It’s hard to even know where to begin. What actually plagues
America with respect to (lack of) gun control, terrorism, xenophobia,
homophobia, and bigotry is so complex and dense you can’t accurately reflect on
the problem in a brief social media post or an internet meme. So I will systematically
lay out my position on why we are the mass shooting capital of the world, and
what can be done to change this, in this post. If you are allergic to long
written assessments or things like facts and common sense – you needn’t read
any further. I’d also like to clarify the difference between OPINIONS and FACTS
before I continue, because Americans have an awfully hard time distinguishing
between the two; an issue that fans the fires of conflict that are currently devouring
our society. Here are the definitions of both words, lifted directly from our
friend Dictionary.com:
Opinion: noun
1) A belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete
certainty 2) A personal view, attitude, or appraisal.
Fact: noun
1) Something that actually exists; reality; truth 2) something known to exist
or to have happened.
So to recap: facts exist outside of human perception and rely
on logic and investigation (using the Scientific Method) as proof of their
credibility. Opinions cannot be proven by their very nature, and are often
driven by a person’s religious/cultural/socioeconomic background which informs
their personal philosophies. For instance, it is my personal opinion that Game of Thrones is
currently the best show on television. It isn’t a fact – there’s no
qualitative/quantitative data that can be used to prove this (award show
nominations and wide spread favorability do not count) – that’s just how I feel
because of various qualities the show has that I appreciate. This, however, is
a fact: since the shooting at Sandy
Hook Elementary on 12/14/2012, there have been 998 mass shootings in America (‘mass
shooting’ as defined by Gun Violence Archive as 4 or more deaths not counting
the shooter)[i].
Another fact: in 2016 alone, there
have been 133 mass shootings (gun deaths/injuries unrelated to
massacres are plentiful also: in 2016, 23 accidental shootings committed by toddlers have happened. TODDLERS.). The
reasons behind these shootings are many, but all have one thing in common: a gun permitted the (male) perpetrator to
commit these crimes and acts of terror based on whatever fucked up ideology
they were acting upon.
The
following is my opinion; therefore
you can either agree or disagree with me. I think that in a civilized society,
guns belong strictly in the hands of people who are serving in our armed
forces, to be used against foreign or domestic aggressors. I think without the
constant threat of guns in civilian homes, the police and other law enforcement
agencies should also be without firearms when serving the public – but allowed
to carry defensive weapons to protect themselves and citizens, much like the
police today in the United Kingdom. Obviously SWAT teams would be armed if the situation
called for this – also like in the UK. I also believe that guns are a cowardly
weapon. Guns are a lazy way to take lives: it shouldn’t be so easy to kill a
room full of people in less than 5 minutes. Violence should always be a last
resort in any and every conflict, PERIOD. Proponents say guns “level the
playing field” so that the physical prowess or numbers within an army don’t
matter as much in the resulting battles, but all it really does is dehumanize
the opponent. Killing should be something we feel the weight of; to serve as a
deterrent from resorting to war. There is no dignity to be found in mowing down
anonymous enemies. There is no honor in killing at all, even in skilled hand-to-hand
combat. If you know me well, you may think my beliefs hypocritical because
pretty much every movie I love is awash with gun violence (as well as
hand-to-hand combat): The Matrix, every Tarantino movie ever made, Hot Fuzz,
etc. But those are works of fiction, and I live in a very real world – watching
a cathartic shoot out in a film is not something that I want to emulate or
observe in real life. At all. EVER. A world with a minimal amount of violent
bloodshed is a lofty ideal, to be sure, may be even a wholly unrealistic one:
but that’s the sort of place I’d like to live in, and raise my son in. Why
would any reasonable person disagree with that?
