Joe Lane
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“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of the free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,” reads the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. More than 200 years after the fact, however, this “right” is coming into question seemingly every day.

According to a Washington Post article published on Oct. 1, during President Obama’s second term, a calendar week has not passed without a mass shooting in the United States, and that frequency has continued past the publishing of the Post article. The data come from ShootingTracker.com, which describes a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot.

The article was published following yet another mass school shooting in Oregon perpetrated by an individual who does not deserve even the infamy he so desired — so he will remain nameless for the remainder. At the end of the young man’s shooting spree, nine individuals were left dead, including the shooter.

Hours after the shooting, Obama made a speech in which he said, “We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths.”

According to David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Obama’s claim was accurate and supported by many studies. The likely reason is that states with stronger gun laws have fewer guns and fewer suicides and homicides from them, he said, according to the AP.

Of course opponents to stricter gun regulation have pounced on the study, claiming that it’s flawed because suicides count for a majority of the 30,000 annual gun deaths. The issue is, however, if opponents believe this is misleading, then they are missing the point.

It is true that, according to the most important governing document for the United States, U.S. citizens have been granted the right to bear arms. And I am glad that the Constitution has been made so difficult to change; as most of the rights provided by it are not of much debate: freedom of speech, religion, and press, for example.

But unlike many of the other rights established by the Constitution, the definition of “arms” has changed drastically since the conception of the second amendment. In the late 1700s, guns were different from what they are today. In 2015, there are weapons available to the public capable of firing several hundred rounds per minute — something that was likely unimaginable to the Founding Fathers.

The NRA responded Tuesday to Obama’s statements by arguing that the issue isn’t more gun-control laws, it’s enforcing the laws that are in place.

Perhaps the NRA is right in saying this, but according to the AP article, researchers concluded that when looking at 120,000 deaths over the past four years, a higher number of firearm control laws resulted in fewer fatalities in those states.

The horrifying statistics presented by Shooting Tracker do point to the fact that something has to change, however. It’s not a new opinion and it’s not a new concept.

But if the science is in to say that more gun laws means fewer gun deaths, then the question I have is this: If current gun owners are safe and responsible with their weapons, then why should they be upset about laws that prevent these weapons from getting into the hands of those who are not? It seems so simple.