Banning Assault And Semiautomatic Weapons

As you can see by the chart shown above that over fifty percent of all mass shooting are used by gun that are legally obtained. That means that the guns used in mass shooting and school shooting are bought legally or are taken from home.

The U.S. government cannot justify allowing anyone to have access to these weapons either. The benefit of a semi-automatic or automatic weapon is to be able to kill more people, not to be able to kill one person faster. So criminals have a bigger advantage by using these guns than law-abiding citizens (Koper and Roth 2). And people using assault weapons for self-defense in their home take ridiculous risks. Shotguns and pistols will scare or eliminate an intruder without taking those risks. Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police says, “An AK-47 fires a military round. In a regular home with dry-wall walls, I wouldn't be surprised if it went through six of them” (Roleff 3). This means that innocent children and adults hiding or sleeping in other rooms could be killed.

The Second Amendment gives average citizens the right to keep and bear arms. This has been an occurring issue for a while now but the recent school shooting by Adam Lanza in December of 2012, an unstable man who had access to assault weapons killed 26 people. Do you feel safe under The Second Amendment? Many people think these mass shootings could have been stopped if the government had never repealed the 1994 assault weapon ban or if we had universal background checks, keeping this ban active could have saved 26 adults and kids from their death. Not only do mass shooting occur too often but so do attacks that end in tragedy. Trayvon Martin is just one of many who was killed for being an average teen in the U.S. only his life was cut short because he decided to walk through a very unwelcoming neighborhood. Under the Second Amendment everyday citizens are not protected by the current gun control laws.

In my opinion, this number is way to high for me even four people is too much for me. Understandably, America cannot stop all mass shootings, but if changing the laws could decrease the amount of deaths, we should do so. Majority of the guns are owned by the United States. In fact, the United States owns half of the guns in the world, which can be a bit of a concern, (“List of Gun Control Pros and Cons”). This just goes to show that we need to do something about the gun laws that we have today, but this could infringe on an individual’s rights. The Constitution states in Amendment II, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” (“The 2nd Amendment of the U.S.

If everyone had access to normal guns only, and the one bad person wants to go on a shooting rampage, he will not able to kill that many innocent people ,someone would have time to disarm that bad person or shoot him. For example, “in 2012, a gunman using several weapons, including an assault rifle, opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 and wounding 58” (Assault Weapons) if there was a ban on those weapons he couldn’t of hurt that many people. Many lives could have been saved, and crimes could have been prevented with a banning in the use of assault

July 20th, 2012, twelve are killed and fifty-eight are injured at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. The man who killed them used a semi-automatic rifle with a one hundred round magazine. An automatic weapon has no use in the United States because all sporting events, and activities with guns can be accomplished without automatic weapons. It is important because it limits the possibilities of events like the shooting at the Sandusky school in Ohio. Some would say they are a good for shooting range activity and most people don’t commit crimes with them, getting rid of automatic weapons would get rid of the crimes committed with them overall. People die because of the actions taken with with assault rifles. Automatic weapons should be banned in the US because they are not needed for self defense, and they have almost no use in recreational activities.

Why should assault weapons be banned? One of the guns used in Columbine was a 9mm carbine and in the Sandy Hook massacre a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle were both assault weapons. Dylan Klebold and Eric Herres got their weapons illegally same with the people that shoot up Sandy Hook. If assault weapons were banned at that time all of the students that died that day would still be alive and probably should have bright futures. That just proves that anyone can get assault weapons illegally or legally. Assault weapons should be banned because they could get sold illegally to the wrong people and cause violence. Assault weapons should be banned.

Columbine and Virginia Tech were definitely two of the biggest, but not one of the first mass shootings on school grounds. On August 1, 1966, a mass shooting took place at the University of Texas. A 25 ex-marine named Charles Whitman, who majored in architectural engineering, murdered his mother and wife that morning. Whitman climbed on top of the UT Tower and started firing. “The crime scene spanned the length of five city blocks… and covered the nerve of what was then a relatively small, quiet college town.”

