Gun control is the set of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians. Jurisdictions that regulate access to firearms typically restrict access to only certain categories of firearms and then to restrict the categories of persons who will be granted a license to have access to a firearm. In some countries, such as the United States, gun control may be legislated at either a federal level or a local state level. However, despite the gun control already in place, incidents involving gun violence in schools have drastically increased over the years. School shootings in particular, are not a new phenomenon. The first recorded school shooting occurred in 1764 in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, where two Native American men walked into a school and shot and killed 10 children. Although these shootings have been going on far longer than most people realize, the rate at which they have been happening is undeniably higher in recent years. According to Business Insider, as of October 29, 2018, there have been 297 school shootings in the year 2018 alone, up from an already outstanding 234 in 2016. The trend is expected to continue this way unless something comes in to stop that. That something is common sense gun laws. Countries all over the world, and the United States specifically, must implement better common sense gun laws to help fix the issues that have been on the rise.
A vast majority of guns used in school shootings, 81.8%, as The Atlantic cites in a 2013 article, are obtained legally. This means that most shooters were able to walk into a gun shop, and legally obtain the firearms necessary to commit such a heinous crime. Even more recent cases, such as the Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, and the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, who, by the way, bought a total of 33 guns in a 12 month time frame, were both instances where the shooter 100% legally bought a gun.
The opposition to common sense gun laws most commonly cite that mental health is the issue here, not guns. There is some truth to this statement. Although the vast majority of mentally ill individuals are non-violent, some evidence has suggested that mental illness or mental health symptoms are nearly universal among school shooters. A 2002 report by the US Secret Service and US Department of Education found evidence that a majority of school shooters displayed evidence of mental health symptoms. However, this evidence only supports common sense gun laws, as individuals who are mentally ill should not be able to own firearms. Emma Beth McGinty and her colleagues from John Hopkins University conducted a study to find out if people tended to associate the violence of school shootings with mental illness, at the expense of other factors such as the availability of high-capacity magazines. Nearly 2,000 participants read a news piece on a shooting in which the shooter is diagnosed as having a mental illness and who used high capacity magazines. One group read an article that presented only the facts of the case. A different group read an article about the same shooting, but in it the author advocated for gun restrictions for people with mental illness. Another group read about the shooting in an article that suggested the proposal to ban large-capacity magazines, which acted to advocate that shootings could stem from a societal problem rather than an individual problem. The control group did not read anything. Participants were then all asked to fill out a questionnaire asking about their views on gun control and whether they thought there should be restrictions on high-capacity magazines. 71% of the control group thought that gun restrictions should be applied to people with mental illness, and nearly 80% of participants who read the articles agreed.
Gun control laws can still be put into place without infringing on the second amendment because the second amendment is not universal. In the June 26, 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller US Supreme Court majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia, LLB, wrote, "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited… nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." On June 9, 2016 the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 7-4 that "the right of the general public to carry a concealed firearm in public is not, and never has been, protected by the Second Amendment," thus upholding a law requiring a permitting process and "good cause" for concealed carry licenses in California. The second amendment protects the right to bear arms. It does not say that everyone in the country is allowed a firearm, and restricting access to firearms to people who are not supposed to own one is not only the best option right now, it is detrimental to our country’s safety.
Part of the plan for “common sense gun laws†is to limit the purchase of high capacity magazines for firearms. Not only are they not necessary, but they cause more injuries and deaths than what would have occurred without them. A Mother Jones investigation found that high capacity magazines were used in at least 50% of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012. When high capacity magazines were used in mass shootings, the death rate rose 63% and the injury rate rose 156%. David H. Chipman, Senior Vice President of Public Safety for ShotSpotter and former ATF agent, stated that a high capacity magazine "turns a killer into a killing machine." Although most people pro gun control believe that high capacity magazines are unnecessary, there has been some debate over their use in self-defense. As Rabbi Dovid Bendory, the director of the JPFO, or Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, puts it, “Whether on the street or during a home invasion, violent criminals often move in pairs or packs. Realize that you will never shoot as well as your score at the range when you are under the unbelievable stress of a life-or-death encounter. Which would you prefer to have in your magazine in such an event? Ten rounds? Or fifteen or seventeen? Or perhaps even 30?†It is clear what his point is. However, the research shows that civilians trying to stop dangerous criminals with their own guns could actually cause more trouble. This is especially true in the case of school shootings. None of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012 were stopped by an armed civilian. Gun rights activists regularly state that a 2002 mass shooting at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia was stopped by armed students, but those students were current and former law enforcement officers and the killer was out of bullets when subdued. Other mass shootings often held up as examples of armed citizens being able to stop mass shootings involved law enforcement or military personnel and/or the shooter had stopped shooting before being subdued, such as a 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, MS; a 1998 middle school dance shooting in Edinboro, PA; a 2007 church shooting in Colorado Springs, CO; and a 2008 bar shooting in Winnemucca, NV. Jeffrey Voccola, Assistant Professor of Writing at Kutztown University, notes, "The average gun owner, no matter how responsible, is not trained in law enforcement or on how to handle life-threatening situations, so in most cases, if a threat occurs, increasing the number of guns only creates a more volatile and dangerous situation."
In the case of protecting one's home, however, research actually suggests that more guns in the hands of homeowners actually increases violence. In a 2015 study using data from the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University reported that firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in the states with the most guns versus those with the least. So maybe that Glock on your bedside table isn’t so helpful after all.