On Thursday night, an as yet unidentified man was found dead
in Sterling, Virginia from a gunshot wound. According to the Loudoun County
Sheriff’s Office, the killing does not appear to be random.[1]
And so it goes, another shooting death in Virginia. What is
just as sad about this killing and the sparse media attention that it has
received is that were it not for the recent shooting in Connecticut at Sandy
Hook Elementary School[2],
this ‘story’ may have been tucked away even further in the day’s notable
stories.
Beyond the immediate tragedy of losing another individual to
senseless gun violence, Virginia and America as a whole has a real problem with
gun violence that has been ignored for too long.
When the issue is discussed the discussion about ‘gun rights’
is usually divided by the mainstream media into proponents and modifiers of the
2nd Amendment right to bear arms. Of course, there are many
different viewpoints that have entered the public discussion over gun rights in
America.
But the fact of the matter is, if we are to believe public
opinion polls[3],
Americans really like their guns and tend to assign more of the responsibility for
gun violence to the individual and not the gun itself. For my own part, I tend
to agree with this position.
When it comes to guns like assault rifles, the issue of gun
rights gets a lot murkier. What exactly is the purpose of an assault rifle? Besides
seriously harming or killing another individual, there doesn’t seem to be
another purpose.
Because of questions like these, Americans have had to
balance the belief in the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms with what
is truly beneficial for society. The discussion, up until the present, has not,
however, been a substantive one where answers have been found.
It is up to all of us as citizens of the U.S. to enter the
public discussion over Federal gun laws and make a decision about where we want
these laws to be and deal with the consequences. As a country, we have
consistently refused to face the issue of gun control in a definitive way. There
is no better time than now while the public is focused on the issue. Otherwise,
we need to ask ourselves how many more gun-related deaths it will take for us
to finally talk about gun control in a meaningful way.
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