A comment on “Guns and Politics in the United States”

I have long heard that most people who died under guns in America are family members because guns make it so much easier to kill a person by pulling the trigger instead of going through the effort of holding a knife to stab someone when the victims can still defend themselves, when the person is too angry to have a conscious mind. This article, Guns and Politics in the United States, gives many convincing statistics to show that we actually do more harm than good by allowing citizens here to have guns.

It is not legal for anyone who is not associated with military and law enforcement to have a gun in Taiwan. Therefore, people who try to kill others in Taiwan usually have to go through the trouble of hiding a knife and killing people manually without the assistance of automatic technology. As a result, the number of the people they can kill is very limited. The most recent massacre that happened in Taiwan was “Taipei Metro Massacre” that took place in 2014. According to the 21 years old criminal in Taiwan, Cheng Chieh (鄭捷), who was executed on 10 May 2016, he had been preparing for the massacre for over a year before he committed the crime. He went through a year of physical training to ensure that he would have enough strength and endurance to kill as many people as he could. Also, he went to the Taipei Metro station to find out between which two Metro stops has the longest transportation time, allowing him more time to kill the passengers. At the end, he killed four people and injured 24 others, which is by far fewer than the number of people killed in any mass shooting in America. From here, we can see that we in fact save more people’s lives by prohibiting the general public to have guns.

I have talked to some Americans who agree with the idea of people should be allowed to have guns, and the most common reason is that they think they will be able to defend themselves when they confront a violent person. However, I told them there are many other alternatives that allow you to defend yourself. For example, you can have a pepper spray, a police baton, a Taser, or even an electric gun. We can still have fairly good protection by having those things. Also, the best way to stay away from danger is use common sense. Being able to sense the danger and get away from a dangerous environment is the best way to protect yourself.