Making Good People Helpless Does Not Make Bad People Harmless

I was reading through the comments on a local story talking about what causes mass shootings and what can we do to curb gun violence where I read, “making good people helpless does not make bad people harmless”.

This really struck a chord with me and I don’t know if the person who typed it in the comments came up with it themselves or if they saw it somewhere else, but thanks to Ru E for sharing it.

This is probably one of the best summaries I have seen on why more gun control won’t solve the problem. The problem with more gun control is that it only affects the people who obey the laws. Gun bans will not make the criminals give up their guns, bans will only serve to strengthen the black market further just like prohibition did for alcohol in the 1920’s.

Even if we could get 100% of all guns from everyone (law abiding and criminals alike), we would still see mass violence. Instead of guns the perpetrators will turn to home made bombs, cars. knives, bats and so on.

• In 1995 two men killed 168 and injured over 680 more with a rented truck full of fertilizer.
• In 2013 two brothers constructed a pair of bombs from pressure cookers that killed 3 people and injured 265 others.
• In 2016 a man launched a mass stabbing attack killing 19 and injuring 26 people.
• In 2017 a man drove a rented truck into cyclists and runners over the course of a mile killing 8 and injuring 11 more.

There are many more examples of mass attacks that did not use a gun at all to kill or injure the victims. Since most mass shootings seem to happen in “gun free zones”, it stands to reason that the only people who follow the rules are not the criminals intent on breaking them. If it is already against the law to kill a person, why do these people still kill? We need to get to the underlying reason why people are committing these crimes and work on fixing that. Banning guns is only a band aid to a much larger problem.