Why We Should Have Gun Control Persuasive Essay

The Atlantic asked its readers about their first memories with guns, and one reader responded with "We lived in southwestern Colorado my first six years of life (1949-1955). My father had a double-barrel shotgun, and a single-barrel one, a .22 rifle, and a “deer rifle.” We ate more venison than beef and almost as much pheasant as chicken.... I never knew where he kept those guns; I never touched one that he didn’t offer. We only saw them when he cleaned them or packed them to go hunting. He let my older sister and me shoot one of them to feel the kick and power and hear the loudness.... When he passed away in 1981, a year after my mother had passed away, we took inventory of their estate, but we never found those guns. Perhaps he sold them or gave them away or simply kept them hidden somewhere so that no one would be able to find them and shoot someone accidentally" (Green). The issue of gun control has been an increasing cynosure in society, growing in its controversy. The polar opposite sides seem to grow further different from one another, with one side supporting and the other opposing gun control laws/actions. Those who support it tend to believe there should either be no place for the firearms in society at all or that there should be very strict restrictions on who may obtain a given firearm. Those who oppose the laws believe there should either be little to no change in current restrictions or, as the National Rifle Association (NRA) advocates, there ought to be

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.

Should we have more gun laws? More and more innocent people are dying from guns. Is 2013, there was 73,505 nonfatal firearm injuries. That number has grown over the years. The violence in growing and there in less time to help. These are true stories that have happened and are not made up. These are just some ways to prove that guns are getting out of hand. We have to stop this and make a different law. We have to save and protect innocent lives.

On the news this morning, there was a government official that made an extraordinarily prominent point; he said that whenever there has been a monumental disaster in this country, the government never hesitates to take immediate action. The case isn’t always so with gun control, however. Every single time there is a gun related disaster, government officials say now is not the time to push for gun control laws. While President Obama was in office, he passed an executive order that would prevent people with mental disorders from obtaining firearms. Congress has refused to enforce the order. An order that could have prevented countless tragedies. How many guns are in circulation at the moment with owners that are mentally unstable? It makes one wonder, could it have been prevented? There is also the ethical issue facing health care professionals about the privacy of their patients. If one were forced to turn over such damning information to the government, whereas it can be assumed that there would also be a dramatic decrease in the amount of reported cases of mentally unhealthy people receiving treatment or even acknowledgment. The reason for this is that people will not risk their right to own a gun for anything. If this means abstaining from receiving proper health care or therapy, then they simply will not. While applauding the bills intention to make firearms less available to people that would not use it for the right intentions, gun rights advocates sharply criticized the bill, claiming it infringed on the Second Amendment rights of Americans’ (Vitale 1). President Trump recently signed a bill that removed the regulations placed on people with mental illnesses that would limit the purchasing of firearms of people that were deemed unfit (Vitali 1). “‘Republicans always say we don’t need new gun laws, we just need to enforce the laws already on the books. But the bill signed into law today undermines enforcement of existing laws that Congress passed to make sure the background check system had complete information,’” as said by Sen. Chris Murphy, one of the leading gun control advocates in Congress (Vitale 1).

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

Recently, mass shooting is happening everywhere across the country once in a while, notably in Las Vegas and Texas. And even on our campus, a Soka alumni was arrested for threatening a “killing spree” last Friday. The debate about the gun control has been a hot issue throughout the history of the United States, yet during the interview after the mass shooting in Texas, President Trump responded "we could go into the gun control policy], but it's a little bit too soon.", and called the shooter a "very deranged individual" with "a lot of problems over a long period of time" rather than calling him a terrorist. The right to bear arms is one of the unique features in the American society. Only in the United States, Guatemala, and Mexico clearly states the right to bear arms in their constitution. The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States reads “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.”

Concealed Handguns are a very controversial subject and many disagree, but according to the 2nd Amendment, of the Constitution, people have the right to bear arms. Even in the nineteenth century, the laws and opinions surrounding concealed weapons varied widely. Although many people blame guns for violence, it is people that cause the violence with guns. While opponents argue that a criminal or mentally disturbed person will carry a concealed weapon, licensed or not, innocent victims continue to die at the hands of private citizens, and that 5 percent of gun dealers that supply 90 percent of all crime guns.

