Why should we care at all about enacting better gun control?
Guns overtook car crashes to become the #1 cause of death for US children and teenagers in 2020 (source: BBC)
Aren’t guns constitutionally protected?
The US Constitution guarantees many rights, but those rights are not without limits. For example, Speech is protected under the first amendment, but you cannot yell “fire” in a theater (other examples)
Isn’t limiting the reach of the Second Amendment questioning the wisdom of the Founding Fathers?
The framers of the U.S. constitution did not get everything right on day 1 (e.g. when the constitution was first written, slavery was legal, only white males could vote, etc.) Since then, we’ve changed our laws to better reflect what makes sense for modern times.
Isn’t this about mental health? Shouldn’t we address the mental health crisis first?
The U.S. is not #1 in mental health issues within developed nations (source: ourworldindata.org). And yet no developed nation, regardless of mental heath issues, has nearly the rate of gun violence that the U.S. does (source: healthdata.org).
"Even if you were to do everything possible to eliminate mental illness, you'd really only be addressing around 3% of the violence in this country," -Dr. Reena Kapoor, professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine (source: today.com)
Why not just arm more people (like teachers)?
Arming teachers is opposed by school safety experts like law enforcement, and teachers and parents. (source: State of Colorado)
When introducing more guns in schools, the risk of shootings increases. Access to a firearm, irrespective of age, triples the risk of death by suicide and doubles the risk of death by homicide. (source: State of Colorado)
How do we know gun control could work?
After a British gunman killed 16 people in 1987, the country banned semiautomatic weapons like those he had used. It did the same with most handguns after a 1996 school shooting. It now has one of the lowest gun-related death rates in the developed world. (source: NY Times)
In Australia, a 1996 massacre prompted mandatory gun buybacks that saw, according to some estimates, as many as one million firearms melted into slag. The rate of mass shootings plummeted from once every 18 months to, so far, only one in the 26 years since. (source: NY Times).
If we introduce “gun control” because people die from guns, then should we have “car control” just because people die in cars?
We do have “car control”: there are sensible constraints on cars (minimum age requirements, speed limits, licenses to operate a car, no drunk driving, safety stands, emission standards etc.)
Why create laws for gun control if criminals won’t obey laws in the first place?
Many recent school shootings have been committed using legally obtained guns (source: nytimes). Introducing gun control that makes it harder to get assault rifles and introduces more checks into the system would introduce friction that may reduce many of the gun incidents that affect Americans. See above “How do we know gun control could work”?
Separately, if we really believe “why have <pick a law> when criminals won’t obey the laws in the first place”, then why have any law at all? Why make murder illegal if criminals will still murder people? Why make theft illegal if burglars will still steal?
If we make guns harder to get, couldn’t people resort to harming others using other weapons, like knives?
That’s possible, but if an attacker has to use a knife instead of a semi-automatic gun, that should result in a reduction in lives lost (it’s harder to kill multiple people with a knife vs a gun).
Did we miss a frequently asked question about guns / gun control? Do you disagree with something above or did you find a mistake? Let us know!