Robert A. Heinlein once said “ an armed society is a polite society.Manners are good When one may have to back up his acts with his life.” Gun control in the United States has been around since the 18th century. America has seen more than 1,001 mass shootings over the past 10 years.The Gun Control Act of 1968 was made for the purpose of “keeping firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them because of age, criminal background,and incompetence.” The act also placed a specific limit on the sale of guns and gun dealer licensing and record keeping. Despite the amount ofI shootings in America, Gun Control laws are too strict. Gun control laws should be less regulated ; theorize that there would be less crime,less mass shootings and a better sense of security : If there are less regulations than one could protect themselves, which would lessen crime rate, with less laws, there would be far less mass shootings due to an armed citizens, with lenient gun regulations one would have a better sense of security Less Gun Control regulations would drop crime rates.Various studies have shown that there is some type of decrease is gun violence, since more Americans are going the extra mile to get themselves a gun and protect themselves,home,and family and in some cases friends. “After all, armed citizens frequently prevent crimes from happening, including gun-related homicides…” An armed citizen may be present in a sense before a police may arrive .People
Gun control laws aim to restrict or regulate firearms by selecting who can sell, buy and possess certain guns. Criminals do not obey laws and stricter gun control laws or banning guns will have little effect on reducing crimes. There are many myths about gun control reducing acts of gun violence, which are simply not true according to research. People are responsible for the crimes, not the guns themselves. Taking guns away from United States citizens that use them for many reasons, shooting practice, competition, hunting and self-defense, should not be punished for the acts of criminals. As stated by Mytheos Holt, “Guns in the right hands help public safety. Guns in the wrong hands harm public safety”. Research shows that defensive use of
Gun control should not exist at all in the United States. Mass shootings have almost become seen as normal event in the United States. What people do not understand is that gun control is not the answer; there are countries with little to no control that have fewer shootings. According to The Washington Post,Finland is ranked number 4 in countries with the most guns despite that they only had 24 homicides by firearm (“Gun homicides and ownership by countries” n.pag.) . In the article Did Gun Control Work In Australia “it is shown that gun control has reduced the problems but it still has not completely got rid of all firearm deaths”(Matthews n.pag.). The number of murders, homicides, or suicides do not go up due to people just owning more guns. Clayton Perry, a staff writer at the University of Maine, even points out “Stricter gun laws were in place during the Assault Weapons Ban between 1994 and 2004, but that didn't stop the shooters at Columbine in 1999 ”(Perry n. pag.). In Iceland, thirty out of a hundred people own a gun and they have zero homicides caused by guns a year(“Gun Homicides and ownership by country” n. pag.). In this day and age, everything is unpredictable, guns are a form of protection for everyone and there should not be restrictions on protection. The U.S. Department of Justice released a data brief that states, “ On average in 1987-92 about 83,000 crime victims per year used a firearm to defend themselves or their property”(Rand BJS Statistician n. pag.). The National Sheriffs Association released that the average police response time is at eighteen minutes while the average school shooting only last twelve minutes (“Embracing Technology To Decrease Response Time” n. pag.). Gun control should not exist because other countries do fine without it , high gun ownership has no link with increasing death rates , and guns are not harmful when instructions are followed.
Every so often the media and news feeds flood with reports of a mass shooting. Families mourn. In the days that follow, calls to action can be heard, and there is a demand for change. Sometimes minor legislation passes, but in the United States extreme change is rarely seen. Other developed nations provide an opposite comparison. Following the Port Arthur shooting in Australia and the shooting in Great Britain, both countries organized for significant gun reform.
According to Nicholas Kristof’s article “our blind spot about guns” gun control is a lot like cars regulation such that if we can regulate cars we can regulate guns. It took a lot of time and effort but thanks to regulations cars are safer than they were many years ago, and the same is very possible with guns. We need to keep our country safe. The first steps to gun control are improving on background checks and also requiring trigger locks on all guns.
