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Gun Control Argument paper

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EN 111 4/16/13 "Don 't shoot! I 'm not armed!" Many have heard the saying, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” then on December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the small town of Newtown, Connecticut. Ever since this tragic day, there has been a large push for gun control in the US, led by President Obama. The bills that are before Congress would make penalties for buying guns illegally more onerous, address trafficking, and greatly expand the number of gun sales covered by background checks. These laws might make us all feel safer as well as make us feel like we have control over the “bad guys” but at the end of the day, these new laws will …show more content…

The second law would put bans on high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic assault weapons. The Liberals’ reasoning for this law is that there is no reason for an American civilian to own, or have to own an assault weapon, for example an AK-47. The argument an individual will use in support of gun control would say something like, “The reason why the mass murders can have such a large killing spree is because they use these semi-automatic, high capacity ammunition weapons. If these kinds of weapons were made illegal it would be harder for these large killing sprees to happen.” That argument does sound logical, but let’s take a look at some numbers to see how much of an impact this law would cause. In a speech that Mr. Virtual President, Bill Whittle, made he said, “In 2011 the total of fire arm murders came to 8,583 and total murders by all rifles, not just semi-automatic rifles, came to 323, which is only 3%.…but there were 5 times the amount of murders then all rifles combined made by knifes alone, and preventable medical errors kills about 98,000 people a year” (Bill Whittle). With the small number of only 3% of murders made by all types of rifles compared to the total fire arms is a very small percentage. If this law came into place there would not be noticeable decrease of total fire arm murders due to semi-automatic rifles being banned. Ronald

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