During the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump stated their support for barring individuals on government lists from buying firearms. I knew this was Clinton’s position, as most Democrats seem to push for this, and many other gun control policies, but I was genuinely surprised that Trump agreed with her. He is, after all, the candidate with the endorsement of the National Rifle Association. The NRA should pull their support for Trump because no one can claim to support the Second Amendment and support such a ridiculous policy.
The very notion that the government can create a list of people who aren’t allowed to express one of their constitutional rights without due process is a pretty scary thought. It’s also a slippery slope. If the right guaranteed by the Second Amendment can be taken away for no reason, there is little to stop them from taking away another one of the rights secured by the Constitution such as the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of the press. Why wouldn’t the government be able to create a list of newspapers or magazines that can no longer publish articles?
You may think this is a crazy hypothetical, but in reality, there is no difference between the two. Freedom of the press and the right to keep and bear arms are both secured by the Bill of Rights, and we cannot allow the government to take any of them away without due process. Also, as with anything the government tries to do, there are many mistakes on these lists. Innocent people, including congressmen, celebrities and even toddlers, have found themselves on the no-fly lists for absolutely no reason.
Another popular idea among the media and liberals that seems to come up after every shooting is the ban on the “assault rifle.” However, how does one even define what an assault rifle is? The infamous AR-15 is often referred to as an assault rifle, but a Ruger Mini-14 Ranch edition isn’t, even though they are both semi-automatic rifles that use similar ammunition. The only difference between the two: One looks scarier than the other. We shouldn’t ban assault rifles then if they aren’t different from any other semi-automatic rifle.
Even if we did ban assault rifles, this would hardly help reduce gun violence. According to FBI data on murders from 2014, of the 8124 murders committed by firearms, only 3 percent (248) were confirmed to be committed by any type of rifle. To put that into perspective, handguns and knives were used in 5,562 and 1,567 murders respectively. Banning assault rifles may sound good politically, but it is ridiculous to believe this would have any meaningful impact on gun deaths in America.
However, I haven’t even discussed the original and most important reason that the Constitution specifically protects the individual’s right to bear arms: That is to keep the government in check. The founding fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence that they believed it was their right and their duty to overthrow a tyrannical government. I highly doubt we could have won the Revolutionary War and gained independence if the colonists didn’t have firearms. If you think that today is different and that our government would never abuse its power, I would urge you to consider what our federal and state governments have proven capable of: slaughtering Native Americans, creating Jim Crow laws that perpetuated hatred, placing Japanese Americans in internment camps, spying on all U.S. citizens and lying about it, killing American citizens without trials and secretly assassinating foreign leaders. Furthermore, the massive expansion of the size and scope of the federal government over the last century, along with the ever increasing role of the executive branch and overall disregard for the constitution necessitates our need to bear arms. I would like to make it clear that I’m not suggesting the government is currently tyrannical or that it should be replaced, but I am saying that the general populace has the right to be armed because of the threat of abusive government.
This is Part 1 of 2 of Correspondents Austin Robbie’s take on gun control in America. Part 2 of 2 will come out on Oct. 11.
