Should the gun laws in the US be stricter?
One major problem that has been plaguing the United States of America ever since its founding is violence associated with the use of guns. In brief, around 34.000 people die each year from gunshot injuries, a lot of them being teenagers who either commit suicide or are killed in school shootings which amount to hundreds in the span of just a few months. But how is it possible? Is obtaining a gun in the US that easy? To find that out, we need to take a step back and look back into history.
As we all know, in 1776 the US consisted of thirteen colonies ruled by the British Empire, which imposed heavy taxes on its inhabitants, who were already prevented from autonomously developing by the industrial and economical monopoly. They didn’t have any sort of political representation either, so we’re talking about a full-fledged tyrannical government. What is missing in absolutism is a “social contract”, an agreement reached by individuals being part of the same society to establish laws as the basis of said community; in other words a give-and-take between the government and the people. After the Americans finally won against the Brits, they founded a nation themselves, which at the beginning was very frail and unstable. It didn’t have a president, nor a judicial system, but it soon became the US as we know it nowadays, following an easy but effective principle, the one that the natives were stripped of: freedom. Freedom of speech, of religion, of press, of assembly, and the most important one, the right to petition the government. Because of that, the government is structured such as to comply with two primary parameters: the tripartite division of power and federalism in the tripartite division.
The legislative power is held by the Congress, the executive power by the President, and the Judicial power by the Supreme Court so that if one tries to take over, the other two can ally themselves and stop it. But how can this have anything to do with gun violence? Well, the reason why so many firearms are spread all over the US is exactly this deep-rooted sense of liberalism,namely the fear that the State , exerting excessive power, might try to suppress the people, who therefore have the right to defend themselves and their freedom. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution hence reads: “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.”
In this day and age, it is, in my opinion, an outdated and narrow-minded concept because, even if only the President himself was to try to overthrow the government, with the current biological and technological weapons he alone would be enough to annihilate all of America's population, who wouldn’t even be able to stand a chance. So what could be the answer? Giving kids tanks and automatic rifles because apparently guns may not be enough? Americans' remedy for gun violence is manufacturing even more guns, even though it is illogical and only falls into contradiction. And why is that? Of course, because the gun business in the US only is worth billions of dollars and the deaths are such a small number compared to that one. The people who died are all irrelevant compared to the fact that for every 100 residents in the US there are about 120.5 firearms. What surprises me the most is that one which was supposed to be the land of dreams is actually such an inhuman and ruthless country.
Fight for gun control, fight for those who have passed away and those who will, and pray that in the future we will do better than this.
