Yet again, a mass murder happens on a college campus. Yet again, there is gun violence. Yet again, there are calls for gun control, protecting second amendment rights, and everything in between. Yet again, a mass murder leads American political discourse through the same old talking points on the issue of gun control/gun rights. What a shame that American politics has to go through yet another unproductive debate on gun control/gun rights, because the result is that so much false information gets circulated around. This editorial lists some of that false information and refutes it:

1. “Overwhelming majorities of Americans—Americans who believe in the Second Amendment—have come together around common-sense reform—like background checks that will make it harder for criminals to get their hands on a gun.” -President Obama, State of the Union Address, February  12, 2013

President Obama’s logic is misleading because background checks would not have prevented many of our mass murders from happening. James Holmes, the Aurora movie theater shooter, passed a background check. Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter, passed a background check. Clearly, background checks are not going to prevent a lot of these mass shootings from happening.

2. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” –Wayne LaPierre, President of the National Rifle Association, on December 21, 2012
If a bad guy with a gun can easily be stopped by a good guy with a gun, then why is it that the states with the least gun control are usually the states with the highest death-by-gun rates? These statistics just don’t fit with LaPierre’s argument.

3. “I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a generally slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun. With today’s internet technology we should be able to tell within 72 hours if a potential gun owner has a record.” –Donald Trump, July 2, 2000

There are two problems here. First, we could wait until the cows come home, but a 72-hour wait would not have prevented these recent tragedies from happening. These people would have still received their guns after 72 hours of waiting. Second, when we, or someone like Trump calls for a “ban on assault weapons” after a mass shooting like Columbine, Aurora, or Oregon, we are saying this without realizing the bans we are asking for. When we say that we want a ban on the guns that were used in Aurora, for example, we are asking for a ban on one of the most popular guns in America: the AR-15. With the way many gun control advocates implicitly advocate for the banning of a gun as popular as an AR-15, no wonder gun rights ipeople are so paranoid about people taking away guns from them.

The unfortunate fact is that a lot of Americans would probably agree with at least one of these three statements. Sadly, all three of these statements make false assumptions about how gun violence could be stopped. I don’t know for sure how gun violence can be stopped, but what I know is that it won’t be through these proposals from President Obama, Wayne LaPierre, and Donald Trump, respectively.