How Many Must Die?

In this country we have a very complicated relationship with human rights. In our past many people didn’t have any rights and others had very little. whether it was slavery or a women's right to vote. These rights and many more like them are now enshrined in the constitution. Brave individuals committed their lives to ensuring the rights of their fellow Americans and the rights of all future Americans were not infringed upon.

There is one right that was fought for and continues to take blood to this day. The second Amendment of the United States constitution gives the right for an American to keep and bear arms. It was written shortly after the American Revolution, early Americans had seen firsthand what happens when a people cannot defend themselves, and that is reflected in the following amendment.

“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.”

This one line has resulted in countless deaths over the last 250 years in this countries history. Whether or not you believe gun control is a good idea, your belief does not change the facts.

The above graphic shows the staggering amount of mass shootings that occur in the United States every year. Every day on my news feed I read about a shooting that happened somewhere in the country. If you don’t live in a place where shootings are common (which is most of the developed world that is not the US) it may not strike you just how normal mass shootings have become here in the United States. They are so increasingly common that I have almost been desensitized to them. It is a common occurrence for me to open my news feed in the morning and read about some event that happened the night before where a group of people got shot. I read it, then go on with my day.

There is so much needless death in this nation, all because of a few words that were written almost 250 years ago. When those words were written “arms” refereed to a musket. The thing about a musket is that even a well trained solder could only fire a shot every 15 to 20 seconds. Compare that to a modern day side arm, the Glock 18 can fire 1200 bullets per minute, carrying magazines of 10 to 17 rounds, modern day firearms can empty a full magazine in less than a blink of the eye. The Glock 18 is not legal for civilian use, but it highlights just how different guns from today are from the guns used during the founding of the United States.

It is more of a coincidence that the word gun refers both to a weapon like a Glock 18 and also to a 18th century musket. They are so vastly different in the amount of damage they can do, it seems disingenuous to put them both in the same category. Today you don’t have to be a well trained solder to inflict harm to large groups of people. Today all that is needed is a credit card. The barrier to entry has gotten so low that you can now print deadly weapons at home, with no need to have a license. And our laws are not keeping up.

Gun rights advocates seem to value their right to own a weapon over the right of others to continue on living. It is a common argument for gun owners to point to the constitution and say that we should read it literally, as it was intended in the 18th century. This argument however ignores some very obvious facts. Like for instance our modern world is different in almost every way to the world that James Madison (commonly referred to as the father of the constitution) lived in. The founders could not have imagined that in 250 years we would have email, or have landed on the moon. The founders did not believe that African Americans were persons, instead treating them as property, I could go on and on. When I hear someone argue that they should be allowed to keep their guns because the founders said it was their right, I just think of all the things we have today that would not have been considered a right 250 years ago. As a society we have changed, in someways for the worse, but in many ways for the better. And I think it is important to keep this in mind when we have discussions about gun rights, or rights in general.

Looking to the past for guidance is a good step. We would do well as a people to look to the mistakes of our past, with the goal of never repeating them. But the past is not a star guiding use through a dark night. Instead it is more so a lamp post, helpful for a short while, but eventually we must look beyond it. The same applies to the current discussion, we should not place the future in the hands (or in this case words) of the people of the past. Instead we should use their ideas as a jumping off point, to make our world a more socially, economically, and religiously diverse and excepting place. By cementing our beliefs and ideas in the past, we are only holding ourselves back when looking to the future.

References:

Mass Shootings Graph: https://everytownresearch.org/mass-shootings-in-america/

Musket Info: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/small-arms-revolution

Glock 18 Info : https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/gun-fact-glock-18-fires-1200-bullets-minute-62907

Cover Photo by Dan Galvani Sommavilla - https://www.pexels.com/@dbgalvanis/