After the tragic death of 20 children, many people
petitioned the white house to have more gun control. Like usual, the federal government's response to a tragedy would be to take away Americans' rights under the pretense of security. (Just think back to how the government passed the
Patriot Act after 9/11.) The demands for gun control are based on emotions and naivety.
When crazy or evil people want to kill, gun control isn't going to stop them:
*In 1996,
Timmy McVeigh killed 168 people, including 19 children age 5 or younger, in Oklahoma City with a home-made bomb he and Terry Nichols made from easily accessible material.
*
Derrick Bird killed 12 people and injured 11 others in Cumbria, England, in 2010, a nation with some of the tightest gun control laws in the world.
*In 2011, a
gunman in Norway killed 92 people in a rampage. Again, a nation with stringent gun control laws
There are benefits of widespread gun ownership such as detering criminals. Burglars are
less likely to target occupied homes or businesses in countries with high rates of gun ownership than they are in countries with low rates of gun ownership, probably because they don’t want to get shot.
Europe, with their strict gun control, has a much greater crime rate than the US. Guns are also the great equalier. My fell better that my 5'4 mother can face a man of any size who breaks into her home, because her ninemillimeter would stop any criminal in his tracks.
Gun control only limits citizens from legally having guns to protect themselves. On the other hand, criminals will continue to carry and use guns despite the law. For example, Virginia Tech's gun free zone didn't prevent
a crazed man from killing 32 people and wounding 17 others, while it did stop the victims from having a means to protect themselves.
There are also rumors that Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are to blame for killing sprees. If that was true, then based on sales of those games to young people, every American school should be a warzone akin to Syria. Yes, there are some rare, isolated incidents where a schizophrenic blames media violence for their rampage, yet schizos don't need video games to motivate them to crazy things. Just look at
Robert Bardo,
John Hinckley, and
Mark Chapman. They were all motivated to kill by
The Catcher in the Rye.