Why Gun Control Is a Fraud

One of my best friends taught me how to load a shotgun about a month back. He placed the giant, heavy firearm in my hands and guided me through each step, placing my fingers on the safety, the trigger, and the belt. Once he walked me through the motions a few times, he stepped back and let me try it myself. I placed the bullet into the shotgun and cocked it. Each time I did it correctly, he would smile at me and say, "Now, you have a loaded firearm."

A chill went down my spine every time he said it. I was fascinated, for reasons that I still have yet to figure out. I continuously loaded and unloaded the gun, trying to commit the motions to memory. I turned the thick bullet over and over between my fingers, subconsciously slipping it into the gun and pushing the fare-end forward. Now, you have a loaded firearm.

I slipped my fingers back and forth over the gun, lifting my head up to finally speak after being oddly speechless for a few moments. "So I could kill someone with this?" I asked stupidly. He laughed and nodded, explaining the lethal power of the shotgun I was holding. That's when it hit me. I could kill someone with this, not the gun itself. If I took the firearm I was holding and placed it on the floor, it couldn't do anything. Guns are powerless without being in someone's hands. They don't have the capability to pull their own trigger.

People are notorious for blaming just about everything under the sun in order to avoid casting the blame on themselves. I scroll through social media after (sadly) yet another mass shooting, and see signs with variations of "A gun killed my son." While my heart breaks for the affected families and my anger grows toward the evil and chaos in this world, I can't help but feel the slightest bit of irritation. I find myself shocked at the fact that people will whole-hardheartedly blame an inanimate object for their struggles. A man-made object that can only be lethal if someone is controlling it.

Society is too quick to blame the "thing" instead of the person holding the thing. Take knives for example, knives are used for a number of things, cooking, hiking, hunting, camping, sharpening. But when a knife is put into the hands of the wrong person, all of sudden, this thing becomes a danger to someones life, or the cause of someone's death. Ironically enough, I never hear a word about "knife control."

When someone uses a knife as a lethal weapon, people cluck their tongues or shake their heads as they scroll through the dozens of articles covering the bizarre, brutal story. And afterwards, knife manufacturers shrug their shoulders and continue to make them, lining them on the shelves of every Wal-Mart, hunting, and other common goods stores. And there the knives sit, waiting for the next cold-hearted killer to swipe them across the self-checkout scanner, pay their usual fare, and walk out without a single suspicious glance in their direction.

This also goes for other household items that could be lethal: bleach, electrical cords, outlets, space heaters, ropes, belts, even pens. You can use just about anything to hinder or take a life. But since guns aren't a household item, since they're not something you can buy in bulk at your local Costco, all of a sudden, they become the one inanimate object that acts alone.

Guns are designed to hurt and/or kill, that is their only purpose. It is the reason they were created. In times of war, we use variations of a firearm for a defensive strategy. In times of peril and chaos, we entrust these lethal weapons to people who are trained to protect us. So one must wonder: if society is so willing to let a firearm roam free as long as it's benefiting them, then what becomes of this weapon the instant that someones tries to "control" it?

I'm all for the marches, the parades, and the protests, but I believe that they'd be more effective if we stopped pushing for a change, a control, that could potentially hurt us all. Someone loads the gun, someone pulls the trigger, and someone decides when and where a life will be taken. A gun cannot do that on its own. It's not a living thing.

I am not a political figure, nor can I even begin to provide the proper advice on how to stop gun violence. But I have a slight idea of where we could start. Stop blaming the thing, blame the one holding the thing. An object can't be evil, but the person controlling the object can be.