Now, my
opinion is just that: an opinion. It
counts for nothing when compared to the law regarding US citizens’ right to own
guns, as protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Any gun-zealots
who are currently foaming at the mouth can relax, because as much as I’d love
to see guns disappear from the face of the earth, that will likely never be the
case, and it would be futile to try and force my vision on 308 million American
citizens (if only the deplorable Pro-Life nut jobs trying to ban my
constitutional right to have an abortion shared my pragmatism). Some very
important background on the Second Amendment, and the context in which it was
formed. Post-American Revolution, the Founding Fathers were very much concerned
with the accessibility of firearms due to the tumultuous English history concerning
that subject. Monarchies during the Tudor through the Hanover periods (roughly
1500CE-1800CE)were super fickle: sometimes the King (or Queen) and Parliament
were at war with each other, sometimes they were at war with the Common people
of a specific religion, and depending on their whims, the average (male)
citizen might have been forced to participate in the local militia, or they may
have been harassed and abused by the King’s standing army of professional
soldiers, or they may have been stripped entirely of firearms to prevent an
uprising – the British Isles were rife with conflict. A philosopher/political
theorist that was greatly admired by the winners of our independence from Great
Britain was James Harrington, who is most famous for his theory of classical
republicanism. Harrington believed that a democratic nation formed by popular
election was safest against foreign and domestic threats when the population
was an armed one. He strongly discouraged the use of a standing army because
inevitably the army is used by the government to oppress the people and
maintain power. If the citizens are armed and there are no professional
soldiers, the thinking was that political power would remain in the hands of
the people, instead of in a tyrannical government, as was often the case under
European Monarchs. There was also a perceived advantage from an economic standpoint;
a nation run by a monarch or an aristocracy tended to favor not having armed
citizens for fear of an uprising, and sometimes had to resort to hiring foreign
mercenaries to handle their conflicts, which was expensive. In a democracy with
armed citizens (who are in theory satisfied with their governmental
representation), the public was thought to be more willing to come to the
defense of their nation should a conflict arise.[ii]
So when
the Constitution was first being drafted, the Founding Fathers were really more
concerned about the power of Congress to raise a standing army vs. assembling
state militias – not with assuring that any Joe Schmo could have a gun just ‘because.’
There was a lot of fear with respect to a standing army that we really can’t
relate to today considering our national pride in all the different branches of
our Armed Services (our current military is a “standing army,” if you hadn’t
guessed by now – funny how things change over time, huh?). There was a lot of
squabbling that took place about this (won’t bore you with details about the
Federalist view vs. the Anti-federalist view), but it was basically unanimously
believed that the greatest danger to the new republic was a tyrannical
government, and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population.[iii]
It was decided that the whole of the (white male) population would comprise the
militia of the United States of America. The framers of the Constitution felt
that by protecting each individual's (again: white males) right to arms they
were preserving freedom and empowering the people to resist tyranny and
preserve the republic.[iv]
Oh, how
the times have changed since 1791. This traditional idea of the nation-wide militia
faded into history; state-based militia organizations were eventually
incorporated into the federal military structure we are more familiar with
today.[v]
But even though civilian Americans are no longer expected to use their
household guns for militia duty (the US Armed Services obviously provides all
munitions to their soldiers) – we’re still allowed to keep guns because the
Second Amendment is vague enough to ensure this. TRUTHBOMB: I don’t actually
have a problem with suburbanites having a pistol for home protection, or for a
rancher to have a few rifles to ward off wild animals and the like. If you live
in Bumblefuck, Wyoming on a farm and there are coyotes or mountain lions
threatening your livestock, I have no problem with you using a firearm to protect
your animals - presuming you aren’t an abusive felon with a documented mental
illness and a history of violence or links to terror organizations. Breaking
and entering is still a common crime and if you live in a non-gated community,
I agree that if you want to have a hand gun on premises to fight off someone
who has broken into your home to protect your family, it is your right and you
should be able to do that - presuming you aren’t an abusive felon with a
documented mental illness and a history of violence or links to terror
organizations. If you’re an outdoorsy type and you have the proper hunting
licenses and such, you should be allowed a firearm to hunt - presuming you
aren’t an abusive felon with a documented mental illness and a history of violence
or links to terror organizations. You
see what I did there? I agreed that under the rights provided to US citizens
under the 2nd Amendment, people should be able to have basic
firearms – until something about their actions or psychology disqualifies them
from ownership.
