Guns Don't Kill People - People Kill People: Gun Control Essay

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One of the most controversial topics in the world is the topic of guns and how to make gun control laws on which everyone can agree. Guns today are used for a huge variety of different activities. For example, many citizens use a gun for protection or self-defense from an attacker while other people like hunters and professional sharpshooters use guns for sport. Many see the need to decrease the number of guns or even go as far as banning all guns because of the actions of the few using them in a bad way, while gun owners actually use their guns as a great source of protection, history, and sport. The United States should not enforce more gun laws but, education on firearms would help.

Gun laws take away the feeling of safety and protection along with a basic right in the Constitution that has been given to the American citizens since the birth of our country. In the Constitution, the 2nd Amendment states that Citizens have the right to bear arms, which means citizens have the right to possess and use a firearm. The feeling of safety and protection is important to a community and never knowing what could happen at any given moment. When owning a gun it comes with many responsibilities but it also allows one to have the safety the gun provides as well as a fighting chance against robber or criminal. If the government was to go ahead with banning every weapon that they have classified as an assault rifle or has a magazine that carries more than ten rounds, it would not be fair to gun lovers who have never done anything wrong. When activists try and say a gun has too much firepower and it needs to be banned, that means that they need to ban cars with extreme horsepower because if there is no need for guns with excessive power, then why do would someone need a car with that much power. In fact, “it’s proven that cars are just as much of a weapon as a gun, for example, a guy in France drove his car through a crowd killing 83 innocent people”(French). When something like a car is used in killing someone, the car is not to blame but the person driving the vehicle is to be claimed guilty. If gun control laws were put into effect, many citizens across the United States would be outraged and would not have anything to defend themselves with as well as decreasing their chances of surviving an attack from invaders. Guns used for self-defense are an extremely useful way to physically and mentally protect family and friends. Self-defense during a robbery or break-in is crucial (French). “There were 230 justifiable homicides in 2010 where a citizen in danger used a firearm to kill a felon”(French).

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“Gun control says what it does in the name which is control. It means control for the government and when the government starts taking control, the citizens of the United States start losing their rights and then the government can easily take control of our lives” (Scott). The more the people keep pushing the government to enforce more gun control laws to ban or restrict them, it takes away more and more of our second amendment rights. There are so many different ways that a criminal can obtain a gun illegally and laws will never be able to stop someone from getting a gun if they really want it, but an honest citizen that is going to use the firearm for self-defense or sport, 99% of the time they will go through the legal process and get the gun legally in their name (Scott).

When people talk about gun control and banning guns that just sums up to take our 2nd amendment away and that will only make the people vulnerable to government power. There is a former teacher at Harvard University named James Q. Wilson that talks about gun control try to explain that taking guns away from the common citizen will not only reduce the chance of surviving an attack from an intruder but also takes away their rights as a citizen. “Those that they cannot buy, they will steal, borrow or buy illegally” (Wilson). Wilson also talks about how whenever someone attempts to buy a gun the legal way, they will be required to take background checks as well as some states restrict the number of guns one person can purchase a month. “He also admitted to saying that even if there were all these restrictions on guns they would still be fairly easy to get a hold of illegally” (Wilson).

One of the biggest debates in the United States is over gun control, and it has been raging through the American political systems for many years. There are two sides to the argument over gun control. Someone that speaks about guns is either fighting for pro-gun control or trying to keep our right to the 2nd amendment which would be anti-gun control supporters. On one side, there is the National Rifle Association also known as the NRA, and the pro 2nd Amendment citizens who use their firearms for hunting and self-defense. On the other side, there is an organization called Handgun Control Inc. also known as the HCI and then the followers of the Brady Campaign who want to ban guns because they claim that they are a danger to society. But yet both sides have some strong and eye-opening arguments that they present. “It is proven that most public shootings are obtained illegally anyway, so by taking away our guns the government is only putting the public and American citizens more at risk”(Wilson). Knowing we would not be able to defend ourselves, no one seems to look at attacks made by other weapons such as a knife but when a gun gets pulled into a conversation the public goes crazy. When someone is agreeing with gun control it means that they are technically disagreeing with the second amendment which by law is against our constitution (Wilson).

In America, it is written into our constitution that citizens of the United States have the right to bear arms as the second amendment states. Pro-Gun control activists wonder why mass shootings are still happening in America but the government still refuses to implement stricter gun laws. Activists say that when looking into murder rates and suicide rates as well as accidental shootings it is very clear that guns are a huge problem and that gun control should be something that should be taken into place but, they do not look into the real facts because they show that guns truly aren’t the problem. “It is common sense that guns aren’t the problem and that guns don’t kill people, people kill people”(Hsieh). “A good example of this is that if someone laid a gun on the floor and commanded it to fire, without anything touching the gun, it will never fire unless something pulls the trigger then, the person is responsible”(Hsieh).

