Another Case for Gun Control

Because of the tension of tomorrow's health care vote, I want to stay with the earlier post's subject: that is, gun control. I feel it is necessary to bring up more issues during the week so that health care, though extremely important, does not completely consume our minds. We need to keep alert for all of the nation's problems.

In an earlier post, I spoke about the terrorist threats we feel abroad. These are very real and very dangerous. Without a doubt, we must make sure to keep focused on the international problems we face from day to day. Yet there is something to be said about the more pressing threat to our citizenry. This is crime.

Every year, about 30,000 people die from guns (in assaults, accidents, and suicides), and about 11,000 are murdered by the weapons. Let us put this into perspective. The amount of people murdered by guns each year tallies to over three and a half 9/11's every year and over two and a half Wars in Iraq (as the number stands right now for Iraq) every year. That's excluding everyone who died from accidental fire or suicides!

More than two times as many people die from gun fire as AIDs in America. Every year.

But, above all, this may be the most telling and saddest figure I can come up with: over 3000 children will die each year from gun fire, according to the Children's Defense Fund. This is unacceptable.

Where is the public outcry?!

In a nation as prestigious, as "humane," and as advanced as ours, you would think that this would go against our moral fabric. The future of this nation is getting killed because of our obsession with misinterpreting what the founders meant by the Second Amendment. Anyone with half of a brain can tell you that this should call for more regulation, for cleaning up the streets, and for the real, sustainable destruction of poverty in our nation. It should be a sign of a lack of proper prioritizing; we would rather spend billions in sustaining the upkeep of outdated and unused military equipment like the Star Wars Missile Defense System or on trickle down economics (Bush Tax Cuts) than on education and housing. It sends the wrong message to our inner-city youth and does nothing to help the most pressing urban problems.

In America today, we hear a lot about Usama bin Laden and al Qaeda and the Taliban, but the media chooses to ignore gang violence. The urban folks in this nation are not afraid of Ayman al-Zawahiri, but they do share a fear of the Bloods and the Crips. You ask any teenager in an American city what they're most fearful of, and it won't be Islamic extremism. No, my brothers and sisters, it will be the streets at night and the gang members that walk them.

It is about time to start getting real about gangs and gun violence, and quick. If not, then we can lose all hope for the future of this nation.