“A Peace Plan” Against Guns
With the federal government failing to take any significant action regulating gun control, the “March For Our Lives” student activists have once again taken matters into their own hands. Their new proposal which they call “A Peace Plan for a Safer America,” includes a variety of solutions for our national gun violence epidemic. The plan explains that it is necessary for all gun owners to pass several in-depth background checks, interviews and rigorous safety training courses. A fee would be required at each step of the process, with the money eventually going back into gun safety education and violence prevention.
As for regulation and prohibiting gun purchases, the student activists propose banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines as a whole in addition to limiting sales to one firearm purchase per person, per month. The student activists also bring up the intersectional dimensions of gun violence in the different areas across America and ultimately conclude that one solution in a certain community may not be the right solution in another community.
The Peace Plan points out that almost two-thirds of gun deaths in America come from suicide. In an effort to reduce this number, the students want to “make it as easy to access mental and behavioral health services in these communities as it was to access firearms.” The plan calls on the federal government to make changes such as automatically registering eligible voters immediately after they turn 18. The plan is concluded with the students demanding an IRS and FEC investigation into the NRA along with a thorough reexamination of parts of the Second Amendment. The “Peace Plan for a Safer America” is spot-on with their demands for major change across this country. Addressing our country’s gun violence epidemic and creating laws preventing it is a basic first step towards creating a safer America.
All of the students’ requests from the Peace Plan are extremely reasonable, considering there have been over 255 shootings within the last year. Requiring licensing for owning a gun in all states is the absolute least we can do as a society to try to decrease these horrific deaths in our country.
If you desire to own a gun, for whatever reason, you should have to endure the inconvenience of the legal process as one small step towards safety for our country. While there are certainly responsible and law-abiding gun owners, the risk of a dangerous person with a gun is far too great to still have minimal regulations for weapons. Instead of attributing our country’s excessive gun violence exclusively to mental health issues, we should look at how easy it is to obtain a deadly weapon and consider that the major contribution. Our country’s gun violence epidemic causes immense fear in schools across the nation. It seems absurd that anyone would favor their gun rights over a child, or any other human life. “A Peace Plan for a Safer America” shows that our country’s gun laws can change for the better, and that it’s simply up to us to take the required action.