A recent story released in The Washington
Post discussed a tragedy that occurred when a young boy shot and killed his
baby sister in Kentucky. This is a horrific and sad story, what makes it worse
is that the boy is 5 years old, the girl was 2 years old, and she was shot with
a rifle that this boy was given as a gift.
Now I
know that with many incidents occurring all around the nation with gun violence
in the recent few months, the debate about gun control has heated up quickly.
The big question has been: Should we allow firearms to be purchased over the
counter for public safety, or should we limit the guns sold to prevent the
proliferation of gun violence occurring throughout the country? I am at odds
with either choice, because I think that each of them has their ups and downs.
With trying to limit the sales of firearms, there will be less weapons being
circulated throughout the country, and possibly (while very unlikely) gun
violence overall may go down, and law enforcement will not have to worry about
trigger happy civilians walking about the streets with lethal weapons. If you
allow everyone to buy guns, crime rates may lower as perspective criminals may
be more hesitant to commit crimes knowing that the odds of other people they
are terrorizing may be armed and ready to use their weapons against them.
Citizens can have the peace of mind that they are safer, especially in the
cases of women and parents with young children.
The counterarguments
for each side are just as abundant. With restricting guns to the public, that
is only limiting those who want to go about purchasing a firearm legally. The
bad people of society will get a gun illegally anyway so that there is no
connection to them and thus do not go to gun stores to purchase their weapons
anyway. So in order to combat that, allow those people who are honest and
willing to get their weapons the legal way, to give them the right to some
protection. If you support that everyone should have the right to purchase
firearms, you still run the risk of major amounts of gun violence: with more
guns sold, you have more chance for an accident or something worse to occur. If
someone develops a mental condition after legally purchasing a firearm, you
have now equipped someone who is not fit to own a gun a tool of major concern
to the public.
What I
wanted to talk about was not about gun control specifically, but builds a
foundation so that we can evaluate how this recent tragedy plays into this
whole debate. A big question the article was asking was, “Who should be to
blame?” It is unknown who gave the rifle to the boy as a gift, but there are
many other factors that should be considered. While I was reading the article I
was slightly taken aback by some of the testimonials given by the people
interviewed. Remorse was obviously the primary emotions expressed by them as
they were deeply sorry for the family’s loss and were grieving for them, but
the other prominent emotion was that of surprise/shock. For them, children’s
handling dangerous weapons was commonplace in their community, but to have one
of them lack the proper knowledge of handling a rifle seemed to appall them:
are you kidding me??? To further find out that there is even a gun maker that
markets some of the products especially to children! Now I don’t know if you
guys are on the same boat as me, but to find out children younger than ten
years old are able to have their own guns seems preposterous to me. While I don’t
know if this will sway the public opinion of gun control one way or the other, I
am sincerely hoping that a tragedy like this will at least make sure that if
guns become readily available to the public, that they ensure no child can get a hold of it. Whether it is through a gun cabinet, locked drawer, or something
the adult purchasing the weapon should be responsible for any fatality that a
young person of their family commits by getting a hold of a weapon due to the
negligence of the parent.
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