When a national tragedy such as the Las Vegas shooting hits the media, liberals are quick to politicize the senseless killing of innocent Americans. Cries for change in gun laws ring out, but the root of the problem lies not in the regulation of guns, but in the way humans value life.

According to a study done by Leah Libresco, a statistician and former news writer, there are, on average, 33,000 gun deaths every year in America. Two-thirds of these deaths are suicides. One in five of these deaths are young men aged 15-34, who are victims of gang loyalties or street violence. The next most notable grouping of deaths are the 1,700 women that are killed every year, often classified as domestic violence. The problem in our country is not the guns themselves, but the humans behind them and the problems they face.

When you make the argument to ban all assault rifles in order to stop people from committing mass shootings, you are implying these laws will be followed. Criminals are criminals for a reason. They have zero regard for the law. Was it legal to shoot and kill 58 innocent Americans? Was it legal to injure hundreds of others in the process? The answer to these questions is no. So, to say a man who spent as much time as he did to figure out how to murder as many people as he could from over 500 yards away would have been stopped by stricter gun laws is false. This was not a crime committed in a fit of rage. This was a methodically thought out plan in order to inflict as much death as possible in as little time as possible. There is no simple way to stop such madmen. Criminals will be criminals no matter what laws are in place.

No gun law is going to stop people from committing suicide or stop the youth in our society from getting caught up and dragged into the horror that is gang life. When you look at these two groupings, as well as the women who are killed in domestic abuse, the problem is much deeper than just taking the guns away. Obviously there is a problem in our nation that desperately needs to be addressed, but tighter gun laws simply are not the answer. There is no simple fix to this epidemic of senseless killing that has taken over our country.

The rising murder rate in Chicago has led people to believe gun laws in Illinois must be lax and weak, yet this is not true.  The reality is Illinois has some of the toughest laws in the country. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence ranks Illinois eighth amongst the ten states with the strictest gun laws. When a person attempts to purchase a firearm in Illinois, he or she must supply a valid, state issued, Firearm Owners Identification Card or a concealed carry permit. Unlike some states, Illinois requires a 72 hour waiting period for purchases of a handgun and 24 hours for a rifle or shotgun. Automatic guns, short barrel shotguns, and suppressors are banned entirely. Their conceal and carry laws are also some of the most stringent in the country. Even with all of these strict gun laws and regulations, Chicago had a total of 720 people shot and killed, and another 3,659 shot and wounded in  2016. More gun laws do not equal less violence. Fixing our culture and protecting possible victims, along with reforming possible killers, will equal less violence.

Clearly, our nation needs to do some soul-searching on this important topic.  Thoughtful, fact-driven policy should be the goal, not an ineffective, emotionally driven, knee-jerk reaction that does little to solve the problem.  Addressing what causes one human being to so callously end the lives of their fellow human beings is a much greater problem that can only be solved by looking deep into our collective national soul to see where and when we lost our respect for life.

When someone is depraved enough to extinguish the life of others so callously, our reaction needs to address how that person came to value life so little, not simply focus on the tool he used to commit the act.

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Thomas Bean 

Opinion Writer