Gun laws aren't to blame; it's the person.
Before we talk about what political group, person, firearm or organization is to blame about the shooting in Arizona, why don't we blame the man himself? The firearm did not simply grow legs and shoot into a crowd of people. This might be hard for some people to grasp, but a modern firearm will not just start discharging rounds into a crowd of people unless it is manipulated to do so.
I do not condone what Jared Loughner has done, I am saying that lax gun laws are not to blame and attempting to make them stronger will not solve the issue. It is easier to buy an illegal, fully automatic AK-47 out of a trunk of a car than to buy a legal semi-automatic AK-47 at a gun store.
We all know of the California high-capacity magazine ban. In case you did not know, it is illegal to possess a certain capacity of rounds in a magazine for certain types of firearms. Have you not seen History Channel's Gangland with AK's with 30-round magazines in them? Do you not see criminals with more firepower than the police? Gun bans and magazine restrictions obviously work, but for the law-abiding citizen. Out-law guns and only outlaws will have guns.
Nobody put a gun in Loughner's hands and told him to go kill a bunch of people in a crowd. He did it himself. He is to blame for this situation.
Trying to blame gun laws for this shooting is the same as a chicken in the chicken coop seeing a fox kill a fellow chicken, the farmer comes in and knows the chicken knows what happened. Instead of going after the fox, he kills all the chickens in the coop.
Look at all the gun owners in America today, and then look at the shootings that occur in America every day, then look at how many of those firearms were purchased legally. Yes there are some that do occur, but the evidence shows that there are far more illegal firearm shootings than legal ones.
Andrew Zeigler is a senior studying history.
4 Opinion
