Persuasive Essay On Gun Control

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.

The second amendment states that we have the right to keep and bear arms. We are one of the few countries that continue to allow and accept this as a right. This is a right that many Americans safely practice, however, it's also a right that some Americans have taken advantage of. Every year, there are hundreds of mass shootings in America, killing a number of innocent people. Change is necessary in order for us to feel safer in our own country.

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 On February 28th, 2017, the Trump administration repealed a firearms regulation that prevented mentally disabled persons from owning guns.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

On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and leaving 17 injured at Virginia Tech. On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza went on a shooting spree in Newtown, Connecticut, killing his mother before shooting 20 1st graders and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary. On June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 58 others. Most recently on October 1, 2017, 58 people were killed and another 489 injured when Stephen Paddock fired onto the crowd at the Route 91 Harvest music festival. Many more mass shootings have happened where more innocent people have lost their lives. Gun control has been in debate for some period, some people advocate for it while others dissuade it. Now more than ever, changes must be made to better protect people from losing their lives to a shooter. To prevent future tragedies in the United States, there should be stricter gun laws enforcing a more advance psychological test, imposing a federal gun license, and have a 1 month waiting period to receive the gun.

Over the course of three years, approximately 160 school shootings have been recorded. Including fatal and nonfatal assaults, suicides, and unintentional shootings. In all, the incidents resulted in 59 deaths and 124 nonfatal gunshot injuries (Analysis of school shootings). It is unreasonable how many innocent lives have been taken away because of these tragedies. Oftentimes when a mass shooting occurs, people debate gun control laws more profoundly. Controlling the gun laws and the way guns are obtained may be a solution to help control school shootings and save many precious lives.

Gun control is one of the most talked about topics in modern day America. 43 of 50 states have the right to bear arms. Most states have to background check you in order for you to purchase or sell guns. Some other states prevent carrying guns and some other ban assault rifle weapons. People who support the gun laws say that the second amendment was meant for militias and that gun restrictions have always existed. People who oppose that say that guns are needed for self-defense from people who invade houses or are actual threats. Although both of those are correct, there will always be two sides for control laws.

October, 1st 2017 has marked the latest in a now all too familiar trend of tragedies; a mass killing of civilians by a sick individual. In the wake of this tragedy, there is a mass of human emotion, grief, anger, sadness, and a demand for justice to right what has been wronged. In looking for justice, one needs an antagonist to blame, in this case an object, the gun. While it is true that firearms are the weapon of choice for many violent tragedies across the United States, will a ban on firearms truly solve the problem of violence for the country? Although a firearm ban may seem like a preventative for violence in the United States, a comparison of violent crime in other countries with varying levels of gun control, the lack of

Gun control for who? Given the recent tragedy in Las Vegas, Nevada, where a lone gunman killed over 50 people and injured hundreds, the discussion of gun rights a dispute in the country’s storied culture wars will fail in any substantial changes to current laws. While I strongly dislike hearing of senseless deaths, especially when they seem preventable with proper legislation, however I know of gun control problematic racist past; not everything is black or white.

“A series of terror attacks that killed more than 120 people, ISIS claimed responsibility for the horrific Paris attacks,” (Castillo and et. al.). Even though more guns will give more chances of murders, will more gun control laws stop people by getting them, will we be safer without legal guns, and why should we give up our right to bear arms.

In the wake of the shooting in Las Vegas this year, there have been more tension around gun-control than ever. This shooting has inspired a new wave of people to argue over whether or not the United States needs new gun laws, one side argues that we need more restrictions on the owning of guns, the other side that it's a citizen's right to own a gun and to take that away is unconstitutional. In this paper, I will first give a rundown of the history of laws concerning gun control, then I will talk about whether or not America should pass more gun laws then I will address how this relates to previous cases involving gun control.

Over 13,286 people yearly die from gun violence. In 2016 over 700 people were killed due to guns in the streets of chicago. Which is the most restricted place to purchase weapons. So they would get it from other ways. Such as buying out of state, or the black market. People would have to resort to these dangerous tactics if only there were less gun control laws. When there can be a simple solution that is not looked at. A solution that could completely fix the problem by the way it started.

“If a child can’t open a bottle of Aspirin, we should make sure that they can’t pull a trigger on a gun.”

Guns have become a weapon to self-defenses when a person is in danger and needs to be able to protect themselves. Many people carry a gun to prevent robbery, break-ins, kidnaps and even abused. In order to purchase a gun, the buyer must be 21 years of age, pass a background check, pass a mental health team, able to demonstrate a safe handling and a waiting period is about 30 days to get the results. When purchase the gun must be locked away with the safety lock and the bullets must be in a different lock box and be out of reach so children won't be able to get their hand on it.