Arguments Against Gun Control
Subject: Political Science Paper 1
Statistics from the National Federation of State High School Associations reveal that,
in 1999, 15 students perished while playing in high school football games. This fact received
little to no coverage in the national media. Angry parents did not parade into Washington,
D.C., in order to demand stricter regulation of high school football. Politicos feigning intense
anguish did not bemoan football’s domination of most learning institutions’ sports programs.
The large majority of this country’s citizens watched their favourite high school football
teams oblivious to the blood that soaked the pigskin and dripped onto America’s playing
fields.
Conversely, when 15 students died from gunshot wounds during the 1998-1999
school year, as the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention indicate, the national media
evangelized endlessly about the evils of guns. Apparently forgetting that many of the kid
killers, such as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had obtained their weapons illegally, hordes
of crusaders seethed that if guns weren’t legal and available, the school murders wouldn’t
have happened. A few local governments, hoping to score political points, filed lawsuits
against gun manufacturers, blaming them for the orgy of death and violence that seemed to
have consumed America’s school system.
Why did 15 deaths related to high school football inspire scant attention, while 15 deaths
resulting from gun violence kindled nationwide apoplexy?
Many right-wingers would simply answer, “Because the gun grabbers want to seize
our weapons, they will ignore any fact that stands in their way!” These conservatives believe
