To control or not to control guns

By Kienan O’Doherty, A&E Editor 

Dear President Trump, it’s time for the United States to put more limitations on guns.

Yet another shooting happened recently, this time in the small county of Sutherland Springs, Texas. Twenty-six people were killed when Devin P. Kelley opened fire in the First Baptist Church of the small community.

And yes, it is, in fact, a situation about guns.

Kelley was able to buy a semi-automatic weapon despite a troubled history that included escaping a mental health facility back in 2012. Put simply, gun laws are not regulated enough, nor that strict.

In an opinion article written on Forbes by Larry Bell, he said he thinks that we have lost hope and it has become too serious.

“So would tougher gun laws make a big difference? Consider that some of the most restrictive bans in the country didn’t stop 52 public school students from being fatally shot during the 2009-11 school years in heavily gun-controlled Chicago,” Bell said.

“No, real solutions must be a great deal more complex, and a whole lot less politically correct to talk about, than adding simplistic, knee-jerk, ‘feel good’ gun regulations. Like addressing the sort of cultural expectations and ethical values we instill in our children and youth, for example.”

How many more shootings will it take? Another mass shooting? For this time, the editorial board at the New York Times reports that Congress hasn’t done anything about the most recent shooting.

“Republican leaders in Congress do nothing,”
according to the Times’ board. “Or really, so far they’ve done the same thing they have always done: offered thoughts and prayers. Soon, they will surely offer warnings not to ‘politicize’ a tragedy by debating gun controls that might prevent such mass killings from happening again.”

When Obama was in office, any time one of these shootings occurred, he was quick to comment and support the victims affected. Now, our president, who has a reputation on blaming national security risks on anything in sight, doesn’t comment on victims at all.

It’s a matter of restricting the purchasing of weapons or forbidding civilians from possessing them at all. Simple as that.