When it comes down to it there are some people who believe that we should take away all guns and other people who believe that everyone should have the right to own and use a gun for personal use. Gun laws do not affect who it would be intended for and those people are criminals. In America, the Constitution states “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” (Gregory). This statement says every American Citizen has the right to keep a gun and it has been a law for over 200 years. For the past couple of years, there has been a huge movement to make it harder to obtain a gun. Pro-Gun Control activists are trying to create laws to take away all guns that American citizens already own and paid for. In America, it is a law that everyone that purchases a gun legally has to register and have a background check done when buying any firearm, however, only law-abiding citizens register their guns. “Obviously criminals will do everything in their power to try and avoid detection by not registering any firearms that they have possession of”(Gregory). When laws are put into place they are meant to affect everyone, but only law-abiding citizens will follow these laws and there will always be people who do not follow them. Stopping criminals and killers from obtaining a gun will never change no matter how much pro-gun control activists try and push guns to be banned (Gregory).

The recent school shootings that have happened in the past few years have feared many parents about their children’s safety when dropping them off at school. In the past number of years, the number of school shootings by students has occurred more regularly than they used to. On Tuesday, February 29, 2000, in Mount Morris Township, Michigan a six-year-old boy who was in first grade brought a gun to school and shot his classmate. After the incident happened, the police report said that “two youngsters had an argument the previous day and a single shot was fired inside the classroom at Buell Elementary School around 10 a.m. The young boy said he brought the gun to school to frighten not kill” (Ulbricht).

According to the Wall Street Journal, “nationwide there are more than 20,000 gun control laws that regulate everything from who can own a gun, background checks on people wanting to own a gun, where it is been purchased, etc..” (Ulbright). The administration that is run by the Clintons has created stricter gun control laws, which was to intentionally put into place to increase school safety, but the question that is going around is will these laws ultimately save the lives of all those innocent children in the schools. Guns today are more available today than they were in the past 50 years and back then in the 1950s throughout the 1980s school shootings were not prevalent as they are today. According to the magazine NEA Today, “the guns do not create violence in schools, the kids with an attitude towards violence are the major problem. Today, the attitude and violence mix together in the mind of the teenagers”(Ulbright). Even if we put a slash on guns, it does not cross people’s minds that there are other weapons that can kill and some are more readily available than guns, that can create violence in the schools. “Say, for example, a student could walk into a school with a knife could kill several people and that student could go undetected for a long period of time”(Ulbright). Bomb-making materials are still available in most hardware stores across the United States and if someone wanted information on making bombs it would not be that hard to figure out how because it is on the Internet somewhere. The NEA Today magazine stated, “When a student who intends to kill or severely hurt innocent people, he or she will find a way to do that violent act even no matter if they do not have the access to guns” (Ulbright).

In America today, we have too many issues to count in our society that we come face to face with on a daily basis but a vast majority of them do not get any attention. A major issue in the American society current day would be gun control and all the bad violence it brings whether the people of this nation want it or not. Americans today live in a time where there are massive technological advancements and it has allowed news to spread quickly almost right when it happens and recently in the past, gun violence crimes have seemed to be in the news quite frequently. Those crimes have started to divide us as a society because most news media stations will only show the parts and facts that go along with their political views because they do not want to show something that proves them wrong. A study showed that “Each year for the last decade in America, more than 15,000 people have died due to firearms but, what they do not want to tell you is that less than a fourth of all those deaths from firearms were murders” (Swearer). Over half of the deaths by firearms are suicide-related. “From 1968 to 2015, we had about 1.6 million deaths due to firearm-related deaths” (Swearer). Since 2013 a study showed that “approximately 3 million incidents where a gun was used, it was used for self defence” (Swearer). People claim that gun violence only seems to be getting worse and worse as the years go on but it could be because of the rising gun laws (Swearer).

In the society that we live in, there are really only two sides to this problem. The first group is where the government can not seem to come up with a solution and just keeps debating on what to do with this problem and all the American citizens that want to keep their rights of owning a gun. And then with the other group, you have people who are against guns and demand an immediate change because they think that’s what’s gonna make this country safer. “Just like anything else in this world, for a society to work and function to the best of its ability, everybody needs to work together and meet in the middle where everyone’s happy”(Dittmar). Since the topic of gun control has gotten big in the United States it has blown up and created political debates, riots, and violence. The main people who are rioting and causing all this violence are the people who want to ban and restrict guns and their laws. It is the people that want to stop the gun violence when really they are the ones that are causing violence because they aren’t getting what they want. In reality, all these people wanting to ban guns should work together and just stop all violence altogether instead of blaming it all on guns (Dittmar).

Our society can not function properly because of the separation between the government and the American citizens due to the gun violence happening over the past few years and unless the people come together and figure out a plan, the United States is not going to get any better. A republican candidate from Florida Carly Fiorina claimed right after the Parkland shooting, that “states with most strict gun laws have the highest gun crime rate in the nation” (Dittmar). People that are on either side never address all the little details and other facts that go against their argument (Dittmar).

As Americans and the nation that we are, we need to move past the never-ending debate over gun control and restricting guns. We need to work out a compromise that could potentially help law enforcement put a stop to these terrible mass shootings while preserving Second Amendment rights and keeping guns for self defense. More gun control in America is not the answer to save lives but education on guns would save more lives than any law could. 

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