The 2nd Amendment: freedom or ignorance?

In a country where 142 new school shootings have happened since 2013, it seems that there should be a massive outcry for gun control to be more regulated and promoted on a larger scale. And yet, in the wake of the plethora of school shootings, movie theatre shootings, and outright massacres going on in this country, there are still a great majority of people pushing the second amendment. While the second amendment states that, “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”, I think that there should be infringement on this law that is breaking down the trust of our nation’s schools in the selling of guns. Should anyone really be allowed to own a weapon, when we have been exposing our children to the kind of cruel and horrific manslaughter we once thought only existed in video games?

In this graphic, we see the frightening spread of mass shootings in the United States just this year. This problem seems to keep escalating, and yet, nothing seems to be done. Only in the wake of each incident do we hear regrets, apologies, and sorrows, yet nothing has been done or is being done about prevention and even more importantly, gun control.

Schools hold the future of our country within their walls, and to expose children to the fear of someone coming into their school and shooting them is one thing, but to not necessarily change the root of the problem at any level is another thing. A poll shows that the American public voted that the sale of firearms should be more strict at 47% in 2014, curiously down from the 58% in 2012, and the 78% in 1990. It seems that the American public does not see a threat in the sale of firearms, especially when the stats also show that only 26% believe there should be a law to ban the possession of a handgun from regular citizens, while 73% said there should not be a ban.

Why are we so obsessed with the right to bear arms, rather than looking at the benefits of gun control for the youth of our nation? A lot of foreign first world countries, such as Australia, are absolutely appalled and upset at the ways in which America has not done anything to fix or deal with the gun control and school shooting problems. In a quote from ThinkProgress.org, they state that,” Australians have been calling out the U.S. for not responding to gun massacres the way their country did two decades ago. In 1996, after a man went on a rampage with a semi-automatic rifle and killed 35 people, Australia banned high-powered rifles and enacted strict licensing requirements.Since then, Australia has seen no mass shootings, which are defined as five or more people being shot. And millions of Australians still own guns.”

From the outside looking in, it seems as though we are a country so caught up in the notion of our rights as citizens to freedom, that we are ignorant to the idea that freedom comes at a cost, and in our case with mass shootings, it is at the cost of our fellow Americans’ lives. If we were to take a step back and look at the root of the problem, a lack of gun control, we could see that we wouldn’t be losing our right to freedom by increasing gun control, but we would be opening our eyes for the first time to new ways of practicing gun ownership safely in America. We need to stop being so ignorant of the harm being done by not enforcing gun control, and start learning from countries like Australia to change our country for the better.