Opinion

Both sides lose in gun control

Virginia Tech shooting sadly used by opportunists

By Tony Reaves

Posted on April 23, 2007, at 12:00 a.m.

In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech University, the debate over gun control has lost its mind. Both sides are dragging out their old arguments and fitting them to the situation and both sound like nasty opportunists taking advantage of a horrible situation.

On the right, you have the people saying we should put a gun in the hands of every college student. This, of course, is so the other students could have shot him before he could kill anyone else.

This is insane for so many reasons it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s start with parties. College campuses become drenched with alcohol from Thursday evening until early Sunday morning. If I knew there was a single gun, let alone 100 at any given party, it wouldn’t matter if I had a gun. I’d rather risk the one-in-a-billion chance of someone marching in to shoot us than endure the two or three accidental shootings I’d no doubt see every week.

Never mind that they’re not suggesting giving teachers a tranquilizer gun, which would still stop a school shooting. Why not give every student a canister of knockout gas or a net? Why is it that the gun people always want to jump straight to murdering the bad guy?

Besides, by this logic, we’d decrease the risk of nuclear war by handing nuclear weapons to every world leader. If North Korea launches a nuke, everyone else can blow the country up before they can fire another one.

The anti-gun side is no more sane. Every time someone gets shot, it’s time to ban guns. This is often from the same people who like to quote Ben Franklin: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety,” is the exact quote, but it apparently doesn’t apply to the Second Amendment.

That isn’t to say the Second Amendment doesn’t need some scrutiny. It guarantees our right to arms, not guns in particular. Apply the nuclear weapon argument again. If we don’t allow people, not even our well-regulated militias to own nukes, then where should we draw the line?

The point is it would be overkill to completely ban guns. Even if you don’t have a strong attachment to living in an open society, there are way, way too many guns in America to outlaw them. In Great Britain, not even police officers can carry firearms except in special cases. It makes everyday life safer, but on the rare occasion that someone pulls a gun, all hell breaks loose. Can you imagine the police running for cover and calling armed backup every time a suspect was packing?

The Virginia Tech massacre is a horrible tragedy, and milking it for your pro- or anti-gun cause is at best tacky. Once all the facts are out, it might be useful to think about how current gun laws, university policies and other factors could be changed to increase safety. But we can’t do it at the expense of our basic civil liberties.

Tony Reaves is a fifth-year journalism and political science major .

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.