Gun Control and Realism

Before posting, I want to preface this discussion with a problem a lot of people bring up. People have been arguing that the extent of their belief in gun control lies only in registration for guns and child locks on them. Outside of the NRA, you will be hard-pressed to find many people that argue against waiting period for guns. To me, pro- versus anti-gun lies in whether or not they should own them. I consider myself pro-gun, but I'm willing to wait three weeks, or even a year before I get my gun. I can do that if I know that other people go through the same process and it will save lives. I will put a child safety on my gun because I care about my children. That's not a big imposition. But saying I can't own my gun is an unrealistic solution to the problem that is gun violence. We need to find a realistic solution to the problem. I just want to use this to frame my position, as well as the context in which I discuss pro- and anti-gun laws. The Brady Laws are not anti-gun in my position, as they allow for gun ownership while preventing dangerous uses, and statistically reducing gun violence. Yet calls for all-out bans are what I plan to oppose.

I found that class's debate Friday about gun control tied in very nicely to my readings in E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis. The book argues that in handling situations on an international scale, we must find a balance between idealism and realism. Idealism is a self-defeating idea; it provides a statement about the way things should be without telling us how to do it. Realism is essentially necessary to reaching any ideal end. This argument ties in easily to discussions of gun control.

Though in an ideal world, means of killing each other would not exist, the fact remains that they do. As Nicholas Cage stated in the beginning of Lord of War, there is 1 gun in the world for every 12 people. They play an immense role in spurring on conflict in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East in particular. Clearly, a broader initiative must be made toward restricting small arms and light weapons (SALW) use in conflict zones beyond paying typical UN lip-service to the idea.

But what I find most interesting about the problem of ownership is rates of ownership in many European countries, to whom we frequently look as the "gold standard" of gun control. Nations such as England do not even arm their police officers. Yet for each Britain (where there are five guns for every 100 people), there is a France, where there is approximately one gun for every three. Or Israel, a nation that arms its teachers, is home to companies such as Galil and Israeli Weapons Industries, yet maintains a low gun violence rate relative to many other nations (1 2). This variety of situational murder rates points to the fact that there must be some other cause other than gun ownership that spurs on violent crime. As a result, I would argue this essentially proves, or at least highly supports, the claim that merely taking away all guns does not provide a true prescription to gun violence as an issue.

We all agree that gun violence is a problem. Yet we must provide an economic solution to the problem. We need to provide an incentive for people to get rid of their guns, or to cease using them in the manners described. There must be some kind of balance to truly prevent gun violence. Taking away assault weapons won't handle it. Making people voluntarily give them up will. Providing cost-based incentives, as Adam's discussed community work does, will best serve the ends of all. This will not completely eradicate gun violence; nothing ever will. But we can at least make realistic strides in the direction of reducing gun violence while still allowing for ownership for sport. I'm not pro-gun control. But this is because I find a lot of programs promulgated by those on this side of the spectrum to be unrealistic. Programs such as Adam's, however, make me much more likely to advocate such a situation, hence my ultimate support for parts of his position. Though I disagreed vastly with many of his reasons for wanting to ban guns, or maybe even the ultimate extent to which he seeks to do restrict usage, I found the programs he chose to advocate as being very strong and serving the same end I desire of reducing gun violence. None of them outrightly banned gun use. Rather, they provided a strong incentive-based plan that effectively reduced their useage in target communities. This is something we can all believe in.