The school doors were locked after 9:30, and no one was admitted without identification. Nevertheless, at 9:35, a man shot his way through a window and killed 20 first-graders and six teachers.
A Congresswoman had just started speaking to her voters at the local grocery store. Gunshots broke out, and six people were killed, including a 9-year-old girl.
The Dark Knight Rises was playing on the big screen. Suddenly, shots were fired. 12 people were killed and 58 others injured before the gunman was subdued.
Pointless violence. Grief. Pain.
When the founding fathers wrote the Bill of Rights, they included the Second Amendment, which stated, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
It is true that recognizing gun rights is important. However, we should realize that the founding fathers wrote the Second Amendment for a different time period, a time when the best and fastest shooters could shoot at most four shots a minute with their muskets. Today, any pull of an automatic weapon’s trigger can release more than 800 bullets per minute. With a greater capacity to destroy comes a greater need for the creation and strengthening of U.S. gun control laws.
The foremost reason for greater gun control is the preservation of civilian safety. We do not have to eliminate all guns, just automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Three recent mass shootings all involved the firing of a large amount of bullets. At Sandy Hook, 152 bullets were fired in 10 minutes. At Aurora, 76 bullets were fired in five minutes. At Tucson, 20 bullets were fired in less than five minutes.
If automatic weapons were prohibited, more mass shootings would be avoided. The NRA defends guns by proclaiming, “Guns don’t kill people — people kill people.” But consider Eliot Spitzer’s words: “Yes, people pull the trigger — but guns are the instruments of death. Gun control is necessary, and delay means more death and horror.”
The intention of the Second Amendment was to allow Americans the right to retain weapons for self-defense and protection of their personal liberties, not the ownership of weapons that would allow massacres on an unprecedented scale. It is therefore wholly justified to enforce restrictions on automatic and semi-automatic weapons that endanger society.
The solution is clear: no semi-automatic weapons. No assault rifles. No 30-bullet clips. If these things had been disallowed earlier, maybe six politically active U.S. citizens could have been saved. Maybe 12 superhero-loving theatergoers might have survived. Maybe 20 first-graders could have lived full lives, and six teachers could have said, “I taught them.” Maybe — if it hadn’t been a time when people could purchase guns without limits on ammunition, without bans on assault weapons.
Maybe, in a coming time
Richard Hwang is a student at Athens High School.
