The Arguments for Guns in America

Following the recent massacre of children in their own school in USA, the responses of those who oppose restricting the purchase and possession of firearms were the usual ones. Senator Ted Cruz, for example, warned against attempts to “politicize” the event in order to “restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.”

There is a worthwhile aspect in that invocation: these tragedies should not serve to inflame passions for proselytizing purposes. As Ted Cruz himself did, for example, when, after a terrorist attack in Orlando, he issued a statement entitled “The administration’s refusal [Obama] of confronting radical Islamic terrorism makes America less safe.” For the rest, the usual purpose of these invocations not to “politicize” these massacres is usually to avoid public debate on a citizen security problem just when it is pressing.

Debate in which the supporters of unrestricted access to firearms have shown a frank intellectual orphan. After a mass shooting in Las Vegas, for example, Donald Trump argued that “the problem in our country is mental illness, not guns.” Which unjustifiably stigmatizes people with diagnosed mental problems, assuming in advance that they are more likely to commit violent crimes.

A Trijicon rifle is displayed at the recent convention of the powerful National Rifle Association. The United States is the country with the highest number of weapons per capita in the world, with some 400 million weapons in the possession of its citizens. PHOTO EFE (AARON M. SPRECHER/)

As a review of the research on the subject published in the journal of the World Psychiatric Association concludes, “mental disorders are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for violence. The main determinants of violence continue to be sociodemographic and economic factors.” Furthermore, the homicide rate in the US is four to five times higher than in Britain or France, despite the fact that the US has nowhere near a four to five times higher incidence of mental health problems (as a proportion of population) than in Britain or France.

The main argument used by supporters of unrestricted access to firearms is that, in order to avoid this type of massacre, everyone involved (including school teachers) should be armed. Or, as the Vice President of the National Rifle Association put it at the time, “The only thing that can stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun.” On the one hand, the formulation of the argument precludes the possibility of asking whether something could not be done to prevent “bad men” from getting firearms. On the other hand, for practical purposes, that solution has already been implemented, without any result.

First of all, the United States is already the country with the highest number of guns per capita in the world, with some 400 million guns held by its citizens (yes, there are more guns than citizens). Second, both the Columbine school in 1999 and the Buffalo supermarket in 2022 had armed guards when they suffered mass shootings. Thirdly, even in the military headquarters with the most US soldiers in the world (Fort Hood, Texas), one of them managed to kill 13 comrades and wound 30 others before being neutralized.

One explanation for this is that someone wielding a semi-automatic rifle with removable 10-round magazines can fire dozens of shots in just over a minute (i.e. less time than it might take even professional armed guards to respond). . The outlandish idea of ​​arming school teachers would only seem plausible if access to this type of weaponry among the civilian population was restricted. But that is something the National Rifle Association also opposes.

Source: Elcomercio