With school shootings becoming a recurring nightmare that strikes fear into the hearts of students, faculty and parents alike, we are tempted to collectively place  blame on something that can be controlled. It gives us a sense of hopefulness due to the fact that we who value human life wish to convince ourselves that we can put a stop to this epidemic by taking away what seems like the only means by which all of this chaos is possible. We could be wrong. The crux of the argument in favor of increased gun-control almost always focuses on the notion that passing legislation that makes it more difficult to legally obtain a firearm, will somehow prevent those who do not operate within the bounds of the state or federal law to kill. Call me pretentious, but it seems ridiculous that this argument has remained relevant after all of these years of gun-control debate. 

When congress passes legislation of any kind, who does said legislation directly affect? It affects those who operate within the constrictions of the legislation passed, also known as “law-abiding” citizens and only those “law abiding” citizens. This logic is shown in the 2011 Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual statistical report in which California had the highest number of firearm-involved homicides while also having what are considered the most strict gun-control laws in the nation. According to Fox News columnist John. R. Lott, only .00078 percent of conceal-carry gun owners were “responsible for a gun-related death,” and it becomes very clear that gun-control laws do not affect criminals. Obviously, placing larger restrictions on firearms for American citizens who qualify to own a personal firearm surely would not cause murderers and other violent criminals to experience some sort of epiphany where the value of human life is suddenly made known to them. If the federal or state government were to infringe the second amendment right of the American people by placing restrictions or bans on firearms, a potential mass-murderer is not going to throw up his hands and say, “Well, I was going to murder the students of a sixth-grade classroom today, but I just do not have the means or motivation to do it anymore. And, I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling politicians!”

 This is real life, not Scooby Doo. A person could potentially go out, purchase several common household ingredients from a few department stores, build a homemade bomb and show up to little Suzie’s classroom with nothing more than a backpack, capable of killing dozens of innocent people. Of course, that is assuming he would not be able to get his hands on several firearms illegally via the same methods that Americans have been importing, buying and selling illegal drugs for decades with nothing more than a few setbacks to show for it. Because he or she does not care about the law just as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev did not care about the law when they set off two bombs during the 2013 Boston Marathon killing three and wounding more than 260.) They did not need a gun to cause pain and suffering on a massive scale. 

If passing legislation that makes firearms more difficult or impossible to obtain legally is still on the table as a viable solution to murder on both the minor and massive scale, I suggest also banning Christmas-lights as those were used to create  fuses of the bombs used by the Boston bombers. Where there is a will to inflict harm, there is a way to inflict harm. Simply put, the problem with murder and other violent crimes in the United States is not due to firearm availability, but rather a problem of the human heart. If politicians and activists spent half as much time and money devoted to promoting the value of human life, we would not have to experience the murdering of innocent people. This can be prevented by education and mentoring young men and women so they don’t fall victim to gangs, drugs and prostitution and funding the recognition and treatment of mental-instability and mental-illness throughout our nation’s schools and workplaces. If we begin focusing our attention on the roots of the problem, we will not fight over which branches to cut. The last branch we need to cut is the one that secures the right for our law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, their families and their country with a firearm. I will end this with a quote from the late ex-marine and gun-expert John Dean Cooper in hopes that it solidifies my point and that you find his words enlightening: “The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.”