Take it
easy, libertarian zealots. I can hear you ranting about how “gun control is
unconstitutional” all the way over here. I call bullshit. Let’s take a look at
the exact wording of the 2nd Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and
bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It is clear and unambiguous that the first
part of this right references REGULATION: “A well regulated Militia.” Much like
the 4th Amendment, which protects our right to privacy, the document
recognizes the authority of the government to conduct reasonable searches and seizures.[vi]
Gun control has existed since the founding of this country. No joke. You think
there weren’t laws on the books forbidding slaves to learn how to use/gain
access to an arsenal of firearms? You think there weren’t laws about minimizing
concealed weapons in public spaces?[vii] In truth there have been many restrictions on
the books since the early 1800s, and ever since the first cases challenging
these gun controls for supposed violations of the 2nd Amendment, courts have
repeatedly held that “reasonable” gun laws - those that don’t completely deny
access to guns by law-abiding people - are constitutionally permissible.[viii]
Based
on the fact that US History has proven that gun control is considered lawful by
the courts when the laws are “reasonable,” I feel as though banning military-grade
weapons from civilian usage and installing intensive background checks and
waiting periods to purchase guns is a reasonable restriction, in light of the
fact that a known wife-abuser/homophobe/racist/ISIS sympathizer/FBI watchlist
member by the name of Omar Mateen bought an AR15 with no trouble and proceeded
to murder 50 people and injury 53 others in an Orlando nightclub this weekend. AND
THAT WASN’T EVEN THE FIRST MURDER COMMITED WITH A GUN THAT WEEKEND IN ORLANDO.
Sadly,
this event – the most deadly mass shooting in American history – is just the
latest in a trend of mass murders committed by disaffected twenty-something
males. I am disgusted by how the media and many public servants have reacted to
this tragedy. Nobody expresses my sentiment better than Samantha Bee did in a
segment on her political-comedy show, Full Frontal. If you have the time, I
would watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t88X1pYQu-I
The gist of it is: many Americans feel similarly about the
issue of gun control; that a gun that can fire 18 rounds per second has no
place in the hands of a civilian, that no one with a known history of domestic
abuse or mental illness should be able to have access to a firearm and to
ensure this you should have to pass a background check and/or obtain a license,
etc. But because of special interest groups like the NRA – who has a financial
investment in the firearm industry, and has effectively bribed and paid for the
loyalty of the Republican tea party opportunists who make up the majority of
our Congress – no such restrictions have been passed OR EVEN ALLOWED TO BE
BROUGHT UP FOR DISCUSSION, not even after a deranged creep murdered 26 people
– 20 of which were children – at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Nowhere
does it guarantee in the Constitution “the right to bear a gun that can kill
dozens of people without even having to stop to reload.” In 1791, the guns
available to the common citizen were the guns you would use if you were called
to serve in the militia, or to hunt that night’s dinner– a long rifle or a
musket.[ix]
Those things fired ONE MUSKETBALL AT A TIME: and the reload time was somewhere
between 2-3 minutes! Our gun control laws are so pathetically outdated we don’t
even require someone to have a license buy a gun: but you need one to cut hair
or buy a car legally. You don’t even need to show a form of identification to buy a gun
in some states: but you have to show State ID to cast a vote in an election in
some of those very same states! There need to be stricter laws put in place to
prevent homicidal monsters from gunning down innocent people literally every
other day in this country. The right to
own any piece of equipment classified under the label “gun” should not trump
the right of every citizen to not be in danger of being gunned down while they
attend religious services, or have a night out at the movies or a nightclub, or
attending/instructing school.
A
related stinking pile of bull crap that I would like to address is the
assertion that “gun control only punishes law abiding citizens because
criminals will find a way to break the law.” Another TV show host who perfectly
expressed my sentiment on this topic is Trevor Noah of The Daily Show, who had
this to say in response to the Orlando Massacre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RolEI5n4Jxs
By claiming “gun
control only punishes law abiding citizens because criminals will find a way to
break the law” you are also asserting that after September 11, 2001, we
shouldn’t have bothered establishing the TSA to screen flyers /expanded the
no-fly list/tried to prevent any other homicidal terrorist fanatics from high
jacking airplanes to fly them into buildings, because it’s positively inevitable that hijackings will take
place – we shouldn’t even attempt to stop
them because frisking flyers and searching their bags is a violation of their
right to privacy. It is exactly
analogous. Fox News cultists always detract from the issue of mass
shootings by claiming the real problem is “radical Islam” (ignoring the fact that
996 of the 998 most recent mass shootings were committed by white non-Muslim males), that the real
issue is terrorist ISIS sympathizers. To be clear: Islamic fundamentalism is a huge problem in the world and I
will address religious fanaticism later.
