While recently visiting Utah with my dad, I realized how truly backwards many parts of American culture can be. Trying to kill some time on a friday night in Provo, we wandered into an enormous industrial park and did something that I had never imagined myself actually doing‒ shooting a gun.
All it took was a credit card or cash. I stood in awe as the employee directed our attention to three glass shelves filled with at least six guns each, ranging from revolvers to semi-automatics. An awkward silence ensued‒ not only did we not know anything about the guns, but we couldn’t even grasp the idea that it was really that easy to get a gun and go to a shooting range. It’s almost like there should have been a Staples’ “That was easy!” button sitting next to the Glock on the countertop.
Fast forward past the ten minutes we stood next to the counter waiting to get instructions much to the chagrin of the employee and my dad struggling to jam the nine millimeter bullets into the magazine, and there we were‒ two professed liberals standing next to a local who was shooting what looked like a gun out of a Bond movie.
Regardless of what your opinion is on the Second Amendment, there I was, Glock and all. A seventeen year-old kid from New Jersey who can’t vote, can’t buy a bottle of beer, and can’t even buy a fish from PETCO, but I was allowed to walk into a gun store and take a gun for a test drive. I ask myself, “How is this legal?”, a question that not even Charlton Heston could answer.
Sometimes America tries to run before it can walk, we are only two hundred and forty years old after all,, and the gun-obsessed culture that we live in today is a prime example. The anti-gun control lobbyists and politicians have made the Second Amendment the “Soup de Election Season”, taking a swipe at Obama’s executive actions almost as much as they take swipes at each other. But the real laughable moment is when you hear politicians saying, “I am going to protect your Second Amendment rights! I won’t take your guns like Obama has!”. But show me one picture of someone from the Obama organization breaking into a house and stealing someone’s rifle. Nobody is knocking on your door to “take away” your guns.
Obviously there are fierce critics of pro-gun control policies and laws, but America has become so decentralized and warped as a nation that we have not acted in response to numerous deadly shootings, including those in Newtown, Connecticut, Aurora, Colorado, Tucson, Arizona, and at Virginia Tech. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were over 52,900 gun-related incidents in the United States last year, with over 13,000 people killed. That was an increase of over 1,200 incidents and 1,000 deaths compared to 2014. This is not acceptable as a society‒ no matter what political party is in the White House. Congress has taken virtually no action on guns in response to these tragedies, with responsibility split between lobbyists and D.C. gridlock. The citizens and politicians of this country are so obsessed with partisan politics and lies that they have forgot about more important issues like criminal justice reform and income equality. And until Congress wakes up and smells the gunpowder, we are all worse off as a society. The United States needs to take a stance on gun violence for once and for all. Isn’t it a little hypocritical that one seventeen year-old boy can serve a federal sentence for marijuana possession, while another can walk into a gun store and take target practice?
Mike Andreotta • Feb 11, 2016 at 8:34 pm
Well written Jake!!! I loved it! BTW – I needs to know… were either you or your Father able to hit the targets at all??? Love ya! Uncle Mike
Philip Childs • Feb 10, 2016 at 10:37 am
While I see where you were directing this article, I would like to see the website, or the rules and regulations, of this gun range. I may be wrong, but it likely says that you must be accompanied by an adult if under the age of 18. Range restrictions are created to create a safe environment to use guns, and so buying a gun from that store is likely more difficult than simply renting one for an hour on the range, where you are constantly supervised and taught how to safely use a gun. Again, I may be wrong about all of this because I don’t know as much about Utah gun control, but I know that here in New Jersey, it is the case. I don’t want to debate the rest of the validity of your argument, but I would like to know more about this gun range if I am to believe what you’re are saying about their rules and regulations.