Within hours of the Sandy Hook shooting story being reported my Facebook newsfeed was filled with sided responses by my American friends from the supportive: “prayers and thoughts go out to the families of Newtown”, to the flippant; “here we go again with the attacks on the 2nd Amendment…”

The response of the national media has been equally as polarised as those Facebook posts. Our very own Piers Morgan has been a vocal advocate of increased gun control, a view which has garnered him a petition on the White House website to deport him (and, fortunately, a counter petition).

Americans are justifiably concerned with their gun ownership right being withdrawn. The right is given in the revered Constitution and Bill of Rights. Amending the sacred Constitution is an emotive topic in America, to the extent that many consider it to be the divine will of the Founding Fathers that must be preserved at all costs. It is important to know that the Founding Fathers recognised it as an imperfect document; they wished it to evolve. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “laws must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind”. This is why it can and should be amended; in fact the latest amendment was adopted as recently as 1992, showing that the document has not been stagnant through America’s history.

The response from the National Rifle Association, the infamously powerful Washington gun rights lobbying group, was widely received as out-of-touch and insensitive. Their CEO, LaPierre, controversially proclaimed that “the only thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”, every teacher should be armed with a weapon. The cost of implementing this policy is estimated to be $2 billion. While enormously impractical, the correctness of this policy can also be disputed. At the Aurora theatre massacre police arrived within 90 seconds of the shooting beginning; this was sufficient for 58 people to be wounded and 12 to be killed. The “good guy with a gun” theory at its most effective only reduces a shooting’s damage but does not eliminate it.

The theory also leads to what could be a potential conflict between amendments in the Bill of Rights. Typically where a contradiction occurs newer text takes precedent, but the Bill of Rights was written into law simultaneously so the Supreme Court would have to decide which get supremacy. The 2nd Amendment would possibly contradict Amendments five to eight, which largely deal with citizens’ judicial rights, mostly prominently the Sixth Amendment which gives citizens the right to a “public trial by an impartial jury…and to have the Assistance of Counsel”. The good-guy-with-a-gun would see the role of judge, jury and executioner self-appropriated to him. Further to this if the good-guy stopped the shooter through a fatal act this could be a violation of the Eight Amendment’s ban on “cruel punishments” – as the constitutionality of the death sentence has been questioned a number of times over the last 50 years.

Fundamentally the gun control problem in America, like many other problems, comes down to a collective belief of what society should be. In the United Kingdom our society does not believe that we should have to compromise our right to life for a right to bear arms. British society also believes that healthcare should be available to all, another belief not universally shared by our friends across the pond. Perhaps the (flawed) theory that violent crime in America is caused by mental health issues might be helped if they changed their view on healthcare? In this regard the Constitution provides a crutch for those who do not favour change in society. Due its venerated status the ease with which the document can create an impasse in discussion is very dangerous.

We must remember that America is still a very young country and one which has a self-sense of might due to its rapid ascent to power. If America ever wishes to join the rest of the Western World’s ideals and leave its dystopian reality the Constitution need not be the stumbling block, it is something that the populace must collectively desire – for example, in 1971 the 26th Amendment concerning voting age was passed in little over two months.

Gun control will be an issue only resolved once the diatribes cool and America sits down for a frank discussion about the merits of the 2nd Amendment. The human causes behind the violence are complex and difficult to solve but it should be clear that if the mechanism, firearms, allowing such attacks to occur were made hard to source then perhaps the events like that at Sandy Hook Elementary School would be less common. As the recently crowned Miss America put it, it is not “proper to fight violence with violence”.