In today’s world, there are many things going on at once from the world melting to someone getting a police ticket. There also many things that go by and sometimes we don’t see what’s going on in front of our noses or aware of the laws in some areas of the U.S. In the “lovely” state of Arizona the laws to carrying a weapon are very slim because there are no special permissions associated with carrying firearms, licensing of ownership, registration of weapon and permits to purchase virtually anyone can carry a firearm("NRA-ILA | Arizona State Profile.") In a publically open area, however, guns are not the concern or the issue, nor the people that own weapons it’s the negative pervasive influences associated with them. Most people can be persuaded into virtually anything someone could say that all white tall rabbits destroy cars electrical systems, and that’s why everyone should shoot them. Should people buying a weapon have permits to carrying/handling, have more than one valid reason to buy a gun, and, at least, two screening test to check for any mental illnesses.

Lately, there has been a controversy about gun control due to an increase is gun crime. With all the crimes throughout the years, many people don't know if we should have more laws for firearms or no more than what we have now. Within the last year, there has been about 53,000 incidents alone, but the year before was about 52,000 so not much of a difference of the two years. With mass shooting between the years 2014-2015 here is the only difference of eighty that had occurred and been reported, but yet with the accidental shootings, they are about equal with 2,000 that were reported (Past summary ledgers). The number of deaths that happened in 2015 was around 13,000 and in 2014, it was 1,000 less than that within the year gap. The new laws not only affect the people who oppose firearms but

Gregory Orfalea’s unhinged sister took the life of their sixty-year-old father and then took her own. Needless to say, Orfalea has known a life of tragedy. Prior to this family disaster, Orfalea described himself as one “acquainted with guns” (17). He reminisced about using guns while “training to be an Army officer” and shooting “snowshoe hares” in Alaska (17). Now, however, Orfalea backs the gun control perspective because “the chance of that gun . . . saving you from harm from an intruding stranger is minuscule, while possession of a firearm doubles or even quadruples the odds of your being shot” (qtd. in Charles Branas’s 2009 study in the American Journal for Public Health 18). Many Americans sympathize with Orfalea’s position out of the fear that firearms in the wrong hands could endanger unsuspecting citizens. But others point to the Constitution to protect their right to own a gun from further regulation.

Imagine somebody breaking into your home with the intentions of hurting you and your family and trying to take all your valuables that you own in your house, and not having anything to protect your loved ones. Without the protection of a firearm, the intruder could injure or kill all members within the household easily. In the United States, according to the Bill of Rights, a citizen has the right to bear arms, however, recently people have started to believe that guns only incite violence and therefore gun laws need to be more strict. Although, If you own the firearm for the right reasons and go through the process of having a carrying license, then that is within your rights to protect yourself and be able to own the gun. Therefore,

“Someone’s right to have a gun,” says Joanna Wallace, “Took away my right to have a son.” (white book pg 25). Gun control is a growing problem and a nationwide tragedy. It has overpowered our society, due to the way individuals perceive the pros and cons of carrying a deadly weapon at all times. However, the policy of gun control is a procedure that must be passed by legislative sessions with many votes before confirming it to become a law. Even though owning a dangerous weapon can be used for protection and self-defense, the fact of the matter is ownership of a gun can lead to accidents, deaths, and crimes; ultimately, guns should be used only in certain situations if needed.

Historically guns haven’t been a national issue. It is not until relatively recently that an overwhelming amount of people have been in favor of placing stricter laws on the owning of a fire arm. The call for gun control has become more prevalent in the eyes of the government and the people; the gun laws that are also often proposed are irrational and ineffective. One could not simply ban guns, it is comparable to banning a certain genre of music; it’s unachievable and would be a fruitless pursuit. There is irony in the fact that there are already gun control laws in place that if correctly enforced would prevent the conflicts that cause many to be anti-gun. Firearms never prove to be the source of the problem in a shooting either; the

Guns are used all over the world and are controlled in some countries but in others people are allowed to have any type of gun ranging from automatic assault rifles to big rocket launches. Should it also be controlled in our country the United States of America? Many say no yes and many others say NO! In my opinion it should be controlled.