary because the Americans had no way to defend themselves against the
British soldiers. One way to fix this was to put a gun in every Americans hand, and that is
exactly what happened. Another suggested way to help control gun violence is to simply make
ammo more difficult to get a hold of. This would mean you can no longer go to the store and by
100 rounds out of time(Graham). You can be limited to 20 or 30, unless you had a special letter
from your local government office. This could possibly work and this has been brought up in the
past before(Graham).President Obama wanted to ban huge magazines. He said there was no
reason for anybody to have 500 round magazines, and I think he's right(Graham). If we didn't
have big magazines, it would take more time for a sugar to reload his gun, which would give the
police and local responders more time to take him down. Another topic that comes up a lot is
background checks. Just about anybody now a day over 18 can walk into a pawn shop and leave
with a rifle or a shotgun. This is a HUGE problem in America. Recently talking to some folks at
Cabelas and they said for their background check, all they had to do was give them their name
and drivers license and they were back within five minutes with their gun. Can you believe that.
All it took was five minutes and those people walked out of there with two new guns. This can
be a combination of things but the main problems are one background checks are not sufficient
enough, into the person running the background check is normally a minimum wage worker who
hates their job anyway(Lott). If the government could somehow make background checks more
rigorous, and make it to where the person selling the gun has to go through an actual course/ be a
gun professional and not someone who is paid minimum wage.
The way gun control would be the most effective is to simply make guns more
legal (Myself). Not before you say this man is crazy just think about it. If you are a
robber or if you are a person who is about to commit homicide, would you rather shoot a
theater are You know guns are illegal or would you rather shoot of a theater where open
carry is legal in everybody has a gun (lopez). This is what life was like back in the
nineteen hundred and eighteen hundreds. Yes there were still homicides and they were
still murderers but you didn't have to wait 10 minutes for the cops to show up. You would
have people right there at the scene and they will control the situation. A great example
of this is the University of Texas shooting back in the 90s. A student at UT brought a gun
to campus and open fired (Rosenwald). He killed a couple people but fortunately there
were some country boys who went to the trucks grab their deer rifles and we're able to
stop the situation 10 minutes before cops arrived (Rosenwald). I'm not saying give
everyone a gun I'm just saying that it is the best choice at the moment, that America will
make it more easy to carry guns in a more variety of places.
Now we can talk about the beliefs of Camus. Albert's beliefs don't really relate to my
topic at all. Here is a a quote from him. “to be happy we must not be too concerned with others”
( Camus). To the normal eye it looks as if Camus was just someone who like to be alone but if
we dig deeper into the quote we find that he didn't really care about others. He believed that in
order to truly be happy it didn't matter what anyone else did so he didn't care about anyone else.
He just cared about himself and that is what made him happy. So Camus really wouldn't care
about this epidemic at all. He would probably say something like “it doesn't matter that all these
people getting shot because I haven't got shot yet” or something along those lines. This is what
made his belief so absurd, and this is the reason why he is so popular. Same thing with the
outcome of the social epidemic. He really didn't care why it happened or what is going to happen
next, and he never asked him self how can we make this better. The only thing he cared about
was him and him only.
This is such an important topic because almost everyone in America has been affected by
this epidemic in some way or form. There have been mass shootings at International house of
pancakes and there is no sign of them slowing down. The only way to fix gun violence is to take
action and chose one or all of the above solutions and work together to bring this County out of
this crisis.
Work Cited
Bui, Lynh, et al. “At Least 59 Killed in Las Vegas Shooting Rampage, More than 500
Others Injured.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 2 Oct. 2017, .
Graham, David A. “What's the Solution to Gun Violence in America?” The Atlantic, Atlantic
Media Company, 8 Mar. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/whatsthe-
solution-to-gun-violence/462537/.
Lopez. “I've Covered Gun Violence for Years. The Solutions Aren't a Big Mystery.” Vox, Vox,
21 Feb. 2018, www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/21/17028930/gun-violenceus-
statistics-charts.
Lott, John R. “Background Checks Are Not the Answer to Gun Violence.” The New York Times,
The New York Times, 13 Feb. 2018,
www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/opinion/politics/background-checks-gunviolence.
html.
Rosenwald, Michael S. “Did Stephen Paddock Follow UT Tower Shooter Charles Whitman's
Playbook in Las Vegas?” The Washington Post, WP Company, 4 Oct. 2017,
www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/10/02/from-the-ut-tower-to-alas-
vegas-hotel-the-carnage-when-shooters-take-aim-fromabove/?
noredirect=on&utm_term=.f749e872bea8.
History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2017, www.history.com/topics/2nd-amendment.
“The Psychological Ripple Effects of Mass Shootings.” BillMoyers.com, 3 Oct. 2017,
billmoyers.com/ story/psychological-ripple-effects-mass-shootings/.History.com Staff.
“Columbine Shooting.”
History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/columbine-highschoolshootings.
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