Gun Control, and Why it's Pretty Important

     As a liberal I am generally not a fan of gung-ho, gun-slinging, conservatives shouting about "the guys with the guns make the rules" as the NRA has been quoted saying.  While I am pretty much always ready to get up on my soapbox and begin to speak about women's rights, when the topic of gun control comes up I usually make a few arguments about all the shootings that have happened as of late before going back to whatever I was previously doing.  However, recently I read an article that has made me realize that my soapbox is not just a place that stands to protect the rights of women, gays, and minorities.  Because gun control is a really big deal when you think about everything that's been going on currently.

     First you must understand that I am not some psychotic liberal who believes that all guns are bad, and that the military should be defending our country with plastic swords.  I am not ignorant, and I was not raised in a home where guns were looked at as mystical objects.  They were there, they were weapons, and they were used by the adult men.  And it is not as though there are not responsible adults who can be safe with a gun, and who can be trusted to use a gun maturely.  They are also irresponsible adults who shoot up gas stations and use guns like they think killing someone is no big deal, and this bad always outweighs the good.

     The problem with guns is that when a person carries a gun it gives them a power complex, a "holier than thou" feeling, that gives them more bravado and less brain, which is part of what leads to shootings such as Trayvon Martin's by George Zimmerman, and the recent one in which four teens were killed over "loud music."  But gun control will not also help stave off the enraged power-hungry, and racial-stereotyping who like to whip out a gun to prove themselves.  It is so much more than that.

     In places that are rife with street violence, getting some of the guns off the street would certainly cut down on the death rates.  Places like Oakland, Compton, and border towns that are struggling with poverty, gangs, and drugs, have some of the highest death and aggravated crime rates in the country, and although controlling the amount of weapons they have access to would by no means get all of the guns off the streets it would certainly limit the shootings that are an everyday occurrence in those areas.