From the shooting earlier this month at the Pentagon to the one last month at the University of Alabama, the question has been raised whether stricter gun control laws would have prevented these tragedies.
There is even a movement in the state of Washington to label handguns as military style assault weapons — if they hold more than 10 rounds per magazine — and banning them altogether. Would such laws be productive or counterproductive to the overall safety of modern society in the United States?
The Second Amendment states: “ ... The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Like several other laws that were written hundreds of years ago, they evolve and become revised time and again to match the current climate.
The Second Amendment was written so that the people of the colonial era had the right to defend themselves from an invading force or to defend their livestock from the wild animals. They also used their arms to hunt for food.
We now have a regulated military to defend us from foreign invaders. The Second Amendment was not written with the idea that the United States would become more of an urbanized society, where the right to bear arms would be reinterpreted to a point that weapons would be used to defend ourselves from each other.
Although the reasons for the need for the Second Amendment have changed, it is still a valid argument that there is a need.
Let us examine the Chicago model.
In 1982, Chicago officials passed a ban on all handguns. Studies have shown that the crime rate has only increased since the ban. The youth homicide rate exceeded Los Angeles last year.
How can this happen when the city has strict laws against the ownership of guns?
When a Draconian law such as the ban on handguns is enacted, it only affects law-abiding citizens — the gun owners who had to pass a criminal background check to legally purchase and register their weapons. They either had to turn them over to the authorities or move out of the city limits.
In theory that would be great. Everyone in your utopian city would not have a gun. However, no such place exists.
An individual who has the intent to use a firearm during a crime is more than likely not going to register their weapon or turn it over until they are caught. A loosely translated Chris Rock lyric is pertinent to this situation, “Don’t go to parties with metal detectors; sure it feels safe inside, but what about the people with guns outside? They know you don’t have one.”
This is actually one of the main arguments to overturn the ban on handguns in Chicago at the Supreme Court. Law-abiding citizens legitimately feel defenseless against home-invasion crimes. Criminals in Chicago know that these people are not allowed to own handguns, so they become an easy target. The only hope of a potential victim is a rapid response from law enforcement or simply the mercy of their intruders.
Drawing from the example of prohibition, strict laws on gun ownership would only facilitate a criminal element in obtaining firearms. A black market would be created for stolen guns, or legally purchased weapons resold to unqualified owners or gunrunning from across state and international lines. This is no different from any other law in the United States — people will always find a way to circumvent the law or flat out break it.
Current gun control laws are as effective as they can be in the state of Washington. Perhaps a psychological evaluation should be attached to the criminal background check to weed some people out.
To answer the initial question of this column, stricter gun ownership laws would not have prevented the recent tragedies at the University of Alabama and the Pentagon.
Chris Chau, a recent graduate of University of Washington, is an assistant records officer with the Employment Security Department. A member of The Olympian’s Diversity Panel, he can be reached at sideoutchau@gmail.com.