When addressing the issue of combating ISIS, Noah stated “removing their
weapons dramatically decreases their ability to hurt us.” This is a factual
statement – without the weapons necessary to kill us, ISIS is just a hateful
ideology. Rightwing talking heads on Fox News don’t see a connection between
gun laws and terrorism – but religious fundamentalists sure as hell do. An
ideology is unable to hurt us until some fanatic picks up a weapon, like an
AR15 or an AK47 or an M16, and uses it to cut down non-believers. ISIS, and
their cohorts and predecessors Al-Quaeda are not ignorant of this fact: they
are well aware that here in America, guns are as prevalent as baseball or apple
pie. And please please PLEASE don’t start an argument that “taking away our
guns makes us a more attractive target for terrorists” – WE HAVE ACCESS TO ALL
THE GUNS WE CAN POSSIBLY WANTAND IT HASN’T DETERRED SHIT. There is NO
evidence that having more guns in the public sphere has decreased instances of
violence in the US. I would argue it has encouraged
violence because again: as far back as 2011, Al Quaeda[x]
was preaching to potential jihadists that America is a great place to wage holy
war because of the easy access to and availability of guns. To have every Dick,
Tom and Harry wandering the streets with a gun tucked in his pants because “it
may deter an act of violence” is an invitation to witness a murder during every road rage incident, every drunken challenge
to an idiot’s masculinity, every confrontation between a parent and a soccer
coach, and so on and so on.
Here
come the Machiavellian devil’s advocates who will argue that “your desire to
get rid of guns is understandable because of massacres and so forth, but you’re
operating under the assumption that people follow rules and the fact is they
don’t: so without guns, we let criminals run our lives, and if not criminals,
than the corrupt government. We need guns to protect ourselves blah blah blah.”
Let’s talk about those criminals, shall we? YES: Large-scale backdoor arms
deals are a huge threat to the world: they provide weapons for oppressive regimes
to use against their own citizens, they arm separatist warlords to rebel
against unsavory governments, they arm terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al
Quaeda and the Taliban and the IRA (that’s right! Terrorist organizations can
be white!), they arm thuggish biker gangs and gang-bangers. This is a problem, and the governments of the
world have done a pretty shitty job reining in this thriving black market. More
needs to be done to reduce the amount of arms and ammunition being manufactured
and sold without any regulation whatsoever, more needs to be done to prevent
unregistered gun/ammo factories from popping up on the down low, and
confiscated illegal arms should be melted down and destroyed to get them off
the street for good. But that won’t solve that fact that it is often
LEGITIMATELY ELECTED GOVERNMENTS that arm fledgling resistance movements in
foreign nations! Remember the takeover of the Crimea in Ukraine two years ago?
That was backed by the Russian government, despite what Putin likes to claim. Remember
way back when the CIA supported the Taliban in Afghanistan during the Soviet
invasion in the early 1980s?? Talk about something coming back to bite you in
the ass. So am I saying that corrupt governments are really the truest threat
to the regular people of the world? Were the Founding Father’s right? YES- but not in the way that they assumed! The standing
army of the US government isn’t the most directly dangerous entity to regular
everyday Americans –the lack of action and
oversight from the legislative body is what really endangers the common
citizen: because the immediate physical threat we face is from EACH OTHER. Additionally, our
over-zealous use of the judicial system which disproportionately threatens the safety
of minority populations in the US does not address the root of our troubles- it
simply punishes offenders without questioning why it is that people steal, or rape, or kill.
This
brings us to my next point, which is that the reason we are the mass-shooting capital
of the world is mostly because we refuse
to recognize that a problem can be multifaceted and complex, with many
factors at play. Humans tend to want to simplify things to be able to
understand them better, but often in a situation - like the one we find
ourselves in - they are NOT simple. It’s NOT just one thing causing a problem. Trevor
Noah correctly states in the above video clip that the most recent massacre
perpetrated on American soil is a problem of both (lack of) gun laws and terrorism. I would go even further
and add “religious/cultural-based intolerance of homosexuality” to that list of causes.
Omar Mateen should have been unable to purchase any type of firearm because
1)He had been under investigation by the FBI TWICE for being linked to
terrorist websites 2)he was a known domestic abuser. But because in Florida
there are no laws that require gun sellers to research criteria like this
before making a sale, nor is there a database for them to access this
information about customers– he was able to buy an AR15 from a seller perfectly
happy to take his money (ironically, from a former NYPD officer who is an
anti-Muslim bigot). Not all gun dealers are irresponsible or without a
conscience: we now know Mateen was turned away from another vendor because he
seemed suspicious. But clearly not all gun sellers are concerned with the
public’s wellbeing; just being able to make a profit and uphold the 2nd
Amendment.
