Abstract
In a time when gun-related violence is becoming an increasingly contentious and unavoidable policy topic, it can often seem as though there is no middle ground—as one common refrain goes, there are those who love guns more than their children, and those who love their children more than guns. It is a grotesque oversimplification, however, to reduce conversations on gun-related violence to conversations about gun control, much less to accusations of ill-intent on the part of those opposing it. There is, indeed, a path of least resistance for meaningfully combating gun-related violence, and it is to focus on the role of untreated serious mental illness. This approach creates a space for bipartisan collaboration that otherwise does not exist and allows the nation to address very real underlying problems that are too often ignored. Policymakers need not engage in unnecessary battles to significantly restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens when there exists another approach to gun-related violence that both avoids serious constitutional problems and better addresses the underlying factors associated with gun-related violence than will commonly proposed gun control laws.
Recommended Citation
Amy Swearer,
Let Us Reason Together: A More Effective, Less Partisan Approach to Gun-Related Violence,
44
S. Ill. U. L.J.
1
(2019).
Available at:
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/siulj/vol44/iss1/1