It’s not guns that kill people…
…it’s people who kill people. For all the flack that the NRA have taken in the mainstream media for their admittedly bullheaded political moves, their slogan holds a substantial measure of truth. The shootings that have occurred over the last couple years here in the U.S. that ultimately culminated in the Newtown massacre have caused quite a scare, leading many to see strict gun legislation as the answer. However, though this seems at first glance to be an appropriate solution, it should really be taken with a grain of salt.
On Tuesday, March 9, the Lone Star College near Houston, Texas, experienced another scare. This time it came in the form of Dylan Quick, a 20-year-old student who attended the college and lacerated 14 of his fellow classmates with an X-Acto knife. Thankfully, no one was killed. Quick was arrested after being taken to the ground by another student. He now faces three charges of aggravated assault, though his mental health has been called into question by the defense after it was discovered that Quick has an obsession with serial killers.
If the scenario at Lone Star College sounds familiar, that would be because a shooting occurred on the Harris County campus, Jan. 22 of this year. Several students were shot. The frequency of these events is definitely something of concern, but the fact that this latest rampage was carried out with a knife just reinforces the NRA’s slogan: Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.
The near instantaneous coverage of the rampages creates a feeling of connectedness with the event. But with the latest news being reported as it happens and the number of people who can access the news from anywhere gives the illusion that attacks like this are something new.
On May 18, 1927, Andrew Kehoe blew up the north wing of Bath Consolidated School in Clinton County, Mich., using a stockpile of dynamite from his home. The blast killed 44 people. This will have happened 86 years ago next month. Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.
For those who say that strict European gun laws should be adopted here in the U.S., one need only look at the 2011 Norway attacks, when Anders Behring Breivik shot and killed 69 members of a youth camp and eight more with a car bomb. All of this occurred in a country where government licenses and strict background checks are required to purchase firearms.
Outbreaks of violence like this could have resulted from any number of causes. Politically charged radicals, including Breivik, are just as much a menace as criminally obsessed mental cases like Quick. However, in the case of Kehoe, sometimes it just takes the right amount of stress in one’s life. Before banning guns, perhaps we should have a look at what it is about our culture that breeds people of this calibre.
Cameron Paquette is a third-year journalism student.