On the morning of December 14, 2012, a group of schoolchildren sat in a classroom in Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newton, Connecticut. The winter air was chill, tinged with the frostiness that only comes to the Northeastern part of this nation. 

The serenity of the ordinary was rudely shattered when 20-year-old Adam Lanza burst into the school, gunning down administrators and schoolchildren alike. At the end of the encounter, Lanza, and 26 other people, 20 of them children, were dead.

This horrendous tragedy has justly provoked great anger and rekindled a dying battle over the issue of gun control. California Senator Diane Feinstein has proposed a sweeping new gun control bill, with prohibitions ranging from forward grips to pistols with threaded barrels. Politicians have stepped forward, demanding that gun violence be curtailed. And yet, the core question amidst all the fervor and political clash is simple: should the federal government control guns? Should firearms be only allowed under the tightest of regulations, and most, if not all, guns be banned as “dangerous” or “unsafe”?

The answer is a resounding no. The consequences of enacting this or similar bills are harmful and counter-productive. However, we’re students. A mere “No” isn’t enough. In order to prove this point, several questions must be answered. Why is gun control a bad idea? Why should it never be enacted? Why should Americans be allowed to keep and bear arms?

That last phrase should have been an instant cue. The law of the United States, the Constitution, which trumps all other laws in this nation, clearly states that “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be denied.” No clearer mandate can be stated: as U.S. citizens, we have the right both to own, and also to carry, our guns. A gun ban like Sen. Feinstein’s is flatly illegal.

Gun control is illogical as well as illegal. Consider what would have happened if there had been a police officer (all of whom are trained to carry/use guns) standing in the doorway of Sandy Hook that fateful morning. Adam Lanza would have gotten no further than the sidewalk. Furthermore, the mere threat of a trained man with a gun would have been a major deterrent, most likely stopping Lanza from even coming to Sandy. The point is simple: is a criminal more likely to be deterred if he knows that an unarmed group of five-year-olds or a trained officer of the law will be waiting with a gun?

That leads to another interesting point. Gun control is only successful at removing firearms from the hands of law-abiding citizens. Criminals are always going to be able to procure lethal weapons. There’s a reason that they are called criminals. Therefore, the very segment of the population that gun control purportedly helps is the one most likely to be victimized! What a perversion of the stated purpose of gun control, which is presumably to better protect the people of America!

What happened at Sandy Hook was a heinous evil. It has become a cliché, yet the phrase holds true: that should not happen to anyone. Taking steps to control guns, however, is a step in the wrong direction. As a final thought, it is often popular to make policy decisions on the basis of a single event. 

When a tragedy such as Newtown occurs, the immediate instinct is to clamor for change, with no thought to the consequences. If change should happen, it must be in the opposite direction from the road that proponents of gun control are traveling.

For such a road will inexorably pull our nation, as it has so many others, down the path from freedom and toward the path of tyranny.