I strongly support the 2nd amendment and do not favor legislation that restricts, limits, or bans the sale or purchase of firearms to lawful citizens.

While I ultimately believe that firearm possession is rooted in preventing tyranny, this philosophical position has been so widely misconstrued in the past decade that attempting to discuss it seems almost entirely fruitless. Instead, I am more interested in examining the causality of gun violence in the United States and proactively addressing that violence.

Stated plainly, I recognize that gun violence is an enormous issue facing the United States. However, there is simply no evidence to support the idea that banning firearms within smaller governmental bodies (eg: states, counties, cities) has any effect on curbing this violence. One commonly cited illustration of this data is that of Chicago, whereby handguns have been banned since 1982 without any particular success in curbing violence.

Instead, the issues needing to be addressed have very little to do with guns and very much to do with a lack of education, massive disparities in wealth, societal upbringing, broken family structures, and numerous other forms of desperation primarily stemming from a desolate population. In the same way that the United States has done nothing to curb drug usage by vilifying drugs (ironically increasing gun violence in the process no less), we should certainly not expect to see gun violence reduced simply because a legislative body invents a frivolous punitive measure for their possession.

This effort does, however, prey upon the emotions of many Americans while conveniently allowing politicians to ignore the numerous poverty-based issues that are turning people towards violence in the first place.