Thoughts From a Gun-Lover's Daughter:

When I was a little girl, I used to sit on my dad’s lap and play the most violent shoot ‘em up computer games. My hand would be on the joystick and together we would shoot and kill hundreds of monsters that exploded into blood and gore and a pile of bones on the pixilated screen. I adored my dad and I adored those lazy Sundays playing Doom with him. When I was a bit older, he took me to the real shooting range. Before I entered fourth grade, I could hit the bull’s-eye of a gun target at 25 yards. I was a tiny girl, but I was a mean shot with a .22 handgun.

Thus, I was raised to be the gun-loving daughter of a vehement NRA member. And while my dad loves target shooting, he never hunts. He is harmless and even-tempered. But he loves guns. And I loved guns because they strengthened our bond.

Despite my childhood, I am a fervent supporter of gun control. The argument that “people who kill people, not guns” is plausible; but I would argue that guns make killing easier. The FBI reported that firearms executed two-thirds of homicides and one-half of suicides in 2011. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health reported statistical evidence that wherever there are more firearms there are more homicides. Violent crimes are often committed out of passion and opportunity. Thus, if guns are easily accessible, then crime is easily perpetrated. Building a cumbersome wall around dangerous opportunity is vital to reducing crime. The most determined criminal may resort to other means, but if violent crimes can only be accomplished through intricate planning, the average criminal will be deterred.

Moreover, the argument against gun control hinges on the Constitution. The Second Amendment—the right to bear arms—is the crutch on which the entire anti-gun control argument leans. But why? The Constitution is not canon and so it should not be treated as such. The Second Amendment was written in 1791; certainly times have changed since our forefathers drafted those words. Also, if there is consensual agreement that bearing arms is a human right, it must be noted that human rights are still subject to stipulations. Even our right to free speech comes with an asterisk on slander and libel. Gun control regulations, like mental health background checks and restrictions on the types of firearms, do not mutilate our founding fathers’ vision for a free country.

If we count the number of massacres in our country beginning with the tragedy at Columbine and end with the most recent at Sandy Hook Elementary, the numbers are astounding in relation to the rest of the developed world. When we compare the United States to countries that have similar cultures and comparable levels of security, like Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, our murder rates are off the charts. The difference is their laws; it is either impossible or very difficult to own firearms in these countries. However, it took devastating shootings for these countries to institute gun laws. In Australia, a massacre in 1996 that killed 35 people was the final straw. Within weeks, its government passed gun reform laws that banned assault weapons and tightened licensing. And the laws worked. Firearm homicides in Australia have dropped by 59 percent from 1995 to 2006. I ask, what magnitude of massacre will induce the United States to reform its laws?

There is a plethora of studies and counter-studies and counter-counter-studies that argue statistics back and forth endlessly. However, instead of politicizing the argument, we need to take off our blinders and realize there is a problem. The United States has the highest rate of mass shootings in the developed world, a murder rate that is 15 times that of other wealthy countries, and 2012 saw the highest number of shooting causalities in decades. And in none of these cases was there a civilian who fired back.

If an infectious disease were ravaging our country’s children, the public and the government would do everything in their power to stop the epidemic. Even if extreme religious groups who believed only in faith healing were protesting modern medicine, the CDC and every top research university would disregard and scorn their protest and continue to look for a cure. The faith healers would have a right to their belief, but society always has a greater right to protect its people. A cure would be found and given to every child in the country. Should not it be the same case with gun control? Guns are killing children. The status quo is failing. We need further restrictions. We need it to be extremely hard to buy a gun so that sane, pacifist people like my dad can still enjoy his weekend clay pigeon shooting, but people like Adam Lanza never harm anyone again.

--- An article submitted and printed in the January issue of Brigham Young University's student run paper, the Political Review.