Commentaries

Easy Access to Guns Feeds an Anti-Life Pattern of More Gun-Related Homicides

By Gerry Hopkins, JD

NYC; Aug. 11, 2022 — When one argues that easy access to guns, is a major contributing factor in the number of homicides in America, he or she is not giving criminals an excuse for their bad acts. Similarly, no one is saying that bad-minded people with little value for life, are to not share in the blame for the taking of innocent lives.

In other words, we are saying that since we know that there are people out there who are out of control, some who don’t value life, others who are mentally ill, and yet others of depraved minds who are driven by anger to kill others, why are we then continuing to make it so easy for these individuals (an unfortunately large part of society) to have access to guns?

Some folks out there seem to have no issue with advocating for the rights of individuals who feel entitled to ownership of guns, although most of this class of individuals may have no legitimate self-defense or safety need for a gun.

The Brits and the Aussies understand the common-sense approach of reducing and/or taking away the means of mass destruction, which automatic handguns and battlefield rifles afford, hence they have been able to lower the incidence of gun-related violence and homicides.

Their rates are drastically lower now than before they toughened their gun control laws. Further, they both have much lower gun-related homicide rates than the USA, thanks to their gun control laws.

Again, the problem here is easy access to guns. It’s not that Americans are inherently more prone to kill than every other people in the whole wide world, notwithstanding that American media, especially computer interactive games, videos and movies, may have helped to confuse the minds of many generations of our children about the value of life and have also numbed their sensibilities regarding the horror of taking another’s life.

The problem is mainly that too many people, rather than walking away, or seeking conflict resolution or mediation or one-on-one negotiation or a fist fight or use of a knife, now have easy access to guns, many of which are licensed — and they are using them. But for the easy availability of guns in the hands of people who never really needed one to begin with (whether at home, in gangs or in rural hate groups in America), many who have being killed as a result of crimes of passion or premeditation, may still be alive today.

Murderers are actually admitting that if they didn’t have access to guns that they would not have been able to do what they did to take the lives of others. For one, it’s easier to simply point a gun, pull a trigger, shoot, kill and then walk away, than it is to walk up to someone with a knife and plunge it into his chest, unless one is completely depraved. Plain and simple, guns make killing or taking a life too easy, even for those who don’t have the stomach to take a life. And so the fewer guns we have, the fewer killings we’d have overall.

In fact, scientific studies have shown that many altercations or disagreements would not have resulted in shootings/killings, but for the availability and easy access to a gun.

May common-sense logic prevail in this gun control debate. For me it’s about doing what’s making a positive difference, as is the case in Britain, Australia, China, New Zealand, Germany and elsewhere in most developed nations.

Yes, some people have more violent tendencies than others and guns don’t by themselves kill people. But guns were made to kill people. And since we know that there are lots of people out there who can’t control their anger or have no value for life, the common-sense thing to do is to make it difficult for them to have easy access a large quantity of weapons of…

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