Criminals, Rights, and the Law
Gun control has become one of the hottest themes in America. Although many people in the United States believe that stricter gun laws will reduce crime rates, gun control will benefit no one except the authorities and criminals, because gun ownership protects law abiding citizens from criminals, government is slowly taking away our rights, and criminals will always find ways to acquire guns.
Gary Baker says he is here today because of his guns. Four years ago when he opened his own jewelry store, two men burst in and started shooting. Gary fired back killing both of them. Gary says, "It enabled me to go home that evening to my wife and family. If we hadn’t been able to defend ourselves, I truly believe we would have been killed" (Outgunned 9). People who have had encounters with criminals threatening their lives or jobs, cherish the right they have been given by our forefathers, The Right to Bear Arms. The only thing guns will do is take away the right of the law abiding citizens to protect themselves from intruders. A woman in New Mexico had just finished taking a shower when she heard the sounds of someone ransacking her residence. Thinking quickly the woman retreated to her bedroom. Soon she was confronted by a stocky male intruder, who had kicked down her locked door. The intended victim pointed a handgun at the man who quickly fled her home. These people along with over 2.5 million others protect themselves from potentially dangerous situations.
Television media can be misleading to the millions of American citizens who watch it. Out of the 653 gun policy stories twelve have been reported on TV (Outgunned.9). While the reporters and newspaper crew make interesting stories out of several school shootings, they leave out millions of times citizens use guns to stop crime each year. Media can present a very misleading picture that guns do more harm than good. This leads people to believe that guns should be limited or even banned. (Outgunned.9)
Banning guns is not the answer. One year in Australia gun owners were forced to surrender personal firearm. Australian government collected and destroyed 640,381 firearms in all. A process costing the over 500 million dollars. (Taking Away Our Freedom1). The results of this drastic change, were drastic themselves, but not in the ways expected.
Gun control will be beneficial to our society because it will provide an opportunity to make our neighborhood and communities more safe. In addition, it will help in decreasing the crime rate, help in keeping guns out of the hands of people who are mentally unstable as well as criminals. It is most American's dream to live life, be successful, and be safe; containing guns provide the key to do that.
First of all, gun control punishes only innocent citizens, not the dangerous felons. Criminals wanting to purchase a gun can easily obtain a pistol illegally from the black market, so gun control is practically useless to the unsafe villains who threaten public safety. Statistics show that in the U.S, 645,000 times in each year, innocent people ...
Firstly, the claims that guns contributing to higher crime rates are completely over exaggerated. Most people are spoon-fed by the mainstream media that guns contribute to higher crime rates. In fact, in large cities like Chicago it has been proven that laws like handgun bans have worsened crime rather than alleviate it. When they did this in Chicago, politicians were hoping that this would bring crime levels down (Peterson 25). In the midst of all this, everyone as soon as the politicians proclaimed it would work, was singing their praises and saying that it would, or so they thought. So did the handgun ban succeed? Not necessarily, the article A Splendid, Precarious Victory proves this point. The author Dan Peterson provides very gut wrenching statistics. It states, “in recent years, while the handgun ban was in place, the percentage committed with handguns has consistently been 70 percent or more” (Peterson 25). Clearly, this proves that the mainstream media, anti-gun groups and politicians have distorted the truth about just how hazardous gun control is. This disturbing information should be a wake up call to those who feel that gun control works. Finally, this proves that gun control is unproductive. These kinds of laws ...
In conclusion, enabling stricter gun control laws will help to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, criminals, and children and teens. With these laws put into place there will be more assurance of the safety of American citizens. It is not necessary to strip citizens of their right to own a gun, but we should be able to make it harder to get guns. If you are someone with a clear record and using a gun for recreation use, you will have no trouble obtaining a gun. In the long run increase the laws on gun control hurts nobody. Despite historic events where governments seized firearms and killed millions of citizens, today we have a different problem, which is making sure guns are in the right hands.
Gun control laws aim to restrict or regulate firearms by selecting who can sell, buy and possess certain guns. Criminals do not obey laws and stricter gun control laws or banning guns will have little effect on reducing crimes. There are many myths about gun control reducing acts of gun violence, which are simply not true according to research. People are responsible for the crimes, not the guns themselves. Taking guns away from United States citizens that use them for many reasons, shooting practice, competition, hunting and self-defense, should not be punished for the acts of criminals. As stated by Mytheos Holt, “Guns in the right hands help public safety. Guns in the wrong hands harm public safety”. Research shows that defensive use of guns discourages criminals and reduces crime (Holt 2). Not only is it wrong to penalize law-abiding citizens, it is against the Second Amendment. It is unconstitutional to pass laws that infringe on the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Guns and crime are two words that people tend to relate, some people say more guns means more crime, and others say less guns is more crime. One thing is for sure, the current gun control measures are not working. Two articles, one by John C Moorhouse and Brent Wanner, another one by William J vizzard, take this topic and convey their own opinion about it. In their article, “Does Gun Control, Reduce Crime Or Does Crime Increase Gun Control”, Moorhouse and Wanner, come to the conclusion that Gun Control doesn’t reduce crime. Moorhouse and Wanner, believe that the current gun control measure fail to make any difference, on the contrary, more crime is increasing gun control. Likewise, “The Current And Future State of Gun Policy In The United
The debate over firearms has been polarized for too long. Gun law is a never-ending issue because there hardly is any true debate. Americans (and even gun owners) do support the governments efforts to make sure guns are less dangerous in violent hands, but that is the main problem-the guns getting in the wrong human hands. Millions of law-abiding Americans do own and do enjoy their guns. But criminals and sometimes-disconcerted kids often use firearms to kill. The use of firearms has increased tremendously. An average day in Los Angeles is four people dying in a gun related crime and the United States faces approximately 87 deaths a day. There are more than 200 million guns in circulation in the United States and if you don’t own a firearm, chances are that your neighbor or friend does (Fineman 27). Sure, the Founding Fathers incorporated the Second Amendment as “the right to keep and bear arms,” but it did not give the distinction of using guns to kill more children and people than anywhere in the world.
