Gun control in the US

On April 16, 2007, a student at Virginia Tech shot 32 other students and professors before killing himself. We have yet another wake-up call for America to tighten its gun laws, and it is almost certainly going to be ignored.

The issue of gun control has always been somewhat of a political hot potato in America. When confronted with the issue, gun enthusiasts first invoke the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. They have a right to bear arms, and so help them God, they will. Unfortunately, they seem to have a selective memory regarding the Second Amendment. It actually states, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." To put it in its proper perspective, this was a provision made by the founding fathers to protect Americans from a British invasion after the American Revolution. Today, obviously, civilians do not form a militia for the defense of the country and the amendment is thus being willfully misinterpreted and bandied about by right-wing, trigger-happy, aspiring Western movie cowboys.

Another argument is that other countries like Canada or Switzerland also allow their citizens to own weapons, but since the rates of gun crimes are substantially lower there than those in the US, the link between stringent gun laws and gun crimes is tenuous. This could very well be true. Maybe the problem has to do with social pressures and expectations. However, this does not change the fact that homicidal-suicidal psychopaths (of whom an inordinate number seems to make headlines in the US) find it ridiculously easy to obtain guns and go on killing sprees. For instance, Texas residents do not need a permit to own a gun, nor do they have to register it (The Economist, 19 April 2007). I also recently visited http://www.armedamerica.org/ which has photographs of civilians brandishing guns they have absolutely no business owning. Do people really need Bushmasters and AK-47s in their homes? Clearly, regardless of whether lax laws are the disease or a symptom, they most certainly need to be toughened.

There has also been a frenzy of damage-control interviews from various members of the pro-gun faction. One idea that literally leaves me bereft of speech is to arm teachers in schools and colleges with guns so that they can effectively stop any rampages by madmen on the campuses. In effect, fight guns with guns. Maybe I'm being completely myopic about the situation here, but should not the general idea be to try to reduce the number of guns on school/college premises? Furthermore, whether the teachers carry their weapons on their person or store them somewhere, it would not be too difficult for a determined and clever student to get his/her hands on them. I really do think that in this case, the risks will always outweigh the benefits and I hope that reason prevails and such idiotic ideas are summarily dismissed.

Unfortunately, no politician wants to touch this issue any more. In general, the Republicans firmly stand behind their right to their guns and the Democrats worry about losing votes in the swing states (like Virginia). Any efforts made by Bill Clinton towards gun control have been undermined by the Bush government. In 2004, due to the heavy lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA), a 1994 ban on assault weapons was allowed to lapse. Even now, after the Virginia Tech massacre, there seem to be no serious discussions in the government regarding gun control.

The mantra of the members of the NRA is, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," but to quote the British comedian Eddie Izzard, "I think the guns help." A disproportionately large number of people are killed in the US by gun assisted homicides and suicides. It is past time that the government realized that the lives of its citizens are worth far more than an archaic and anachronistic provision in the Constitution, and actually take some steps to fix it.