Another
factor that has been downplayed greatly in the press has been the fact the
nightclub that was chosen by Mateen was a gay club. His ex-wife has made statements
that Mateen was homophobic and she believes that was because he was gay
himself. The bartender at Pulse, the site of the massacre, has said that Mateen
was a frequent patron. You could say that is because he was scoping the place
out for his crime, but honestly? He was probably a man trapped in the closet
because Islamic culture is intolerant of homosexuality. Scratch that: American culture is intolerant of
homosexuality. With laws being passed in the South that are policing the tiny
transgender population’s usage of bathrooms and other “religious freedom” bills
pushing for the right of employers to be able to fire LGBT people because of
their closely held religious beliefs, is anyone really surprised that this attack
happened? This act of murder was as much an expression of self-loathing as it
was an execution of jihadist Islamic fanaticism.
Let’s
address the fact that the large majority of mass shootings that take place in
America are un-related to Islamic terrorism. Terrorism, by the way, is not
unique to Islam. Remember the Oklahoma City Bombing? Prior to 9/11, this was
the most prolific terror attack on American soil and it was perpetrated by a
domestic terrorist; a white man and Persian Gulf War-veteran who wanted revenge
against the federal government for their bungled siege in Waco, TX two years to
the day before the bombing, and for his belief that the federal government was
encroaching on American’s 2nd Amendment rights.[xi]
He was also known to be a white supremacist sympathizer – basically the exact ideological opposite of an Islamic
terrorist. Let’s remember the 9 innocent church goers who were murdered almost
exactly a year ago in Charleston, SC when a racist white guy joined them at
their bible study and then opened fire and murdered them all because they were
black. This miserable bastard later told a law enforcement official that his
intention was to start a race war. Let’s remember Sandy Hook Elementary in
December 2014, when over 2 dozen people were senselessly gunned down in an
elementary school by a mentally unhinged pedophile whose enabler mother
regularly purchased him firearms thinking “they would give him confidence.”[xii]
These are only two examples, but the motives here were vastly different: the
only common denominators were that the killer had a homicidal goal and a gun
with which to carry out this goal.
Now we
can talk about religious fanaticism. I will stress that acts of violence
inspired by religious fanaticism are not exclusively the domain of Islam:
Christianity had them beat in numbers waaaaaaaay before the Islamic conquests
of the Middle Ages. The religious fanatics that get the most press these days are
Islamic, there’s no disputing this. Since 9/11, the idea of what our enemy looks
like changed from the Cold War-era “Socialist” to the Middle Eastern jihadist.
There is no denying that Islamic terror is a problem in nations all over the
world; most recently France has had a number of gun massacres and attempted
bombings, and Israel is perpetually at war with Hamas-backed Palestine. But
Christians regularly shoot and kill people because of a homicidal ideology too
- they don’t usually garner the same level of national attention because their
body counts tends to be smaller and for some hypocritical reason it isn’t considered
an act of terror to shoot up an abortion clinic or the sidewalk outside of a
synagogue – that’s “hate crime” territory. How we define a crime is semantic
legalese: by using violence to end the lives of others because they don’t conform
to your brand of fanaticism, you are both a terrorist and a hate crime
perpetrator in my understanding, if not the judicial systems.’ For more
information on the difference between “hate crimes” and “terrorism” and the
hypocritical inconsistencies about when these terms are applied to crimes,
please read this article, it’s short but insightful: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33205339
Here’s where I enter really dangerous territory: organized
religion is a haven for blood thirsty demagogues to spew their philosophies of
hatred to large groups of people under the guise of spiritual fulfillment.
Because the US Constitution guaranteed the right to freedom of religion in the
1st Amendment, it is extremely difficult to confront hatemongers
because they hold the title “Pastor” or “Bishop” or “Imam” or “Rabbi.” We
challenge literally every other type of authority in this nation on the regular
(reports of people attacking police, school teachers, and their own parents are
quite common) – but if they’re toting a Bible/Torah/Koran, we can’t challenge
radical fundamentalists of any religion because religion is viewed as something
inviolable that should never be
questioned. Yes, the majority of religious people are not running around
committing mass murder with their legally owned AR15s – they are law abiding,
respectful citizens, who practice what their religions actually preach: peace. But for disaffected socially alienated men (and
sometimes women – women are often the perpetrators of suicide bombings) who are
looking for something to belong to, a radical idea that speaks to their
feelings of isolation and victimization and bigotry is a fast track to mass
murder, made that much easier by the proliferation of guns in the US. Radical
ideas can come from sources other than religion, of course. Nazism is an
ideology not based on religion, but it preaches hatred towards anyone who isn’t
a blond haired, blue eyed person of European descent, with a specific niche
hatred of Jewish people.
