I know that this is a sensitive subject and one that I touched upon last semester. However, given the reaction from the White House as well as many members of Congress, it appears as if there may soon be some legislative action on the Second Amendment. Neither I nor anyone else can say what this action will be, although there is one thing I can say: this is not as much of a gun issue, as it is a mental health issue. According to Pew Research, as of 2013, roughly 24% of adult Americans owned a firearm. That’s nearly a quarter of the population, and it is likely that number has increased over the past five years given the increased number of gun sales throughout the United States. Back then the number of total guns in the U.S. was between 270 and 310 million guns. Once again, this number has likely increased over the past five years. I should also add that these statistics likely only include legal firearm owners. I could not find any note in the study whether this included or excluded illegally-obtained firearms.
Now, these numbers certainly sound big and scary to most people, but let’s stop and think for a moment. If guns were truly as dangerous as we are led to believe, shouldn’t everyone have been in some sort of firearm-related incident? Or perhaps, that high number of guns doesn’t mean that more crimes are being committed simply because people own guns. What sets the few gun owners who actually commit crimes apart from those who legally exercise their constitutional right? The answer is mental health or some sort of hate-filled motivation. Every time a crime is committed, it has one of these two things at its very core. No mentally-stable person would go and commit a crime. What motivation would they have, aside from pure hatred? The answer: nothing.
So, what can we do about mental health? Well, in today’s world, the majority of gun deaths are suicide related. So we should first take steps to improve access to mental health resources as well as find a way to increase diagnoses of people who are depressed. On the other hand, people may have deeper psychiatric issues than depression, of which there are signs. Some of these signs include abuse of family members, friends, or animals, drug use, and self-harm. Although these may seem very obvious, it is important to speak up if you notice any of these signs. Specifically, in reference to last week’s mass shooting, people noticed and reported the signs of mental instability of the shooter to law enforcement. However, the FBI dropped the ball somewhere along the way, and now 17 people paid the ultimate price for that mistake. Who exactly dropped the ball or why? I don’t know. So I think there are steps that can be taken to address this issue, but these alone are not enough.
We need to alter the gun laws in this country in order to fully affect change. Many of those who use guns for the purpose of murder obtain their guns illegally. So in order to address this issue, we must find a way to eliminate the black market on guns and other weapons. How exactly this could be done is beyond me, but none the less, action must be taken. Finally, we need to improve background checks (a shocking thing to hear from a conservative). Currently, background checks only look at what government agencies have reported on your past history – they do not look at your current state of mental health. Everything in a background check is self-reported, so it is very easy to pass a background check, like the shooter in Florida did multiple times. I would recommend a psychiatric evaluation to be added to background checks to prevent people intent on mass murder or suicide by firearm from actually reaching their goal. Whether that is done by a government-sponsored doctor or a private one doesn’t really matter, as long as everyone has the right to this background check because of their Second Amendment rights. This is a real solution that will actually save lives!
My biggest issue right now is that there are many government agencies failing to do their jobs entering information into the federal databases to prevent people from obtaining firearms. In the case of the Texas shooting back in November, had the government done its job, the only way that gunman could have obtained a firearm would have been illegal. So I guess my larger point is that there is room for gun reform, but we cannot only pay attention to one side or the other – we must focus on both sides of the issue.
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