We Don’t Have a Gun Problem. We Have a Violence Problem.
- Jordan
- May 1
- 5 min read
Why more gun control won’t stop what’s actually causing American violence.
Every time there’s another mass shooting or tragedy, the same solution is thrown at the public like a reflex: more gun control. We’re told violence keeps happening because America hasn’t banned enough guns, hasn’t closed enough loopholes, hasn’t restricted enough access.
But that idea falls apart under pressure.
The claim that violence exists because of a lack of gun control assumes one thing: that laws alone can stop desperate, broken, or violent people from doing harm. They cannot. Because laws do not fix what pushed someone to violence in the first place. They do not rebuild a life, repair trust, or treat pain.
They just punish everyone else in the process.
We do not have a gun control problem. We have a violence problem. And the cause of that violence is systemic. It is economic. It is about health. It is about disconnection, neglect, and trauma, none of which can be banned out of existence.
Gun Laws Are Already Widespread. Violence Still Happens.
The United States already has thousands of gun laws on the books. Federally, background checks are mandatory through licensed dealers. Certain people, like felons and domestic abusers, are already banned from owning firearms. Some states have waiting periods, red flag laws, licensing requirements, storage mandates, and bans on specific weapons or magazines.
And yet violence continues. Not because there are not enough laws, but because none of those laws address why someone chooses violence in the first place.
No ban can undo a lifetime of untreated trauma. No waiting period can stop someone who is already spiraling in isolation. No magazine restriction can prevent a gang retaliation or a suicide attempt fueled by hopelessness. The law cannot fix what broke a person long before they picked up a weapon.
The Data Does Not Support the Ban Narrative
We are often told that countries with stricter gun laws are safer. But the truth is more complicated.
Places like Japan and the UK have lower gun violence rates, but they also have lower overall violence. They do not just have gun laws. They have universal health care, low poverty, accessible mental health services, and stronger community support. You cannot copy-paste their gun policies into the U.S. and expect the same outcomes.
On the flip side, Mexico has extremely strict gun laws. But cartel violence, corruption, and inequality make those laws meaningless. Criminals do not care about bans. They never have.
The effectiveness of gun laws is not about how strict they are. It is about the context they exist in. And in a country like the United States, where the social fabric is fraying, no gun law is going to patch that hole.
Violence Is a Systemic Issue, Not a Hardware Issue
Violence is what happens when everything else fails. When someone cannot afford help. When there is no support system. When a person is isolated, abused, or full of rage and has no tools to process any of it.
It is not about the object in their hand. It is about the life that led them there.
Look at where most gun deaths come from:
• Suicide, driven by untreated mental illness and despair.
• Community violence, driven by poverty, broken families, and lack of opportunity.
• Domestic violence, where victims often have no safe exit and abusers go unnoticed until it is too late.
• Mass shootings, often committed by people who have been radicalized, isolated, or failed by every system meant to catch them.
None of these problems are solved by a ban. If anything, bans only help politicians look like they are doing something while avoiding the much harder work of confronting poverty, rebuilding mental health care, and creating real safety nets.
More Gun Control Means More Criminalization
Every new gun law comes with enforcement. And historically, that enforcement has never been equal.
Gun control in America has always been political, and it has always been used disproportionately against Black, brown, poor, and marginalized communities. Red flag laws sound reasonable until you realize they are often enforced based on vague accusations, sometimes weaponized against people in crisis or protestors the state wants to silence.
Licensing schemes, mandatory training, and expensive permits sound like responsible regulation, but in practice they create paywalls between working-class people and their rights.
Gun control does not just disarm. It criminalizes. It gives more power to a system that already targets the most vulnerable and then decides who gets to be safe and who gets to be disarmed.
If We Want Less Violence, We Need More Care, Not More Control
The answer to violence is not more restrictions. It is more support. It is more care. It is recognizing that people do not turn violent in a vacuum.
If we really wanted to reduce violence, we would be investing in:
• Community mental health centers
• Violence interruption programs led by people in the neighborhoods they serve
• Job access, housing stability, and education
• Resources for domestic abuse survivors
• Social workers and trauma-informed intervention teams
This kind of care does not just stop one incident. It changes the conditions that lead to violence in the first place. And it does so without disarming the very people who follow the law and want to protect themselves.
The Right to Self-Defense Still Matters
People own guns because they have seen what happens when help does not come. Because they live in neighborhoods the government forgot. Because they have been stalked, threatened, or assaulted. Because they do not trust that calling 911 will work, or will not make things worse.
Banning their tools in the name of safety does not make them safer. It just leaves them with fewer options in a world that already feels stacked against them.
You cannot police your way to peace. You cannot ban your way to trust. And you cannot punish your way to prevention.
Conclusion: Gun Control Is Not the Solution. Accountability Is.
If violence in America came from a lack of gun control, then adding more laws would solve it. But it does not. Because the issue is not the tool. It is the trauma, the neglect, the abandonment, and the failure of nearly every institution that is supposed to keep people whole.
Blaming guns is easy. But it does not stop the next tragedy. It does not make your neighbor less desperate. It does not help a teen in crisis. It does not rebuild a broken system.
We do not need more bans. We need more accountability — from our institutions, from our leaders, and from a society that keeps asking how to stop violence without ever asking why it starts.
Sources for Further Reading and Citation
1. RAND Corporation — Effects of Gun Policies in America
2. CDC — Public Health Approach to Violence Prevention
3. Pew Research Center — Gun Deaths in the U.S.
4. Everytown for Gun Safety — Background Checks
5. Giffords Law Center — Gun Laws in the U.S.
6. Harvard Law Review — Racist Origins of Gun Control
7. NIH / Injury Epidemiology — Gun Control Enforcement and Racial Disparities
8. District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) — U.S. Supreme Court Decision
9. National Institute of Justice — The Impact of Community-Based Violence Interventions
10. Brookings Institution — The Limits of Gun Control
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