Argumentative Essay On Gun Control

(Lund & Winkler, 2015). With its initial focus, and subsequent interpretations revolving around self-defence of the nation and the¬ individual respectively, the second amendment was unchallenged for decades. It is said by Bellesiles (2001) that the American public were relatively indifferent to gun ownership and control arguments through history, and that the fierce debate surrounding gun control, that will be further discussed later in this paper, is a recent phenomenon.

Private gun ownership is something recognised globally as being integral to American culture. Originaly limited to only arming the white adult male property owner, post 1950’s and the introduction of individual human rights, the entire adult population of America was entitled to own a firearm (Bellesiles, 2001). This resulted in steadily rising gun ownership, something substantiated when looking at the figures surrounding gun culture and ownership in the United States of America. For instance, The Small Arms Survey (Karp, 2007) estimated that in 2007, American civilians held 270 million firearms, equating to 97 firearms per 100 people, a figure far higher than that of any other western world nation. As demonstrated in figure 1.

Looking at figure 2, we can see that the trend of firearm ownership in America is certainly not slowing, in fact, since Barack Obama was elected into office, there appears to have been a marked increase in the number of new guns in circulation. Although interestingly, the

This section of the paper will explore several case studies of particular school shootings in America, as well as looking to define any common characteristics in the shootings and looking to how and why they occur. Finally, this section will seek to find out if there is a link between America’s ‘Right to bear arms’ and the prevalence and severity of America’s school