We live in an age dominated by rapid advances in technology of all kinds. Our growing technological power has enabled us to produce more powerful and more dangerous arms. The enduring right to keep and bear arms entitles people to have access to more guns, which have the potential to hurt more people than ever, thanks to the new technological advancements of those weapons. This has laid us open to disaster on an unprecedented scale, by accident or design.
Handguns, rifles and assault weapons, whether in the hands of the innocent or the insane, can kill large numbers of people in a very brief moment in time. These technologies are designed for the singular purpose of inflicting enormous casualties, and in the hands of insanity, things can go dramatically wrong. That we know is true from the recent tragedies in Santa Barbara, the FedEx shooting in Georgia, or those at Fort Hood, or Jewish facilities in Kansas.
The mass killing of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School didn't result in substantive changes to our mental health system and laws governing access to weapons. I don't think these recent tragedies will make a substantive change to America’s political landscape on these issues, either. I do maintain hope, though.
The argument that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” must cease to justify America’s right to keep and bear arms. If we examine this argument using reduction ad absurdum, we can replace the word ‘Gun’ with ‘Nuclear weapons’ and the result is “Nuclear weapons don’t kill people, people kill people.” I trust even the most vocal supporter of the right to keep and bear arms would oppose a nuclear-armed Al Qaeda or Iran or James Egan Holmes.
There is no way to eliminate risk from the world, and we would be foolish to try. As a Nation, it is time for substantive changes to mental health system and laws governing access to weapons. We cannot continue to ask parents to bury their children for the sake of the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Our forefathers derived the right of the people to keep and bear arms from the English Bill of Rights drafted in 1689. Technology has progressed since William III reigned over England. It is time we progress at a Nation too.
Richard Martinez, the father of 20-year-old Christopher Michaels-Martinez, one of six killed in the Isla Vista, California shooting rampage: “Today, I’m going to ask every person I can find to send a postcard to every politician they can think of with three words on it: ‘Not one more.’ People are looking for something to do. I’m asking people to stand up for something. Enough is enough.”
There has to be a solution for the people to keep and bear arms that is more forgiving of human fallibility. Changes in mental health system and laws governing access to weapons can only do so much. I wish I had the solution to the problem and I wish I could present the solution here today. However, recognizing that a problem exists is the first step in solving it. America is great; we are a people that face our problems head-on, and we should not be a nation that hides behind faulty logic.
Not one more.