From 1988 to 2001, the usage of anti-depressant drugs in the general public increased by four-hundred percent (Swanson). The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary took place in December of 2012, and during 2014, firearms were used in 88 percent of teen homicides, and 41 percent of teen suicides (“Suicidal Teens”). On February 28th, 2017, the Trump administration repealed a firearms regulation that prevented mentally disabled persons from owning guns. At the same time, teenage mental illness is on the rise, specifically in cases of depression and anxiety. A report from the Surgeon General shows that over 90 percent of adolescents that committed either suicide or homicide have or had a mental disability. Mental disabilities such as depression and anxiety put teenagers at a high risk for homicides and suicides. Teenagers who are stressed due to school, lack of parenting, puberty, bullying, and other factors can develop depression, anxiety or another mental illness. Allowing these teens easy access to firearms proves time and time again to be very dangerous. In some cases, the families of these teens have never been assessed to see if they can responsibly store firearms. The only background check performed is on the owner of the firearm, meaning that a person may own the weapon even if another family member living with them legally cannot. Loose gun control laws allow families with physiologically ill children to have access to firearms, without first checking to see if the disabled children in the home are responsible enough to be around said firearms. Repealing gun control laws instated by the Obama administration will cause an increase in adolescent firearm-related homicides, suicides, and tragedies similar to the one at Sandy Hook Elementary.
On October 1st 2017, Steven Paddock shot and killed 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. Over the course of 12 minutes, Paddock committed the worst mass shooting in modern American history. We must honor the victims and respect their memory, but we have to ask ourselves what we will do to prevent this in the future. The first and completely valid response to that question is enacting stricter gun control, but there is much more than that. We can increase funding for mental health treatment, we can take stricter security measures at hotels and concerts, however there is something major that needs to be changed that hardly ever gets talked about. It’s something that we are used to, that we have seen all throughout our
Over the past two decades, rising gun control controversy among the American people alters the way Americans foresee firearms. Even today, controversies continue. The Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights states that "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. (Brooks np)." In January of 2016, Obama announced his gun control plan. His plan would more strictly enforce current laws, including firearms (Smith np). People deserve the right to have firearms for the ability to protect, defend, and entertain themselves and others. The way people obtain information about firearms is the biggest controversy among the American people. The thought that "guns kill people," influences people, when in all reality, they need to understand that "people kill people." Although there are around 10,000 people killed in the United States each year from firearms, guns are not the primary conflict in the killings, the people behind the guns are (Brooks np).
To begin with, gun control laws aren’t doing any good in their current state. In fact, from a study done from 1980 to 2009 “assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level.” This reveals us that it isn’t the laws that are in control, it is the people that are in control. To elaborate, another study found that “states with the largest increases in gun ownership also have the largest drops in violent crimes.” With crime rates dropping the deaths and injury rates dropped an “average of 90 percent.” In addition to less crime, one law passed by the government was for civilians to conceal carry, which means to carry a firearm undetected. This law being passed is what caused the drop in crime and violence, and again seeing as how a law for gun carriage is good, it is shown how it is on the people to make the right decisions. So, if there wasn’t a law for concealed carry, there may be more accidents. There may be a scenario in which a bank is being robbed, if and when a civilian is there to incapacitate the perpetrator, no harm will occur to the surrounding audience (Gun Control).
Breaking news, an “assault weapon” walked in a school and wreaked havoc creating the ninth school shooting we’ve had this year! You may be thinking, what, a gun with a mind of its own? Well, that is exactly the type of thinking the news and gun-control activists want you to have. I have never met a firearm who wants or even can shoot someone, have you? That leads us to think about who the real problem is with gun-control, the firearm, or the human? If these activists were to become successful, we would be able to see the effects. The consequences of people not being able to own guns would have tremendous effects on safety, such as self-defense, which is why laws should focus on placing more restrictions on who can get guns, strengthening the filtering system, and placing harder penalties for those who use guns wrongfully or who do not have the right paperwork.
