Gun control is not the answer
(Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons )
A month after the tragic theater shooting at Aurora, Colo. and a couple of weeks after the Sikh Temple Shooting in Wisconsin, another shooting at the Empire State Building shocked the nation.
A laid-off, disgruntled worker of Hazan Import Corp. shot his former co-worker multiple times, even after the victim had fallen. At the end of the day, two men were dead: the victim and the shooter, who was taken down by New York City’s police. Nine innocent bystanders were injured.
New York City — a place the anti-gun Brady Campaign gave a four-star rating — makes New York one of the strictest states in the nation for gun control. Of course, that doesn’t mean a thing for the shooter, Jeffrey Johnson, who didn’t even purchase the gun in New York. The weapon, a .45 caliber 1911, was purchased legally in Florida in 1999 and brought to New York illegally.
But surely that’s no excuse to encourage citizens to actively carry a weapon. That’s all we need, a bunch of uneducated civilians carrying pistols and assault rifles around like a bunch of outlaws. Leave the protection of the public to the police, New York’s Finest.
That’s right, the responding officers ended up injuring more people than the actual shooter, unloading sixteen rounds into a single target with six of those rounds missing completely. This left nine people hospitalized for gunshot wounds caused by the very people they entrusted their protection.
To clarify, those casualties should not be blamed on the NYPD, because their inaccuracy can be blamed on the ridiculous 12-pound trigger pull of their standard-issued Glock pistols. For those not in the know, the 12-pound trigger pulls mean that their index force must exert a force of at least 12 pounds to fire the weapon, resulting in less accuracy.
The problem is how shootings are rallying calls for greater gun control, but these recent shootings are happening where gun control is strict enough as it is. The fact of the matter is that these laws are creating nothing but shooting galleries for these crooks and in the case of the NYPD, leaving our last defenders much less capable.
The Aurora Shooting took place in a gun-free zone, but that didn’t prevent James Holmes from his murderous spree. This recent shooting happened in one of America’s most bustling cities, with officers responding in mere seconds. The gun was brought over illegally and in a place like New York City, it isn’t doubtful that the gun could be obtained illegally somewhere more local.
The fact is that gun control is only a leash for law-abiding citizens. Criminals act outside the moral spectrum the rest of us operate in. Laws banning or restricting the sale of firearms will only limit people who care about following the rules.
It is hard to find anyone these days who does not know someone else who carries weed, yet weed is still illegal. With the federals shipping guns back and forth across the border, what are the chances there won’t be a black market for firearms too? The criminals carry functional guns, but the rest of us will be stuck to fend for ourselves while our police deal with handicapped guns.
James Wang is a history sophomore and may be reached at [email protected]
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