COMMENTARY: Is the right to bear arms causing more mass shootings?
The phrase “guns don’t kill people, people do” is a common expression that illustrates the idea that the person behind the gun does the killing and not the gun itself. Lately, it has felt like there has been shooting after shooting and sadly it feels like the norm.
There was the Santa Fe shooting in 2018, the El Paso in August, and the Midland/Odessa shooting a few weeks after El Paso, and that’s just looking at the state of Texas. Hours after the most recent shooting in the Midland/Odessa area, Texas legislatures passed a new series of firearm laws. As of Sept. 1, 2019, these new laws will continue loosening gun restrictions, which will make owning and carrying a gun even easier.
The new laws in place allow guns in foster homes, apartments, places of worship, on public school grounds, and to be carried without a license during a natural disaster.
House Bill 2363 allows foster homes to store guns and ammunition in safe and secure places for personal protection. The minimum standards require guns to be stored properly by putting firearms and ammunition together in the same locked location.
House Bill 302 bans homeowners and landlords of apartments and condominiums from prohibiting residents from carrying, transporting, or storing firearms and ammunition lawfully on the property.
House Bill 1177 prohibits residents from being charged for carrying a gun without a license to carry while evacuating from a natural disaster locally or in the state as long as the person is not prohibited by state or federal law from possessing a firearm.
Senate Bill 535 allows a licensed gun owner to legally carry a handgun in places of worship unless banned to do so by the property owner. This law comes nearly two years after the Sutherland Springs church shooting in New Braunfels.
House Bill 1143 states that school districts cannot stop licensed handgun holders from storing guns or ammunition in a locked vehicle on school property as long as the weapons are out of sight.
The laws are put into place for the safety of the public, but the question is, should we really be loosening our gun laws? If 36,000 Americans are killed by guns each year, is it worth it to restrict gun laws? On average, 35% of Americans are killed in gun homicides, 61% from gun suicide, and 1.3% from unintentional shootings.
States with the lowest gun laws have the highest gun rate deaths. This means more people die or are injured who live in states with weak gun laws. Some of the more liberally regulated states such as Alabama, Tennessee or Alaska where guns are lightly regulated have roughly four times higher rates than states such as New York, Massachusetts or Hawaii, which has some of the more stricter gun laws.
Since 2014, about 11,000 people have been killed by gun homicides and since the most recent poll in 2017 gun homicides have increased over 30%.
There are 4.6 million children living in homes where guns are stored and ready for use, causing the rise of unintentional shootings to rise. This causes concern because children have access to guns safes if the guns are not stored properly. Eighteen percent of gun injuries happen in the U.S. Out of the 18%, 1.3% are from unintentional shootings.
The majority of unintentional shootings involve people under 24 years old and typically involve someone their age. Living in a home with an improperly stored firearm can significantly increase the risk of death or injury from unintentional shootings. Having proper storage and knowledge on how to store firearms in the home is vital to staying safe and keeping everyone else safe.
Some states support firearm regulation as a necessity in aiding against gun-related deaths, but many states, such as Texas, do not stand by this. Because it has been proven that states with lower gun restrictions have more gun-related incidents, lowering gun laws in Texas is a step backward. Loosening gun laws has a negative connotation and should be reevaluated.
But then again, maybe going backward, say to the days of the wild west, isn’t such a bad idea. Gun laws during the old west were stricter than most states have in place in today’s time. Because laws were stricter there were fewer crimes in towns. For example, old west laws required visitors entering town to disarm either at the local hotel or sheriff’s office.
Carrying any kind of weapon, gun or knives, was not allowed other than outside the town borders for protection in the wilderness, and inside the home. The practice of checking your weapons in town started in the Southern states in the early 1800s. An 1840 Alabama court, in upholding its state ban, ruled that each state had the right to regulate gun control and that a state’s constitutional allowance of personal firearms “is not to bear arms upon all occasions and in all places.”
