OPINION
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By Meade Spotts
The role of guns in American society is a hotly debated topic. Growing up in a household with guns separates me from some students at Collegiate. From the Red Ryder BB guns I had as a child, to the semi-automatic and pump action Winchester shotguns I own now, there has never been a time in my life where I could not go outside and shoot a few targets.
A Winchester Super X3 Field shotgun. Image credit: Winchester Repeating Arms.
My dad, Meade Spotts (’75), attended the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), graduating in the class of 1979, and went on to serve as a major in the US Army reserves. He grew up on a farm in Dublin, Virginia, where he learned to hunt and fish. He was taught how to respect guns and how to handle them correctly, which is a skill he has passed down to me and my siblings.
The number one rule of handling a gun is that the barrel always points away from you and other people; this often means the barrel is pointed straight at the ground or straight up in the air. When picking up a gun, you must always check the chamber to see if the gun is loaded. Whether or not the gun is loaded does not affect how you handle it, but a loaded gun can go off due to user error, and an unloaded gun is a blunt object. Never point it towards others, assume the gun is loaded at all times, make sure the safety is on.
These were my father’s rules, and he taught me these things while I was still shooting a 50 feet-per-second BB gun that would occasionally bounce off the tin can targets in my backyard. Regardless of the gun’s power, my dad made me follow the exact same rules. Even when I was using a BB gun, he sternly stated, “It may not look like it, but that is a real gun. You could take someone’s eye out if you are not careful.” Every time I walked back into the house after shooting, he would check if the safety was on and if the BB’s were emptied from the chamber.
I took a hunters’ safety course sometime in Lower School and started duck hunting at age 10. Hunting has always been a immense part of my family’s past and present. I’ve hunted for geese, ducks, dove, turkey, deer, and coyotes in Virginia.
There are many people who are opposed to the idea of hunting, and sometimes I hear criticism or just questions about the practice. A common question is whether we eat what we kill. The answer to this is almost always “Yes.” While my family isn’t in a position where we need to hunt for food, hunting is a sport in the sense that I practice it, and eating what you kill is respecting the animal’s life. Another common misconception about hunters is that we don’t feel remorse when we kill an animal. For myself, this is not true. After a hunt, I am acutely aware that what I am holding was once living, and I treat it as such. In my own way, I thank the animal for what it has provided.
As a hunter and firearm owner, I’m also saddened by the terrible tragedies and school shootings we’ve witnessed in the last few years. Understandably so, these events have prompted enormous debate in our country. From my position, I can reason with perspectives from the moderate left and right. However, the debate for a total ban of semi-automatic firearms is unrealistic. It may have worked in other countries, but other countries do not have more guns than people. A government buy-back, a technique used by Australia in 1996 following the Port Arthur massacre, would cost billions, if not trillions of dollars in the United States. In Australia, the government bought back 600,000-800,000 guns, around 20% of the total amount of firearms in the country. That same amount in the United States would be close to .0016% of the more than 360,000,000 weapons in circulation.
A version of the AR-15 assault rifle. Image credit: Firearms Prostore.
An assault weapons ban, such as the one that became law in 1994 and expired a decade later, might be the solution for a small piece of the problem. Assault weapons, such as an AR-15, have been in the spotlight for numerous mass shootings in the past year. This style of weapon is one that usually has features such as a barrel shroud, semi-automatic firing rate, pistol grip, detachable magazine, and flash suppressor.
While bump stocks are not included in the specifications contributing to the definition of an assault weapon, this attachment has been in the news as well. A bump stock replaces the standard stock on a semi-automatic weapon. The attached bump stock uses kinetic energy from the recoil of the weapon, transferring this energy into a forward motion, causing the trigger to press the user’s finger. This allows the user to fire the weapon rapidly and accurately. On February 20th, President Trump announced that he had directed US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to take new measures towards completely banning bump stock attachments. Florida and other states and municipalities have already passed legislation banning bump stocks in response to the most recent shootings.
Assault weapons enable a trained user to fire quickly and with control, and there is no doubt in my mind that a high school student should not be able to acquire a firearm that meets these specifications.
AK-47 bump stock. Image credit: Bumpfire Systems.
The most common weapon used in crimes, however, are handguns, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. They are the most common firearm used in murders across some of our largest cities, and a recent study of juvenile offenders shows that many have either stolen, kept, or sold a stolen firearm (BJS). In 2012, The National Crime Information Center reported 190,342 lost and stolen firearms nationwide.
The true problem with the gun debate is that there is no right answer. Everyone seems to have strong opinions, and nobody seems willing to budge. In our country, with its history and character, a full-out ban on firearms is not feasible. A ban on assault weapons might make people feel safer, but someone could easily replicate many of the shootings in the past year with a shotgun and depressingly do just as much damage. An AR-15, with its military appearance, is what many refer to in the gun debate, but it is not the underlying problem that our country is facing. A single gun or class of guns is not the problem, or a problem that can be realistically fixed. Before the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, shootings of the type and scale we see today were unheard of. Unfortunately, in recent years there has been such a constant stream of shootings, to the point that many of us are no longer surprised when we hear of one. The number of guns has gone up since 1998, but that number has grown with the population.
From 1999 to 2014, the suicide rate increased by 24% after steadily declining from 1986-1999. This rate has been prominent in teens and young adults, the same demographic as our current school shooters. This mental health crisis that we are seeing today is a tremendous problem contributing to the violence, and we hear little about how to fix it. There is no simple way to fix the mental health of a nation, and many people feel uncomfortable speaking of mental health, fearing that they may offend.
As a responsible gun owner and hunter, I do believe that there needs to be action taken regulating the sale of firearms. The age for all weapon purchases (excluding pistols, for which the purchasing age is already 21) could be increased to 20. Yet this would preclude young adults from owning a weapon for protection. One of my close friends, who is 18, lives in downtown Richmond by himself. He would have no way to protect himself if he needed to do so. The vetting process to purchase a firearm could be strengthened, but that can only prevent so much, as weapons are stolen constantly and go undocumented in circulation. If an unstable person willing to murder innocents wishes to do so, I strongly doubt that breaking the law to acquire a weapon illegally would stop them.
The problem that is infuriating so many people is that nobody really has a perfect solution. Other countries’ solutions are not applicable to our own problems, and we cannot completely eliminate the problems of mental health that many of these perpetrators have. This stalemate leaves people feeling hopeless, and that hopelessness turns into anger and resentment without conversation.
A possible policy change is armed security at schools: trained professionals that will not hesitate to defend students in the face of an armed and dangerous shooter. The thought of having a guard with an assault rifle at a school upsets many people. We do not want that to be the reality, but it sadly is. The youth in our country must be protected. Security footage at from the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting shows that we cannot always solely rely on the police.
If I could surrender all the firearms in my house and never see another headline about a mass shooting, I would do it in an instant. The hard truth is that it would change nothing. The kid that wants to take their classmates’ lives won’t surrender the gun. The criminal murdering in Chicago won’t surrender the gun. The disturbed person massacring church goers won’t surrender the gun. If we passed laws banning all firearms, only the lawless would be armed.
Read more of The Match’s coverage of the gun control debate in American:
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