No Need to Ban Assault Weapons

In the wake of the horrific murders at the Sandy Hook school in Connecticut, America has been deluged with calls for ever-more-restrictive gun-control laws, and that’s understandable. It’s natural to think that’s the solution if you don’t know these measures have been tried and have always failed.

I think they just ban assault rifles just on the way they look. It isn’t right, they fire only one shot with each pull of the trigger, like a revolver or the cowboy style lever-action rifle used by John Wayne. Semiautomatics have been around for more than 100 years. President Teddy Roosevelt hunted with a semiautomatic rifle, as do millions of hunters today. However guns don’t kill people, people kill people. More people are killed with fists and feet than with rifles of any kind, and semiautomatics constitute merely a subset of rifles.

However gun owners should take programs that teach safe gun storage and gun handling. Over a half-century, the number of gun accidents resulting in death has fallen because of education. All gun owners should lock and hide every gun they own.

For instance arming good people does, in fact, reduce crime. But banning certain types of firearms, or the loading devices, does nothing to stop mentally ill people and criminals. People should get background checked very well before purchasing a gun, to make sure they have no mental illness.

In other words we all want to do something. But it is foolish and wasteful to return to a policy with a clear record of failure. We shouldn’t have to suffer because of physcos.