If you watch the news for just a few minutes each day in America, you’re more than likely going to hear news regarding a mass shooting, whether recent or in memory. In an effort to shine a light on the problems with purchasing guns in the United States, HBO developed a social experiment to try during Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. The episode focused on a 13-year-old actor who attempted to purchase things that are illegal for minors to own, like lottery tickets, pornography, cigarettes, alcohol, and a rifle. He only succeeded in purchasing one of the items on that list, and it certainly wasn’t the cigarettes.
No, you didn’t misread that last sentence. The 13-year-old was refused every item on the list, except for one. He was sold a .22 caliber rifle without showing any form of identification and without passing a background check. The boy made the purchase at a gun show, where the rules of firearm sales are essentially non-existent. Not only can a 13-year-old boy walk in to any gun show and buy a firearm without so much as a library card, but anyone else could do the same thing. The sad thing about American culture is that no one appears to think it is horrifying that a young teenager can acquire a weapon of death as easily as he can buy a pack of gum. Most people, in fact, tend to chalk it up to American values, as if it is simply a part of our culture that can’t be altered.
There is a large middle ground between repealing the Second Amendment of the Constitution and creating more comprehensive gun laws that prevent them from being so easily obtained. People often make the comparison between other products that sometimes cause death, like cars or prescription medicine. Why shouldn’t those things be banned as well, they ask. This is a ridiculous analogy, because cars and prescription drugs have other primary functions they are designed to perform. Guns, whether they be for protection or aggression, are designed to do one thing, and that is to cause damage and death.
The United States does not have to operate the way that it does under such lax gun laws. There are thousands of regulations in place to prevent certain individuals from buying things like alcohol, cigarettes, and lottery tickets, but those regulations aren’t preventing the law abiding citizens from obtaining those things. Likewise, there is no reason to fear stricter gun regulations unless you are one of the individuals who won’t be able to purchase a gun under the new regulations, and that only applies to criminals. That doesn’t mean they won’t still look for guns illegally, but if gun show sales were more thoroughly regulated as well, then the sources of illegal guns would diminish comparatively. There is a reason why America has one of the highest rates of gun violence in the world. It is because we have the easiest access to them. We, in this case, means every single person in the country, regardless of past offenses or age, as was proved in this HBO social experiment.
It is shameful that Americans place so many regulatory measures on other products in the moral grey area, like alcohol and pornography, and leave gun sales essentially unregulated. The lax laws at gun shows have created what essentially amounts to a black market of gun distribution. If anything, those responsible citizens who desire the freedom to own guns should be in favor of regulations that keep guns out of the wrong hands. Any other attitude toward the situation is a pure denial of reality.