Those
who are most susceptible to ideological radicalization are often those who
suffer from some sort of social anomie or untreated childhood trauma. This
brings me to my next point: many people who perpetrate mass gun murders are disgruntled
or sociopathic; having slipped through the cracks of the mental health and
education systems un-checked into adulthood. Let’s face it: our mental health
infrastructure is a joke. The only people who seem to get treatment are people
who have already attempted suicide, and that’s only if they were treated at a
hospital with connections to mental health facilities. We stigmatize the
concept of mental illness as a culture, dismissing the importance of mental
health with demeaning biases about spiritual or inner strength, and we only ever seem to
care about it politically until the aftermath of one of our many mass shootings[xiii]
– when we bring it up to deflect the discussion from gun control to our poor
mental health system because clearly the shooter was “insane” or “disturbed.”
It is impossible to say with any certainty if any of the perpetrators of the
past 998 mass shootings would have still committed their murders if they had
been treated for their social ills – perhaps they still would have been
radicalized by whatever ideology inspired them to commit mass murder, perhaps
not. While I agree that our society needs to make mental health checkups a
component of basic healthcare and to make psychological treatment easier to
seek/afford, this won’t prevent fanatics from gunning down innocent people
because we don’t consider racism, homophobia, xenophobia, or bigotry “mental
illnesses.” They are SOCIAL illnesses, which can only be addressed by
aggressive education and accountability for why hatred based on skin color or
ethnic origin or sexual orientation is not only wrong, it is DANGEROUS.
To sum
up: taking assault rifles out of the hands of civilians or limiting the amount
of firearms/ammunition that they can purchase or closely monitoring the sales
and manufacture of firearms won’t prevent all violent attacks from happening:
it will only reduce the number of mass murders committed. If there is a will,
there is a way to harm another person or a group of people, whether it is with
a knife or a bomb or a pencil. But when you have a problem that is so prolific
and widespread, the answer should not be “don’t change anything” or even worse
“make guns easier to buy.” That’s like saying you should prevent a fire by
putting more flammable objects in the vicinity of a flame or prevent drowning
by encouraging people to swim in un-guarded water – it’s asinine and logically
absurd. Enacting stricter gun control is
only the first step to making our country a safer place – while that is
being accomplished, we can also work on the festering wounds that actually
inspire gun violence: social alienation, stigmas about mental health, poor
mental healthcare systems, hateful ideologies like racism/homophobia/xenophobia,
unchecked fanatical religious movements, corrupt elected officials, and
unchecked bribery lobbies like the NRA. To accomplish this we will have to vote
the corrupt lackeys that compose our current Congress and elect officials who
actually care about the lives and safety of their constituents, and to do this
we need to educate ourselves about the social, political, and economic issues
that affect our everyday lives and vote for representatives that have a record
and a platform worth standing up for. If we followed the simple precept of “Don’t
resort to violence when faced with conflict unless you have to defend your life
or the life of someone you love,” we could concentrate our efforts on the
things that really matter, instead of squabbling over what the real cause of a
mass shooting was.
**** Note – I’ve cited sources here in an informal way
because this was not a paper being submitted for peer review; my opinions are
my own and I tried to give credit to the rightful source when bringing up facts
or news articles/videos.
[iii] http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/89vand.pdf
[iv] http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/89vand.pdf
[vii] Cornell,
Saul (2006). A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of
Gun Control in America. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0-19-514786-5. OCLC 62741396.
[ix] http://www.nramuseum.org/gun-info-research/a-brief-history-of-firearms.aspx
[xi] Michel, Lou; Herbeck, Dan (2002). American
Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Tragedy at Oklahoma City. HarperCollins.
ISBN 0-06-039407-2.
[xii] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/26/we-already-know-what-adam-lanza-s-real-motive-was-at-sandy-hook.html
[xiii]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGY6DqB1HX8
