This Is How You Can STOP Gun Violence

Tragedies like Gun violence are on the rise and happening all around the country, and at an accelerating rate. Wherever you look it seems like there’s news about another shooting. When these things happen, the gun debate always comes up. What forms of gun control measures should we put in place? Is any type of restriction on our constitutional right to bear arms?Show more

What can we do about it all, and how do we get out of this terrifying mess that we’ve created?

Size of the Gun Industry

Americans have been steadily buying more and more guns every year since the year 2000. In 2021, 18.8 million guns were sold in the US. In 2020, it was 21.5 Million. 2021 may have seen a slight dip, but 2022’s on track to be the biggest year yet.

But who benefits from all of this? The National Rifle Association-the NRA- is the biggest “gun rights” activist group in the country, and they’ve managed to convince any politician that’ll sit down with them to ensure guns stay in as many hands as possible through donations.

The biggest politicians in their pockets are exactly who you think they are.
Marco Rubio got $22,000 from the NRA last year. Rand Paul got over $30,000. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Gun Violence In The US

Let’s look at the data we have on the issue, and see where we’re at.
45000 people died in 2020 due to guns. But is there anything that correlates with higher gun violence rates? It doesn’t affect the whole country equally. Certain states have it worse than others.

Let’s compare the states with the highest gun death rate, as measured by gun deaths per 100,000 people, to the gun ownership rate, measured by the number of gun owners per 100,000 people. Mississippi, the state with the highest gun death rate per 1 Hundred Thousand people, is also the state with the seventh-highest gun ownership rate.

Louisiana is second in gun death rate but not top 10 in gun ownership.
Then there’s Wyoming, third in the gun death rate and second in the gun ownership rate.

Alaska is sixth in gun death rate and third in gun ownership rate.
From this, it seems clear for the most part, that in areas where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths.

Stopping The Gun Violence

It’s simple, we restrict the number of guns available in the hopes that fewer guns mean fewer gun deaths. Not so fast. This brings up the big question of whether or not restricting guns is an infringement on our constitutional right to own a gun.

The constitution

The second amendment states as follows:

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The amendment states that there is a need for a “well regulated” militia, so that not just anyone can get a gun.

There is definitely a way to have meaningful restrictions without infringing on our right to bear arms. There is a reasonable solution here.

Other countries have a culture of gun ownership that was able to find a way to balance safety with security. Canada, Great Britain, and Australia have all passed some form of gun restrictions that had the effect of reducing gun deaths. Those are not countries we wouldn’t classify as “free”.

Preventing Gun Violence

There have been gun control measures introduced to combat the gun violence that’s been plaguing our society for decades.
Expanded background checks.

Expanded background checks would remove the loophole that private sellers don’t need to perform background checks. It’s not required if the seller doesn’t have a gun selling license. They also want to increase the background check window, which is currently 3 days, to be longer since all the states and the feds have their own systems, and the background check must go through all of them. As to what the new time limit would be, that’s up for debate.

Raising the purchase age to 21.

Raising the purchase age to 21 would just make the age the same for purchasing handguns as it is for rifles, shotguns, and alcohol. Handguns are normally associated with gun violence, while the others are associated more with hunting and have legitimate purposes other than self-protection. That is the reason for the discrepancy.

But that understanding of rifles doesn’t include assault rifles, which are rifles, but can be used for… non-hunting uses…like shooting up a school.
It makes sense to make the age of purchase for a weapon be the same across the board, between handguns and rifles since the danger they pose can be similar.

What can we do?

Well for one, we can vote these people who are stonewalling any and all gun control measures out of office. We can donate money to organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety to help fight against these politicians. If you enjoyed this video, hit the Like button and comment below. Let us know what you think on the issue and whether or not you agree with expanding some gun control measures.