Commentary on :
I agree with everything said here. Before I get into my
statements, it is important to note that I personally believe there should be a
stricter regulation on guns, thus, may bring in some bias into my arguments.
Firstly, like Bill said in his first paragraph, guns give
people the capability to kill many people within a short period of time. When
asked why people choose to have guns, the 2nd Amendment comes into mind, giving
people the "right to bear arms". In this aspect, people are thinking
in the idea of constitutional originalism. This is an issue, because if we
think about what kind of weapons they had when the constitution was created,
those "arms" they were allowed to bear were muskets, inaccurate and tedious. A
quote from the general Alexander Suvarov roughly says "the bullet is an
idiot, the bayonet... a fine fellow". This essentially sums up the
effectiveness of these ranged weapons during this time. People owned weapons
back then because they were only useful in self-defense. In Bill's argument, he
says that American's own weapons for their self-defense as well. The only issue
is nowadays, people are owning much more deadly weapons such as machine guns
and semi-automatic rifles for their "own protection".
I think Bill did a great job at implementing his Taiwan
example. Even after 1 whole year of preparations, the man "killed four
people and injured 24 others". This is the most recent massacre in Taiwan,
which occurred in 2014. When compared to the United States, the most recent
massacre was this year in 2016, where 50 people died in the Orlando night club
shooting. The difference between the amount of people killed is huge here. Of
course, one can argue there are fewer people living in Taiwan, so the frequency
may not be as high but it still does not answer the question of why more people
are killed in the United States. That answer is because of the easy
accessibility to guns. All big massacres in the US involve guns. The guy who
killed 50 people at the gay night club was able to kill that many people before
law enforcement were able to react.
These kinds of weapons should only belong in a war zone,
used by the military or even the police. Even then, we've seen how horrible war
is, and how many lives these weapons have taken. It should not even exist
within a civilian environment. If we jump back to Bill's Taipei Metro Massacre
example, if the U.S. had a similar law that did not allow its citizens to own
guns, and if a similar knife attack occurs, we might be able to simply outrun
or even overpower the assailant, instead of being shot and having nowhere to
hide.
I think what Bill should have included that can improve his
argument was to add a solution, or acknowledge the difficulties in creating
one. One can say that all we have to do is take away all the guns owned by the
citizens of the United States, but that is much easier said than done, hence
all of these debates over gun control. We can’t forcibly take these guns away
because it may provoke further violence and protests, especially since so many
Americans own guns. The truth is, there is no simple solution to this problem.
The founders of the Constitution allowed for gun ownership, and that has stayed
all the way to the present day. If we want to remove guns, then we will have to
slowly and quietly do so.
Ultimately, Bill states that "the best way to stay away
from danger is use common sense", and this probably the best advice to
hold onto in a world were anyone can own guns.
