The Costs of Discussion

The facts are that a disturbed couple, with murky motivations, ambushed and killed two police-officers and a civilian.  Every gun involved, it appears, was legally owned.  Every time a tragedy like this happens, it necessarily raises the normative question: should this have happened?  Are the alarmingly high incidences of disgruntled workers going on shooting sprees, gun murders, and school shootings simply the inherent costs of the right to bear arms protected so furiously in our country? 

Supporters of the right to bear arms will inevitably tell us not to overreact to one incident.  They will spin the discussion towards quasi-philosophical debates for or against the statement, “guns don’t kill people, people do”.  They will talk about the right to protect your home.  They may try to exploit the incident into making a case for more ubiquitous gun ownership to prevent these incidents in the future (although the one gun-toting civilian in this situation paid for his right with his life).  But in the end, they never want to address this more fundamental question head on, “are incidents like this an inherent cost of the right to bear arms?” 

This is my greatest frustration with this debate (and most political debates in general, for that matter).  Why does it devolve into an “either, or” discussion?  Why must any change to the status quo of gun control in this country be framed as an attack on the fundamental right itself?  Why is any adjustment looked at as a slippery slope down the path of overturning the second amendment? 

I don’t believe that incidents like the Vegas shooting are an inherent cost to the second amendment.  I think the right to bear arms can exist in a world where Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Beltway Sniper attacks, and so many others didn’t occur with such numbing regularity.  I am imminently unqualified to speak about how to bring that world into reality.  But, I am qualified to say none of us want to believe that Vegas is a necessary cost of our freedom.  If none of us believe that it’s necessary, why can’t we have an honest exploration of how to prevent it?

Anonymous,  Stanford University Graduate.

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