Are Guns the New God?

If growing up in Texas has taught me anything it’s that Americans, especially the South, love their guns. Not only do we love our constitutionally given freedom to bear arms but we take pride in it. We host gun shows, and take our families to the shooting ranges. Guns have become venerated in this country. They are the new religion. We are no longer “one nation under God”, we now stand united as “one nation, under guns”. 

The United States owns about half the entire world’s gun supply while only taking up about 5% of its population, that means there’s about one gun per every citizen of the us. Gun owners purchase their firearms for varying reasons such as for protection or for collecting, but the issue is with people who purchase firearms with the intention of harming others. Not surprisingly our nation leading the world in gun ownership correlates to its citizens being 10 times more likely to be killed by guns than people in other developed countries. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who pays even a minute amount of attention the news. This year has seen record setting mass shootings that only seem to be escalating in size, nature, and frequency. 

The rise in mass shootings is not an issue that is new to our nation, but it is one that has been ignored. Most of the nation has gone in the opposite direction of stricter firearm regulations, following the contrary notion that we somehow would be better off with fewer gun laws and more guns. In 29 states, unless they are felons or mentally incompetent, permits must be issued to applicants while 12 states have fully abolished needing a gun permit entirely. In 24 states, no gun training is even required to carry a gun. 

The problems of loose gun regulations, the absence of thorough screenings and background checks, and the lack of proper training are met with a default response by the public to shrug and say that it isn’t the laws that matter, since there will always be bad people doing bad things, what could new laws change? This ideal has long since festered into a sense of absolution and false innocence, but we’re disregarding the most important question: Shouldn’t the government do more to keep such extremely calamitous weapons from the wrong hands? Granted, mass shooters tend to have little to no criminal past, which makes them hard to identify before they commit these acts of violence. Still, many mass shooters do give indications, and only a few states have any measures in place to pick up on that.

If we aren’t able to decide on responsible and rational gun regulations in the wake of the recent tragic shootings such as Las Vegas, Orlando, and the most current one here in Texas, not to mention previous incidents like Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Virginia Tech, and Columbine, when will we? It is obvious that gun control is an issue of growing concern for the public but changes have yet to be made. Maybe the answer to our problem will arise as the nation’s gun violence level reaches a critical tipping point.