With gun rights being a serious topic of recent debate, it’s easy to ramble on about whether one believes that gun control is a good idea in today’s world. Instead, I’m going to give up a bit of ground here and focus on those who maintain an ultra-literal interpretation of the 2nd amendment.
People who simply can’t stand the idea of their assault rifles being taken from them seem to have generated the hypothesis that guns are necessary — even though guns kill people, guns also kill people that kill people. Apparently, all it takes is a “good guy with a gun” to neutralize evil in the world.
This idea that your average Joe with a firearm is all it takes to defend people from an armed attack is one of very little practical merit. The average Joe is not trained to deal with the high-stress situations armed attacks present. Let us also take into account that even those who are supposedly trained for instances in which a firefight might occur often have lapses in their own judgment — police shootings of supposedly armed people and military on civilian casualties are just a few examples.
Mentally and emotionally, most people are not made for these sorts of situations — no matter how able they think they are. Even people who think they’d make wonderful soldiers are not able to act when it comes to the point where they must make the decision to take the life of another human.
Not only are most people qualified psychologically, but gun-wielding vigilantes simply aren’t necessary. According to a recent FBI study, only about 3% of all civilian-ended armed attacks are stopped by armed civilians.
Sure, it might be fun for some people to play cowboy in real life, but there is a reason our nation has evolved from the gunslinging justice system of past times — we simply don’t need the additional chaos.
Unlike the codes of the justice system, we can’t standardize human opinion and emotion. This, I believe, is one of the major reasons the “good guy with a gun” proposal falls short of being a practical solution to reducing gun-related violence.
To put it simply, Americans wouldn’t be able to come to a uniform decision on who their “good guys” actually are. A person who dislikes Islamic Americans might believe some crazed gun-wielding individual who fired off at a group of Muslims was doing good, just as strongly as someone might believe that someone who stopped a robbery was doing the same.
Armed people looking to stop crimes would only add to the air of uneasiness already plaguing the nation. When they act, they would only bring more chaos and confusion that this chaotic and confused nation truly needs no more of.
Jordan Marcell is a 19-year-old studio photography and linguistic anthropology sophomore from Geismar, Louisiana.