Devin P. Kelley committed a mass shooting at a local Texas church. He was discharge from the Navy because he tried to kill his commanding officers. Devin P. Kelley escaped from a mental institution and was charged with domestic abuse,multiple misdemeanors and of mistreatment, neglect or cruelty to animals, and yet he was able to buy four guns legally (Rosenberg). That is the most recent example of why Americans need more gun control laws. Guns are not cool or makes you look good, they are a dangerous piece of machinery that Americans take advantage of. The average American in the right mindset should not want to own anything more than one handgun or rifle for hunting or protecting their household. Gun control reform that limits gun
Gun Control I believe are great laws that help the country rid themselves of violence by taking away fatal weapons that are used by those unsuitable to use respectively and defensively, but that is what the gun control laws are for. The gun control laws are to take away weapons from the ones who would use them not for self defense, but rather they would use it for reckless murder. To be honest the gun control laws are not 100% guarantee, because of the fact that you really don’t even know if those people the people who have a clean record with the cops. You never know they can change their mind and go crazy and go and do a murder, but it is better than just giving and selling guns to everyone in the United States and allowing anyone to buy and sell weapons. Being able to have people being able to have their weapons in their pockets is a controversial issue, their is a good and bad to it the good is it is great for self defense at critical moments the bad is that that person who has the weapon holstered may just be a person who is going to commit a massacre. You see nobody knows who will not or who will murder people it is hard to tell even if someone has a non criminal background it is still hard to tell. In fact when guns are allowed to be holstered the murder rate in the country rises as shown in Agresti, James D., Smith, Reid K. & Guerra, Rebecca. “Gun Control Facts.” Just Facts. 6 November 2017. Web. 8 November 2017. (-- removed HTML --) . When gun control laws are thrown to the curb they put many more lives at risk such as this website showing murders in states increase when weapons are holstered.
America is a country where guns are becoming more of a common household item, more people have been buying guns to protect their families. While guns are becoming more popular in homes, gun violence and crime is becoming more common as well. As more people are dying everyday from gun violence and crime, the government and the people of the country are beginning to take the incidents into account and are beginning to build up more laws around gun control. But with these laws many people have begun to not agree with them. Americans are questioning whether having more gun control will help, or if it will create more chaos and violence in their country.
Gun control has always been a heated topic in this country, and as more issues involving guns arise, the more heated it gets. This was especially seen after the Las Vegas mass shooting where 58 people died and 515 more were injured after a 64- year old man opened fire into a crowd during a concert. This devastating event should be enough for people to realize that more gun control laws should be placed around the country because most guns like large capacity guns are not needed for recreational use, gun control laws will lower the amount of mass shootings, and finally they will also lower the homicide/suicide rates. Although the other side may claim that owning guns is a protected by the second amendment, there is nothing in the
For the past few years, gun control has been an “important matter” in the United States. Every US citizen that is the appropriate age, has the “right to bear armaments”, according to the 2nd amendment. This Right is slowly being taken away from us by new laws and regulations. ““Gun control” is a wide-ranging term that covers any sort of restriction on what kinds of guns can be sold and bought, who can possess or sell them, and where and how they can be stored or carried. Sometimes, the term is also used to cover related matters, like restrictions on types of shells, bullets and magazine clips people are allowed to use”(Pérez-Peña 2015). According to Pérez-Peña, “In recent years, gun control debates have focused primarily on background checks for buyers, allowing individuals to carry weapons in public, and whether to allow the possession of assault rifles”(2015). Many politicians use the topic of gun control in their campaigns. “Laws on carrying weapons vary. Most states allow anyone who legally owns a gun to carry it openly, in public, without requiring a permit. A few states also have no permit requirement to carry a concealed gun. Concealed carry requires a permit in most states, but most of those states grant the licenses automatically to any legal gun owners who want them. States also vary in their rules on gun ownership in specific settings, like schools and churches”(Pérez-Peña 2015). In the state of Georgia, you must have an open carry license in order to carry in public. “For example, in Rhode Island, any individual with a concealed carry permit can bring a gun onto the grounds of a public school, but in Massachusetts, written approval from school administrators is required – and rarely given”(Pérez-Peña 2015).
Yet there is even more to the story, since the very founding of the United States of America, the United States has banned African Americans and minority’s from possessing firearms. Throughout most of American history, gun control was openly stated as a method for keeping African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities "in their place.” This was so that whites could feel safe. In the United States with the fear of “blacks” owning guns they created statues that were designed for blacks only. This was to keep them in line and prevent them from revolting. “In Maryland, these prohibitions went so far as to prohibit free blacks from owning dogs without a license, and authorizing any white to kill an unlicensed dog owned by a free black, for fear that blacks would use dogs as weapons. Mississippi went further, and prohibited any ownership of a dog by a black person” (Wilson, 2016). Laws such as the black codes passed in 1865-66 which counteracted the 2nd amendment showed the fear many whites had especially in the south had towards blacks. These laws were designed to prevent African Americans from carrying guns to sustain control over them. These were former slaves that were know free and had just the right as any to own a gun, yet they were barred yet again due to them not being white. This continued into the civil rights era and in fact got worse, the system did not allow African Americans to even posses them.