Loren Tlobniar
Introduction to Ethics
F, 4
March 8, 2013
769 words
American Violence Violence in our country has come to the forefront of the social and political stage in recent months. Many different people have differing views on what causes people to be violent, or what even constitutes as “wrong” violence. No one can come to an agreement on the correct reach of gun laws and purchasing requirements. The thing that everyone seems to agree on though is that we should inherently be passive when it comes to choosing whether to be violent or not. Who says we’re not inherently violent? I believe the guns are what we need to control, because the people are already a lost cause.
If you really think about it without any sort of background or bias, we are a nation of violence. We are a nation of power, of rebels. We love having authority, yet we love to defy it just as much, if not more. It makes sense if you consider how our ancestors came to America. They rebelled against authority, and while the result was freedom, the cost was violence. African-Americans, for example, were faced with an even greater suppression and had to fight, often with violence, to gain respect, and ultimately, authority, in this nation. Even though this authority, or equality was gained, for the Patriots in the Revolutionary War, for suppressed groups of people gaining rights or achieving civil equality, or for their children, the violence never went away. Now examining the aforementioned observations, why is it so incredibly shocking to American’s that we are so violent? In my opinion, if you consider the “fight or flight” trigger, many of us would tip the scale on the “fight” side. To me, this disproves the arguments such as “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, because the gun was made by people, to kill people. That’s no different to me than saying “water bottles don’t hold water, unless someone puts water in it”. The intent of the utensil adds to the task as much as the user.
My problem with this thinking is that we do not advance in our efforts to form a resolution when we continue to fight the wrong fight. I believe we should accept that we are all inherently temperamental and able to use violence when triggered at a high enough level. I do not believe that analyzing the committer of the crime on a case-to-case basis will solve the question we have about violence. Therefore this argument points to the issue of gun control being the obvious and only effective way of deterring the amount of violence in our nation. It provides a direct and controllable source to set restrictions and laws on, rather than the vague attempts to tailor background checks and buyer restrictions.
The main objection to my argument is that we have the right to bear arms due to the second constitutional amendment, and that by increasing gun control violates one’s constitutional rights.