Dillon Weber | Honest and reasoned debate

The recent guest column from the Penn Democrats executive board called to mind the horrors of violence in America and highlighted some of the saddest statistics our nation has to offer. PennDems made a strong emotional plea for what they called “sensible and meaningful gun control legislation.” That is why I was so disappointed to see the same old, tired suggestions: ban “military-style” weapons and restrict magazine size. This, PennDems would have us believe, will prevent tragedies like Newtown and reduce the horrifying number of violent crime deaths in our country.

Of course, they forgot to mention a few important points in their article. They forgot to mention that nearly all of those murders were not carried out with “assault rifles” — the subject of the proposed ban — but instead by small pistols capable of holding six to 10 rounds, weapons that would not be affected by an assault rifle ban or a magazine restriction.

For all the talk of “military-style assault weapons” the ban advocated for by PennDems is one which arbitrarily separates assault weapons from non-assault weapons based on how frightening they look rather than on how dangerous they are or how frequently they are used in crimes. In terms of capability, many of the guns targeted under the proposed ban are identical to the rifles millions of hunters use every year for large game. What do aesthetics have to do with reducing violent death? The term “assault rifle” and the designation of “military grade” are factually incorrect scare tactics used by people who do not know enough to tell the difference.

So please, let’s stop all this high-flying, save-the-children rhetoric surrounding gun ban legislation and start looking at the issues and facts at play. One key fact: numerous studies, including one by our own Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, found that the assault weapons and large-capacity magazine ban from 1994 had negligible effects on gun crime. The Lee Center study concluded that a ban on large-capacity magazines saw no corresponding reduction of their use in crimes. It also noted a renewal of the assault weapons ban and magazine restriction would produce effects “too small for reliable measurement.”

So instead of scapegoating guns and gun owners, let’s focus on the real issue: violence in general. I, along with many others who oppose gun bans, take issue with such legislation because it’s the easy way out and fails to address any of the underlying problems surrounding gun violence — every politician who votes for a gun ban has a “get out of jail free” card on the hard issues like mental healthcare, poverty and gang violence.

And to those who fall back to the old standby “But if it saves one life it’s worth it,” I wonder if you would tell that to the families of the brave patriots who were killed in the battles of Lexington and Concord when Massachusetts citizens refused to surrender their guns to the British regulars or to military families today whose sons and daughters fight and die for the freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution. To say our rights are not worthy of sacrifice is to betray the very idea of freedom. As our illustrious founder tells us, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The right to keep and bear arms is an essential liberty, protected by our Constitution and upheld by millions of law-abiding gun owners throughout the nation. I am not saying the lives of innocents are a price we have to pay for gun ownership — I am saying we should not give up freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, nor take for granted the sacrifices made for those freedoms, for feel-good legislation which arbitrarily impedes law abiding citizens and does nothing to stop criminals or solve our problems.

Reasonable and responsible gun owners are ready to sit down and have an honest discussion about how to combat violence in America, but scare tactics and scapegoating have nothing to contribute to that discussion.

Dillon Weber is an Engineering freshman. His email address is dillonw@seas.upenn.edu.

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