Gun Control Fear Mongering Rings Hollow

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It didn’t take long for President Barack Obama to politicize the tragic shooting Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon on Thursday, October 1. Just hours after the news of the shooting broke, he appeared before reporters and demanded more gun control laws.

“[W]hat’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common-sense gun legislation. Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out: We need more guns, they’ll argue. Fewer gun safety laws,” Obama said. “Does anybody really believe that? There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country — they know that’s not true.”

“There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer? We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don’t work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence,” he added.

No one denies that what happened at Umpqua Community College is a terrible tragedy. But it doesn’t appear that the gun control laws that President Obama and like-minded members of Congress have tried to advance could’ve prevented this incident. The shooter didn’t have a record of mental health problems or past legal problems, unlike the Charleston, South Carolina church shooter, who slipped between bureaucratic cracks.

Bad things can and do happen. Some of them are preventable and some of them aren’t. But no legislative proposal that has been discussed or actually introduced will stop tragedies like these from happening. In addition to the anti-gun bias of our President, part of the problem, of course, is a media that isn’t honest about the ineffectiveness of gun control proposals or how they wouldn’t stop shootings like the one at Umpqua Community College from happening.

Let’s be clear, we know that gun violence has declined significantly over the last 20 years. What we know is that the Centers for Disease Control, in 2013, recognized the private ownership of firearms as a deterrent to crime. And we know that states with concealed carry laws, known as “shall issue” states, have fewer murders than those that severely restrict these permits.

There is no cure-all to stop shootings, and President Obama and the media should be honest about that, rather than trying to push outrage and raise emotion to pass policies that promote their long-standing views against guns.