Stephen Roper

    HERE’S a tragic fact: the Monday after Jay Loughner attacked a political meeting in Tucson — killing six and injuring 14 more, including an elected government official — handgun sales increased by 60 percent in the U.S. state of Arizona.

    Another one: in response to the Tucson shooting, Texas representative Louie Gohmert proposed a bill to allow Congressional representatives to carry firearms into the Capitol Building. He claims politicians have the right to defend themselves even, apparently, if they’re in the Capitol Building surrounded by security and other politicians.

    And just one more: Arizona representative Jack Harper rebutted the notion of a need for updated gun-control laws by saying: “When everyone is carrying a firearm, nobody is going to be a victim.”

    I’m sorry, what?

    I grew up in the South. I had friends drive to school with hunting shotguns in their trucks, and I’ve been shooting several times (it’s fun, although terribly loud). I respect the Constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms should they desire, and I respect the idea of people wanting to protect themselves. I do.

    But come on, the idea that more guns make people more safe is absurd. If everyone carrying a firearm means everyone can defend themselves, doesn’t that also mean everyone can attack and threaten? Besides, if we go back to the Tucson shooting we would see that there was, in fact, an average citizen with a firearm at the scene.

    Joseph Zamudio was at a nearby drugstore when he heard gunshots. Armed with a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, he rushed to the scene of the shooting but never once fired his weapon, actually admitting in a later interview that he almost shot the wrong person twice. The point is, he had a weapon and he wanted to help but he didn’t have the necessary training and experience to do anything.

    But, if there’s one thing we can glean from the tragic events of Jan. 8, it’s that Jay Loughner could more easily obtain a gun in the United States than what he needed most: mental health care. What does it say about a country when a 22-year-old college-dropout, Army-reject with questionable mental health can obtain a weapon as easily as a can of soda?

    It’s amazing, head-scratching, sobering, and ridiculous at the same time to realize that people, still, don’t see a need for revised gun-control laws. In addition, they want to expand the rights of people to carry firearms with the misguided idea that more weapons mean more safety.

    In the right hands, sure. But people like Loughner show just how dangerous a country can be — one that owns half the world’s handguns, by the way — should measures of proper distribution and control be lacking.

    I’m not calling for a total disarming of American citizens or anything like that, but there are things, little things, that could be done to ensure weapons are available to the right people and restricted to those who are not. For example, the United States could limit people to purchasing just one gun a month, thus eliminating the potential for gun trafficking and an increased possibility of the wrong person getting their hands on a weapon. We could ban oversized magazines, which Loughner used in Tucson and increases cartridge capacity from 10 to 33 per clip — had it been a normal magazine, maybe Loughner might have been stopped earlier. And, if nothing else, we could improve our background checks of individuals before allowing them to own a weapon.

    It’s something that needs to be addressed — I just hope politicians won’t be “packing heat” in the Capitol Building when it is addressed.

    (The author is a former U.S. journalist who is teaching English in Shenzhen.)