The Tragedies of Vegas

Mourners place candles, flowers, and signs at the site of the Las Vegas Shooting

Every week in my blog posts I have attempted to take the time to discuss controversial topics. I choose to do this because I believe that shying away from these discussions only leaves people ignorant and prolongs the issue. The more we talk, the more we can learn from each other and hopefully reach an agreement that is best for everyone. 

This week, in reverence for the poor men and women who were so brutally mowed down in Las Vegas, I will try to be brief, succinct and to the point.

Every time there is a mass shooting, the United States quickly descends into a panic, and everywhere talks ensue about whether or not America is strict enough in her gun laws. Overwhelming statistics are given. I saw one CNN article estimated that almost 12000 people had died from gun related violence this year alone. Obviously, the solution many people suggests are stricter laws. They suggest the elimination of automatic weapons, military weapons and sometimes ask that we overturn the Second Amendment all together and remove guns entirely from the American people.

Here is where people make a mistake though, and its completely understandable that they do, because events like this are just so completely traumatic to us, who wish to see nothing more than the United States lead the world into an era of peace and prosperity for our children to grow up in. 

When the founding fathers wrote up the constitution, they had many things on their minds. Obviously, they wanted to create a democracy, a system of government that in no way modeled the totalitarian English monarchy that had just overthrew. In order to guarantee the longevity of this government they gave the people ways to ensure that their government remained one elected by the people. One thing they did was establish terms. Of course, every government office is subject to a term limit, and if you do not do what the people wish, when your term is up you are not re-elected and someone better takes your place. In the spirit of this, Dwight D. Eisenhower limited presidential terms to only two, ensuring that the government would remain an every shifting power to preserve the democracy and interests of the people of the United States.

Another thing the founding fathers did was establish the second amendment. This would guarantee that, even if a man in the government or the military decided to attempt to assume all the power and turn the US into a dictatorship, the people would always have the means necessary to protect their rights and democratic country. 

The minute you take away the weapons from the people of the United States is the moment we are in more danger that what any one crazy man could ever put us in. What happened in Las Vegas will be a tragedy that will not be forgotten certainly in my lifetime. However, the tragedy that would be the ending of democracy within the leading free country on our planet would be much worse. If you think that the US government is incapable of being infiltrated or corrupted and could never fall apart then you are naïve. Our government had done shameful things in the past and all it would take is one man to overthrow it if the people were all unarmed. Sadly, that's all it would take.

So in a time of mourning, lets not point fingers and say, "Country fans who voted anti gun laws deserved to die at the whims of a crazy man." Lets not politicize the thing and demand sweeping gun laws which would put us in more danger than we are in now. Instead, lets work together and find the warning signs. There had to be some. Lets work together to figure out how to stop these things from happening again. The answer surely doesn't lie in making ourselves more vulnerable that we already are.