The Argument for Gun Control: Let's Compare
The are three states of being when it comes to the level of regulation certain things have: Anarchy, Regulation, and Prohibition.
The right will have you believe that the left wants to have Gun Prohibition; "Why do you want to take our guns?"
The problem with that argument: It's a strawman. A strawman argument is one in which you tell us what we're arguing, and then you argue against it, rather than arguing against the argument we're actually making. "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument."
"Gun Control" is not "Gun Prohibition". It's "Gun Regulation".
Another common argument is that the left says Drug Prohibition doesn't work, so why are they calling for Gun Control? Hypocrites.
But hold on, that's argument makes the assumption that "Gun Control" is "Gun Prohibition", or that the left is arguing for "Drug Anarchy".
The common wish for drugs is to have them legalized, taxed, and regulated. The left calls for Drug Regulation.
So there's the left's position: We want Gun Regulation, and we want Drug Regulation. We want neither Anarchy nor Prohibition for either thing.
But to call for Regulation, we should first argue against the other options.
Let's start with Prohibition.
We have a history going against prohibition. The most popular one: Alcohol. The 18th Amendment of the United States Constitution established prohibition against alcohol, saying "Every day is now Sunday".
However, this led to a massive problem: The Mafia formed and became very powerful during this era. People were not giving up their alcohol.
The 21st Amendment was ratified in order to repeal this prohibition. We didn't go back to alcohol anarchy, however... we moved to alcohol regulation.
Moving forward, we later got another prohibition: Cannabis, Heroine, LSD, etc... a prohibition on drugs. And we're seeing the same pattern: The drug cartels formed and is becoming way too powerful.
Unlike the alcohol prohibition, we keep trying to double down on this. The President has even called for the execution of drug sellers.
Now, the argument against anarchy.
Looking in the past, why do you think we would have even considered a prohibition of alcohol in the first place? If alcohol didn't become a problem, do you really think they would have done this?
No. Why do you think we didn't even go back to anarchy for alcohol?
The fact is, things weren't fine during anarchy. The successful move was regulation.
People who lived during the anarchy of drugs will tell you that things weren't fine then, either. People were taking drugs and ruining their lives because of it.
Think about it, the reason we had laws passed at all for these things is because they were problematic.
Now, let's go to something else: The banks. The politicians want to deregulate banks all the time, but if you look to the past, there's a common pattern: Deregulation, Boom, and Crash. It caused the Great Depression and the Great Recession. So why wouldn't it cause yet another crash?
Banking Anarchy does not work, it crashes our country.
Let's talk about cigarette anarchy. Before regulations, cigarettes were actually marketed as healthy, even medicinal at times. They were targeted to young teenagers, even kids at times.
Smoking became a major problem back during cigarette anarchy. So, how did we address it?
We regulated.
Now let's go to cars: Do you really want anarchy on cars? Really? People speeding, not staying in their lanes, driving under intoxication?
Of course we want regulation on cars.
This also happens to be another target of people against gun control: Well, why don't you just ban cars, too? They can kill.
That argument would work if prohibition was what we wanted. The fact is, driving regulation does limit deaths on the road.
Now, the argument for regulation:
A common thing people seem to argue is that "people will still die with regulation, so why regulate at all?
Well, then why don't we bring anarchy to alcohol, drugs, banking, tobacco, and cars.
Of course that's a crazy idea, I mean, look at what happened back when we did have anarchy on those items. People. Died.
And that's the problem we're having on guns as well. We have a mass shooting every other day, not to mention tons of people dying every minute. We have thousands of people dying every year to a gun.
Regulation works on alcohol, it works on banking, it works on tobacco, it works on cars, and the rest of the world can even be looked at to show it works on guns as well.
Even with drugs it works. Over at Portugal, they used to have a massive drug problem, one of the worst in the world. How did they fix it?
They decriminalized all drugs. Even heroin and cocaine. Then, they moved forward to treat addiction as a medical issue.
If the right-wing argument held true, Portugal's situation would have gotten worse. But that's not what happened. Instead, they are now one of the best countries in the world when it comes to the drug situation.
Seriously, they went from one of the worst in the world to one of the best, by simply decriminalizing the drug.
Now, decriminalizing isn't the same as legalizing. Drugs are still illegal there, you just won't go to jail there for simple possession or usage.
And that's how it should be. Why should one go to jail because they put a substance in their body?
Regulation on everything has worked, even for guns in the rest of the world. But gun regulation would never work in America?
Under what metric? We have history to prove prohibition doesn't work, regulation does. We have the rest of the world to prove regulation works. For crying out loud, we have our own laws to prove regulation works.
We used to have a ban on assault-style weapons. And it worked back then. Think about that.
Every single piece of evidence leads to the conclusion that regulation does, indeed, work.
Simply Put:
Anarchy leads to tons of deaths.
Prohibition leads to cartels and tons of deaths.
Regulation leads to solving the problem.
Of course, it matter how we do our gun regulation. We have to do so in a way that doesn't violate the 2nd Amendment, while also lowering our gun deaths so it can be closer to even Switzerland.
As Always,
-Keep Exploring