By Asish Samson
The recent school shooting in the state of Florida where an ex-student opened fire and claimed 17 innocent lives shook America to its core. The entire nation watched in shock as one grisly detail after another was revealed about the perpetrator and the victims in one of the deadliest mass shootings ever.

As soon as the news broke out many prominent Democrats, liberals and celebrities took to mainstream media and social media to bash Trump and his gun policies. Many of them shamelessly politicised the issue by calling out Republicans and the NRA and proposing stricter gun control laws and also banning guns outright. Some even claimed that Trump and Republicans had “blood on their hands”. While there are conflicting views and debates about this issue, in this article let us see how gun control doesn’t even come close to solving the problem.

1. Criminals don’t follow laws: A criminal by definition, doesn’t follow the law. Therefore, no matter how strict the gun laws are, a criminal could get a gun illegally. The gun control policies could never hope to stop a criminal from laying hands on a weapon. For example Chicago has one of the strictest gun laws in the country but, its homicide and gun related deaths are one of the highest in the country. Strict gun law states and gun free zones have some of the highest crime rates in the country.

2. It takes away protection from Law abiding citizens: The most effect the gun control laws show is on legal gun owners. These laws take away guns from legal owners and families who genuinely use them for protection. This leaves them vulnerable to attacks and unable to defend their families from a criminal attack. There have been many incidents of families and single parents defending themselves from burglars and other criminals using a legal gun. Here, the presence of the weapon neutralised the threat. This would not be possible with the kind of new gun control laws proposed or by banning guns. Instead if reducing crime, it would increase it.

3. Doesn’t serve the purpose: Let us imagine that gun control laws have been passed and are in effect. This prevents or regulates new guns being bought. But, still there are already more than 300 million guns in the US from previous years. To confiscate them would take years and achieving complete surrender of these guns is near impossible. Add to that, the kind of black market this would create for weapons and the amount of cash that would go to criminal enterprises. These laws would hugely profit them and make them more dangerous than ever with an unarmed general populace.

4. Border Control Problems: America has a severe border control problem. Thousands of illegal immigrants, tons of drugs and huge caches of weapons from cross the border every year. These weapons are then sold or used by local gangsters and other criminals. Some lf them are sold in the black market. No gun laws can prevent this from happening. Only strict border security and effective immigration laws can. Ironically, the same Democrats and liberals who cry about guns do not support border security.

All these problems along with many other factors show that gun control is not the solution. Rather, it is used as a tool for politics and virtue signalling. Blaming guns for murder is like blaming symptoms for the disease instead of the pathogen. The real problems are mental health issues, violence in media, lack of adequate security among others.