There is one characteristic that unfortunately sets our country apart from all other advanced nations in the world, and it’s the number of innocent lives that are lost each year to gun violence. Individuals who legally obtained firearms commit the vast majority of these crimes.
But whether it’s one life or 20 lives that are unexpectedly taken, the same arguments continue to follow each tragedy. The left will rightfully ask, “When is enough enough?” The right is always swift to counter such emotional appeals with a reminder that people, not guns, kill people. And that would be correct. Sometimes, people make the decision to obtain and use a weapon for murder.
At present, the political will to create changes to reduce such senseless, gun-related crimes seems nonexistent. Legislative action is the only real mechanism to make this country a safer place from people who use a firearm to do harm, and until our elected officials come to a genuine agreement that reducing these tragic crimes is a priority, then we might as well consider such violence as a guaranteed part of the American experience.
In a reasonable and rational world, people on both sides of this issue would come to the table with open minds, ready to compromise, recognizing how progress toward curbing this sort of violence has been stymied by the immovableness of conservative constitutional purists and an unrelentingly naive left. But the likelihood of this happening is slim. The dialogue has been hijacked by people who would rather talk about the extent to which gun owners can go beyond simply owning guns. They are laser focused on a person’s ability to openly carry firearms in public places, and Arkansas has been no exception.
Recently, state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge was asked for her opinion on the status of open carry in our state. Her office responded that the Arkansas Legislature legalized the open carry of handguns with a 2013 law, noting that additional legislative action could clarify the purpose of the law, and I agree. I, and many other Arkansans, would appreciate straightforward legislation that doesn’t provide for loopholes or confusion when it comes to gun-ownership rights. But why kick that opportunity back to the body that created the confusion? There is a reason for the ambiguity, and it’s probably political.
Rutledge does not “encourage” open carry, which I think is incredibly responsible. But her reasoning for why open carry is permissible comes down to intent. Basically, the idea is that a person can openly carry their handgun as long as they are doing so without the intention of unlawfully employing it as a weapon against another person. But this doesn’t do any sort of good for the people who continue finding themselves in front of the barrels of these guns. This opinion confirms the belief held by some that the presence of a gun reduces crime.
Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins wrote a book called Crime Is Not the Problem, in which their research uncovered that the level of violent death in our country was not determined by overall crime levels and that the presence of firearms actually makes tense situations far worse and potentially deadly.
If this is the case, then what have we achieved? We are guaranteed one life, and apparently, part of this earthly experience is now learning to accept that my time might get cut short because a person who initially wasn’t intending to do any harm did, and it was all made possible by a fear of political consequence from standing up for reasonable compromises between people on both sides of this issue.
Jessica DeLoach Sabin appears on Political Plays on KARK on Friday mornings.