Guns in America

There is an issue in which South Korea far surpasses the USA. Guns. Gun control. Gun-related deaths. Etc.

This issue has been on my mind for a long time but Ask A Korean!'s most recent post encouraged me to write this posts.

I don't really have much to say, except for the fact that gun use in America is WAY out of control. WAY WAY WAY out of control. It pains me to know that many many deaths could be prevented simply by making it harder to own guns. Just give me hand guns, that would solve a lot of problems. Let the NRA have their hunting rifles. Change the constitution, I don't care. Just get these damn guns off the streets.

Someone I know, her son, got paralyzed because a stray bullet went through a wall and hit him. He is twelve. Recently, a man was taken from his wife and two kids when a simple robbery turned ugly. I believe, with all my heart, that he, along with hundreds of thousands of other men and women, would not be dead if gun ownership was not a right in America. Gun ownership should be a privilege given to few.

Some say that guns have nothing to do with the crime rate... that people who want to kill will kill even if guns are harder to come by. It's hard for me to buy the argument that shooting a gun is the same as stabbing someone with a knife. Having done neither, I can only imagine. In my imagination, shooting a gun is not the same as stabbing someone with a knife, or bludgeoning someone to death with a hammer. The sheer fact that it's so EASY to take someone's life by squeezing a trigger, that fact should be enough to make it harder to own guns. 

The NRA seriously pisses me off. National Public Radio recently aired a story. I learned that it's illegal to create any kind of electronic database to trace or track guns. There are warehouses, full of papers, that trained personnel have to go through manually, to trace any guns. Manually. By hand, one by one. Seriously? Seriously. This maddens me to no end. Politicians, shame on you for letting that one pass. I mean, isn't this the sort of thing that leads the American people to equate politics with shady shananigans?

I'm sure that the proportion of crazy people in Korea and in America are similar. There will always be sociopaths. Getting rid of guns will not prevent all homicides. Remember? There can still be stabbing and bludgeoning. There are lots of "yes, but"s that are mere excuses to let this problem go on and on... I seriously cannot believe, that such an advanced society like America even has this problem. This issue leaped out at me during graduate studies. The answer is SO clear. So clear. I have no idea why this problem still exists. Is it really because of the constitution? I know NRA is a part of the explanation but it really is shocking to think that one lobby group could have so much power.

Do we need a Moms against guns campaign or what? Famous celebrity, take this one on PLEASE!

 

- Mary