Zachary Roman, Contributing Writer
Five years ago, during that god-awful Zoom school year, I was outside with my puppy when I saw a white pickup truck drive by my house and head towards I-495. A truck that proudly flew a Confederate flag.
The driver is infamous in my neighborhood for having the house covered in pro-Trump flags and signs. I felt my usual disgust toward this person and went back to my class. During the same class, I glanced up at my living room TV and my mouth went agape. On the live broadcast from MSNBC, a mob of radical election deniers chanted for the execution of the sitting vice president, broke through police lines and rioted at one of our nation’s most sacred government institutions. They smashed the windows with riot shields and assaulted police officers with mace, bear spray and whatever else they could get their hands on.
I alerted my family of the situation and we watched in horror as the chaos continued to unfold, hoping it would not migrate the five miles it would take to reach us. When you can see the top of the Washington Monument from your house, Jan. 6 becomes infinitely more terrifying.
The next day, my ex-marine father took me to the Marine Corps Exchange at Fort Myer and bought a Saint Victor 5.56 AR-15 pistol, a short-barrelled semi-automatic rifle. He bought this weapon without the permission of my mother and when I asked him why, he had a very matter-of-fact answer: “If those nutjobs are going to have these guns, then so am I.”
A weapon like this fires rounds with such velocity that it tears apart your organs, shatters bones and can render a person unidentifiable. Weapons like this should not be legal under any circumstances, but they are.
When my father bought this gun, it was legally classified as a pistol. Only under the Biden administration was it deemed a “short-barrel rifle.” This loophole is one of many that allow for these weapons of mass destruction to be owned legally. That is a major problem with our constitution and the political party that refuses to infringe on Second Amendment rights, even when there is statistical proof from other countries that restricting gun ownership reduces mass shootings (i.e., Canada, Australia and the UK).
I am in full support of strict gun regulations, a registry system where every single gun, bullet and augment is stamped and can be traced back to an owner and even repealing the Second Amendment, which would make gun ownership a privilege in this country. However, these beliefs are unlikely to be codified into law and until then, these weapons will be legal.
If they are, then I will absolutely be an owner of one. There is no chance I am sitting back and letting people like my neighbor or any of the 10,000 people at the Jan. 6 riots have weapons like that while I have nothing.
If it comes down to them or me and my family, it is me and my family every single time.
We live under an administration that has no qualms with their immigration enforcement agency murdering people in public in broad daylight, where ICE is stopping vehicles without probable cause, where they raid homes without warrants and where they racially profile brown people, where the Patriot Front, a white supremacist organization, can march on the National Mall chanting about “taking the country back.”
As long as this is the case, I am going to own an assault rifle. If this borderline authoritarian administration continues to make life for marginalized communities increasingly more dangerous, then I will level the playing field.
Mass shootings and lack of gun control is a uniquely American problem. We are the only country in the world where the second biggest culprit to children dying is guns. We saw 20 first graders get torn apart by an assault rifle at Sandy Hook in 2012 and decided not to do anything.
We saw a man fire 1,049 rounds from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay hotel, murder 60 people, injure 500 others and nothing was done about it.
If I sat here and named every single mass shooting to happen in this country since Columbine in 1999, I would be writing this piece for months. With all the death, pain and grief guns have caused us in the 21st century, I would love for nothing more than a future where parents can drop their kids off at school and not have to worry about trying to identify their kid who was brutally murdered by an assault rifle.
If confiscating every weapon in the country and melting them down to nothing but metal would save every single child who would have died from gun violence, I would give up any and all guns in a heartbeat. But right now, that future is so far away, I cannot see it. Right now, guns are legal weapons of mass destruction that can be purchased under loopholes. In 38 states in the US, you can decide to buy a gun and obtain one that same day. If that is the case, then I want to be on the same playing field.