preview

The Pros And Cons Of Gun Control

Decent Essays

In the article, Dear Mona: How many Americans have never shot a gun?, Mona Chalabi provides information to answer her reader’s, Curtis, question. In October 2007, Gallup did a survey on “Have you, personally, fired a gun?”, in which 31 percent answered “no”. However, not much has changed since then and there hasn’t been enough data to draw any conclusion. Thus, Mona decided to look at surveys about gun ownership instead. Most surveys that Mona found did not get similar results. The General Social Survey gave a steadily decreasing data, on the other hand, Gallup showed more of a consistent result with only the “personally owning a gun” section increasing. It’s still hard to say whether looking at gun ownership survey is a good way to estimate how many Americans have never shot a gun. A Pew survey that Mona provided did say that 61 percent of U.S. adults who own a gun are white men.

Mona had stated in the article that the overwhelming amount of gun owners is white and male. That is to say, white men are not crazy and ruthless. In reality, there are other explanations that are more logical than stereotypical causes. One reason is that the male species are used to having a dominant over others; therefore, male feels that having guns would enforce their hypermasculinity. This, in turn, increases the percentage of male having access to guns. Another reason is that usually people would empower status of others, such as white male tends to want to reinforce their power situation;

Get Access