Books, not bullets, part 2

Back in 2018, I attended the March for Our Lives event at the Capitol. This week, they had another rally. It wasn't as well publicized this time around. But yesterday, after running up North Canyon, I decided on a whim to attend.

Unlike last time, yesterday's event was inside the Capitol. There weren't as many people. But even though it was less publicized, there was still a good turnout. I went straight to the Capitol, which was sparse at first. But then the main group made their way inside after marching from West High. I joined in some of the chanting: "No more silence! End gun violence!" and "Vote them out!" They had various college students and activists giving rousing speeches. And one of the members of the band AJR (who sing "come hang, let's go out with a bang!") gave a speech, since they were in town on their concert tour.

I purposely wore a BYU hat and a UofU shirt to show this issue applies to everyone.

I just simply can't believe that we still have such lax gun laws, and that any attempts to tighten them are met with irrational people making all sorts of strawman arguments and making it seem like guns are the most important things in the world.

I have not heard a single convincing argument from those who oppose tougher gun laws. Not a single one:

• "Criminals don't follow laws. If you outlaw guns, only criminals will have them." Well, first of all, this is a true statement. But it is a strawman argument. We don't want to get rid of all guns. We just want to make it harder for the bad guys to get them. Additionally, the Uvalde shooter bought his gun legally. The Buffalo shooter bought his gun legally. The Parkland shooter bought his gun legally. And all three of those are under twenty-one. Why would we make it so easy for them to buy them?
• "The Second Amendment says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed! Gun control is unconstitutional!" How convenient for you to ignore the first part of the amendment, the part about the "well regulated militia." "Well regulated" indicates there must be regulations. "Militia" indicates that there is a different purpose behind the Second Amendment than simply "Anyone can own any kind of gun they want." Especially since the high-capacity assault rifles used in these mass shootings didn't exist when the amendment was put in place.
• "Maybe we should arm teachers." I suppose if the teacher in Uvalde had a gun, she might have been able to prevent the shooting in that one particular instance. But there are a number of reasons this is a terrible idea. We already expect teachers to be babysitters, counselors, peacemakers, etc., in addition to being educators, all at low pay. For them to be safely trained in guns and de-escalation is just another burden that is beyond their pay grade. If they don't get the training, it is unsafe for them. Additionally, if all the teachers had guns, I can easily imagine scenarios when a student manages to get a hold of the gun (whether wrestling it from a teacher, or a teacher accidentally leaving it unlocked). Or I can imagine a teacher having a mental health crisis using their gun to injure the very students they are supposed to protect.
• "We already have background checks!" Great! Let's make them universal!
• "But if we have background checks, then the government will take away everyone's guns, and then people won't be able to defend themselves if the government comes to strip them of all their rights." This sounds like a far-fetched, hypothetical event that could maybe, possibly, sometime in the future happen under certain circumstances. But the mass shootings and other gun violence we are seeing aren't a hypothetical. They are literally already happening right now. They are reality. We need to fix the reality before we worry about these absurd hypotheticals. And after January 6, 2021, I am more concerned about an armed population trying to take over the government than I am about an armed government trying to take over the population.
• "The answer to guns is more guns!" We already have more guns per capita than any other nation, yet we have a disproportionate amount of gun violence among developed nations. If it were true that more guns were the answer, we would already be the safest.
• "It's not about the guns. It's a mental health issue. Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Well, people use guns to kill people. Could they use knives? They do sometimes, but mass stabbings are far less fatal. There's a reason the killers choose to use guns. People have mental health problems in other countries too! And, if the people who blame mental health were out there providing viable solutions to mental health, I would one hundred percent be on board with their changes. But they seem to use the "mental health" argument to deflect it away from the guns, then don't do anything about mental health either.
• Mike Lee wondered if "fatherlessness" could be to blame. But Kevin Shafer, a BYU sociologist who studies fatherlessness, shared this graph about fatherhood in developed nations, showing that that's not the problem.

When I was a teenager and didn't know much about politics, I assumed that Republicans were the ones that wanted gun control, because it just seemed so logical to me and I thought Democrats were usually wrong.

I hope I can help change people's minds about this topic. The far-right has cultivated a dangerous, misleading rhetoric surrounding this issue. We need to depoliticize it and get some commonsense solutions. I literally don't see any reason for any civilian to own a weapon that is meant only to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible. I don't see the need to own a weapon that is meant not only to kill but also to absolutely destroy bodies, to the point that the remains are unrecognizable. 

At the Capitol, there was a booth where we could write messages to lawmakers. So I wrote one.

The rights of people to live, learn, worship, and shop are more important that the rights of 18-year-olds to own assault rifles. They just are. Period.

Thanks for listening!