America's gun show

Something my friend Ben told me online shocked me. I thought that I had seen everything that there could be seen, and that anything relating to the sniper case out in Washington D.C. could startle me. After all, I feel I'm somewhat of a jaded news watcher like most of you, and I do put my trust that nothing horrendously stupid is going to be said.\nTurns out I was wrong.\n"They're blaming 'Grand Theft Auto' for what's happening in D.C." Ben told me.\n"What?" After all, this is a disturbing news event and there is no motive of the killings, but 'Grand Theft Auto 3'? A video game?\nBen told me it was "one of the pundits," though, sadly I can't seem to verify exactly which stupid organization is blaming these senseless killings on a video game. In any other situation, I would have dismissed it whole-heartedly as Ben pulling my leg. But, sadly, in today's society, blaming a video game (and a quite enjoyable one at that) for a serial killer's deeds doesn't seem to be too far-fetched at all.\nIn fact, it seems that the only thing that would never be blamed in these shootings is the man and his gun. Without either of these, would this sniper be any sort of a threat at all? Would we even be able to call him a "sniper" if he had nothing to "snipe" with?\nFrom the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Studies, released in 2001, 39 percent of all Americans have at least one firearm in their home. Of those 39 percent, 74 percent of those involved have a shotgun, 73 percent have a rifle and 59 percent of them have a pistol. Forty-one percent of those polled have all three. Upon looking over these numbers, you'd think that we are a very well-armed nation. The Second Amendment surely is being enforced properly.\nBut, wait. Whereas a rifle can be logically kept in the home for a somewhat reasonable purpose (i.e., hunting or self-defense), that doesn't mean that gun ownership is that reasonable. In 1999, 1,148,984 firearms were registered in the United States. Out of that one million, 277,362 or 24.13 percent of those guns were classified as "machine guns." Machine guns made up the second largest group of registered weapons, behind only "destructive devices," with 676,837. Even if every single one of those registered machine guns is in the hand of someone who is honest and trustworthy, think of those criminals who have not registered their weapons. Common sense would label that as a much higher rate of ownership than those legally owned.\nAll this brings up an important topic: Are we, as Americans, all responsible enough to warrant having 1,000,000 plus registered firearms? It's obvious that someone out in the D.C. area isn't, but what about the rest of us? Do we need enough machine guns to arm 277,362 of our closest friends?\n Those questions are important, but "if's" and "could be's" are only theoretical problems. We should focus on the "right now." There are a lot of guns out there and, for every responsible person who keeps his rifle under lock and key (for protection, of course … protection if the government ever tries to take it away from his "cold, dead hands"), there is another lunatic who keeps his rifle in the back of a white van, ready to pick off innocent people. If only there was a way to know who was who, then perhaps there might not be the propensity to blame others instead of those holding the trigger.\nSupport "ballistic fingerprinting." It's the only way to tell the good guys from the bad.