There is currently an ongoing debate in the U.S whether or not the government should ban assault weapons. An assault weapon is a semi-automatic weapon that has a larger magazine that is capable of holding more bullets, and fires a bullet every time the trigger is pulled. There are also assault weapons categorized as machine guns that fire bullets as long as the trigger is held down in a constant state. What differentiates assault weapons from other guns is that assault weapons are deadlier for they have semi-automatic capability, larger ammunition and military like features. It makes the weapons more appealing to people who want to kill large amounts of people. The likelihood or ability to obtain an assault weapon in the United States are

United States history of deadly massacres. Gun violence has always been a hot topic because of constant crimes involving firearms over the years. Recent history has alluded even more debate to possibly create or reform even more gun laws. In the story of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, the New York Times addressed what had happened. This shooting killed twenty six people, twenty in which were children ranging from the ages of five to ten years old. Adam Lanza, who ended up committing suicide, was identified as the gunman who was armed with semiautomatic pistols and a semiautomatic rifle. Another example is from the Los Angeles Times that covered a 2012 Colorado shooting in a movie theater. The gunman, suspected to be James E. Holmes, killed twelve people and injured dozens more in the shooting in a packed movie theater in Aurora. Authorities said Holmes was dressed in full body armor and used a form of tear gas on the crowd before opening fire with multiple guns. In addition, the most recent shooting occurred on May 2014 in Isla Vista near the University of Santa Barbara. This shooting resulted in seven deaths, thirteen wounded, and the murderer himself a gunshot wound to his head. He used three semiautomatic handguns and more than four hundred rounds of ammunition at his side. The recent history of shooting massacres is only a sample size of the whole history of gun violence in

Strathfield Massacre In previous years, owning a gun in the United States was an uncontrolled issue. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry could walk in a gun store and so long as they did not have any previous criminal record or mental problems, they were eligible to buy a gun. There was no control as to how many guns one could own either. This was a loophole in the regulations as it enabled many people to access the weapon without finding out what they were using it for.

On August 1, 1966, The University of Texas at Austin was the target of a school shooting. This tragedy was known as the deadliest school shooting in America before the Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007 (Slotkin). School shootings are something that should not be taken lightly and the victims should be

October 1, 2017: the date of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history; 58 murdered, hundreds more injured. Unfortunately, this is just one example of an awful mass shooting; breaking families apart, and scarring others for life. Although it is beyond tragic that there have been so many tragedies like this, with the help of forensics and investigators they have been able to find similarities in mass murderers, and with more public awareness comes the hope that in the future, these disasters can be prevented.

It seems that gunmen can walk freely in schools at present. Too many murders with assault rifles and pistols happened in campus. The Americans laying down under gunfire are not troopers patrolling in Middle East threating by terrorism, but children having classes and playing with friends in campus. Every police officer and nurse cannot forget the tears left on faces of who can never see the sun of tomorrow and even celebrate their 10-year birthdays. Arguments about an old topic of limiting guns and weapons are now rising again; but this time, parents turn to be main supporting force of such prohibition. Emphasizing the right of owning weapons, which is protected by US Constitution, or at least, an amendment, some people are still the resisting power against any forms of restriction of firearms. However, even ignoring the fact that related laws are actually outdated, some actions seem to be necessary for protecting children away from malice of weapon keepers. Therefore, the restrictions of assault weapons should be considered to put onto the agenda due to the excessive power of assault weapons, the obsolete background check system helping proliferation of firearms, and erroneous interpretation of constitution of private arms by opponents.

Sometimes the public can make entirely incorrect inferences about certain issues. This misinformation can sometimes become prevalent when talking about assault weapons and mass homicides. Often assault weapons are painted as horrendously deadly guns that can kill hundreds of people in minutes with little to no thought from the shooter. However, what is often misunderstood is that the type of weapons most often mistaken for assault weapons are machine guns. Machine guns are fully automatic guns that typically require two people to operate and can fire multiple rounds under a single prolonged depression of the trigger (“Fully Automatic Firearms.” 1).