Gun Control is Not About Saving Lives

By Matthew Etzel

Politicians push for gun control to get votes, not to end gun violence. They play into a narrative that’s simple and effective: less guns equals less gun violence. This notion grossly oversimplifies a complicated issue and is utterly wrong. 

Laws don’t work on lawless individuals.

One of the foremost issues with gun control is that it tends to only affect law-abiding citizens. When new gun restrictions are passed, only good people will oblige. People with ill intentions, on the other hand, have a tendency to not follow the law. Effectively reducing crime ultimately comes down to strong enforcement and addressing root causes. Words on paper don’t change the ways of violent criminals. 

Are laws supposed to work like that?

Here are a few illegal activities: murder, theft, human trafficking, and assault. These result in people getting hurt or dying. You get in trouble by doing or attempting to do these things. This makes sense so far. What about simply owning an illegal firearm? This is where things get confusing. 

What exactly is the owner doing wrong? Is it assumed that they will hurt someone in the future? Gun restrictions are special in the way that you don’t have to be a danger or hurt anyone to be at odds with the law. 

Why are some firearms illegal anyway? Don’t they all do effectively the same thing? Rifles with a suppressor or a barrel under 16” are illegal without a special license and the purchase of a tax stamp. A rifle with no suppressor and a 16” barrel, on the other hand, is totally fine. Both can have the exact same internals, fire the exact same round, and take the exact same magazines, yet the legality is totally inconsistent. Such is the case of numerous other gun laws, where the legality is determined by appearances and false perceptions of what makes one gun more “dangerous” than another. (Any gun is dangerous in the hands of a psycho. Any gun is safe in the hands of a smart and safe person.)

There are at least 466 million guns in the U.S.

Supposing that gun control is valid in any way, does anyone have ideas on how to enforce it? Consider ghost guns and 3D-printed guns, which are impossible to trace. Suppose that maybe people with ill intentions will hide their weapons from the government while law-abiding citizens become disarmed. Recent studies by the RAND Corporation and the National Bureau of Economic Research found that gun buyback programs in the U.S. “have done little to reduce gun crime or firearm-related violence” (NBER).

A Cheesy semantics argument segues into a legitimate point.

If you take away “gun” from “gun violence,” you still get “violence.” Whoa. Violence exists for reasons other than the sheer existence of guns. Violence in the U.S. is traceable to far more relevant issues like mental health decline, drug use, and poverty. Access to firearms has been a constant in this country’s history, but the aforementioned factors have grown significantly and done immeasurable damage to the safety and unity of communities. While it’s technically true that the magical disappearance of all guns would end gun violence, division and unrest would manifest in another way. And we’re left with violence. 

I wholly understand viewpoints in favor of gun control. I know that we all want to see an end to tragic mass shootings and gun violence in the U.S. We’re getting played though. I hate to be a debbie downer, but according to the FBI, 103 people died in mass shootings in 2021. That same year, 132 people committed suicide per day. Every single death is tragic, but from a pure numbers point of view, we have far worse problems than guns. But banning guns is a lot easier to advertise on a campaign than fixing everyone’s mental problems. 

Effective gun control is a total pipe dream. The politicians who advocate for it just want your votes so they can get into office and retire with a fat pension, then let the next generation of politicians perpetuate the same problem. 

This is a topic I care a lot about and I feel I haven’t done it justice in this puny article. I encourage everyone to read more into the issue. The more I learn about gun control, the less I agree with it. In middle school I was very anti-gun, and I even gave a presentation in social studies where I quibbled about the NRA as if it were a terrorist organization. I’ve since learned that the NRA is way weaker than you think and that I was just as wrong about everything else.