Cycle of Violence: Gun Control and Victim's Rights

The subject is a twelve year old girl who was shot in the head and put into the hospital in early September. She is still unresponsive but has been taken off the respirator and is breathing on her own as her family maintains full faith that she'll come home as the girl that they knew. The girl is poor and black living in a major city.

So this is the crossroads of two important political issues - gun control and victim's rights. The victim's family is holding a party as a fundraiser for the girl to cover medical expenses that have continued to accumulate in the time that she's been hospitalized, and which will continue to accumulate. As a victim, one who has no financial independence of her own and who obviously has a very long recovery ahead of her if she does come out of her coma, how is she ever going to be able to pay down medical expenses not covered by the state? If her family is working class or poorer, how would they be able to cover it? When long term care is required that would carry a person over the caps of whatever health insurance they may already possess, what responsibility do we have as a society to care for that person?

As a society we are struggling with the issue of gun control, and that seems to be a particularly relevant issue in this case. How many fewer cases of these violent crimes would occur if handguns were controlled with the strictness with which we control explosive substances? aren't they as deadly? Yet we are allowed to hold licenses for private ownership of handguns that we would never be allowed for some controlled substances. Even propane requires certain permits to possess in large quantities, like the licenses and permits farmers have to use propane in large scale heating systems for barns. Why is it inconceivable then that we as private citizens wouldn't have to have a permit demonstrating a necessity for using a handgun before we are allowed to own one?

If we accept the ownership of weapons as a constitutional right and do not put very clear and discriminating limits on ownership of weapons when they are responsible for the majority of violent deaths in this country, we as a society have to take responsibility for the victims of crimes perpetrated largely by use of those weapons. That means that we owe victims of gun violence every type of care necessary for them to recover. If we don't owe them that because of our common humanity than we owe them because we have given permission to those individuals committing the crime by our purposeful and self-interested ignorance of the fact that guns only have one purpose, they kill.