In America guns have been a part of the country’s society since it’s birth. Throughout history the citizens of the US have used firearms to protect the nation, protect their families, hunt for food and engage in sporting activities. The issue of Guns and gun control is complex. Weighing the rights and liberties of the individual against the welfare and safety of the public has always been a precarious balancing act. In the United States, gun control is one of these tumultuous issues that has both sides firmly entrenched in their positions. Those parties in favor of gun ownership and the freedom to use and keep arms, rely on the fact that the provision for such rights is enshrined in their constitution. In this climate of growing violence, rife with turmoil and crime, gun advocates feel more than ever that their position is justified. As citizens of the “Land of the Free” possessing a gun is a fundamental right, and may even be a necessity... Anti- gun lobbyists point to the same growing violence and gun related crimes in an effort to call on the government to take action. By enacting more laws and stricter control, these people not in favor of guns feel society would be better safer.
Guns and crime seem to fit together like peanut butter and jelly, but is that really the case? There are two ways to look at gun control, but one realization that needs to be made and that’s that guns are powerful. Guns can either be used for defending and protecting people or they can be used to harm and kill people. People have different views on whether guns are being used for protection or being used to harm and kill others. The majority of people that think guns are being used for safety and defense oppose gun control laws. On the other hand the majority of people who think guns are being used to heartlessly slaughtered people are for stricter gun control laws. People opposed to gun control thinking it will be taking away some of their rights; whereas, those in favor of gun control thinking it will help protect people.
“It’s not gun control we need, it’s sin control” (Si Robertson). The government can’t control what people do with their firearms or who has them in their possession. Gun control does not decrease crime. With or without guns people will still find ways to harm others and even with a gun ban people will still find away to either make or buy a gun illegally. With a gun control law in place there is no good way for citizens to protect themselves. Even though some may say it that it will stop some of the crime, there are many reasons that prove that gun control doesn't decrease crime.
Ultimately, it is a person’s choice to use firearms to commit violent crimes. So criminals should be controlled, not the guns which they share with millions of law-abiding citizens. Gun control supporters claim that gun control lowers crime rate. We as people need to take a stand and fight for our Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. Gun control advocates need to realize that passing laws that honest gun owners will not obey is a self-defeating strategy. Gun owners are not about to surrender their liberties or their right to bear arms. The Federal Govement of the United States should not be able to take away the right of law-abiding citizens to own a gun.
...as, the guns used for hunting. Also, gun control will not take away guns from the criminals within the United States. Criminals already disregard current guns laws, just as they would new ones because they are criminals. In addition to that, too much gun control would increase the stress already felt by police who have the inability to be everywhere all the time. When law abiding citizens are armed, it is a help to the police and the citizens that are around them. The people can only do this if the have the rights to have a gun and also have the right to carry a gun around with the proper gun license. In conclusion, while the United States legislative branches debate over the future of gun control, all law abiding citizens should take comfort in the fact that the United States too have a powerful voice when it comes to gun control and that is with the peoples vote.
Guns are always represented as a sigh of terror, violence and insecurity due to which, gun control is always being a significant and controversial issue from both political and self defense point of view. Guns and humans had a shared part of the past history, during that period guns were used for hunting and protection from the invaders. The second amendment of the U. S. constitution even made the guns/arms more debatable on the basis of keeping guns as their right. Their is a no harm keeping a gun for self protection under a proper law and order, which will be regulated by different background, physical check and the awareness of proper use of the guns. These checks will help lower down the statistical data of misuse of firearms and reduce
There is an American consensus for some form of gun control. “…[F]irearms were involved in two-thirds of all murders in the United States and [t]he United States leads the world's richest nations in gun deaths…murders, suicides, and accidental deaths due to guns - according to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the International Journal of Epidemiology” (Lepore). There might be some far extreme people who think that all guns should be banned but most sane Americans do not think that gun rights should be abolished. Americans regard self-defense as the most compelling reason to have a gun and twenty-two percent of households have handguns in the United States. However many people do think that gun control laws must be enacted and enforced. Pro-gun extremists and the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) must understand that there is a real for many people at the uncontrolled s...
There are arguments that demonstrate that stricter guns laws are the very core of creating a better and safer America. However, it is also true that States such as Chicago with very strict gun laws also have the highest gun related crimes. It is also argued that any of the crimes that happen are done with legally acquired guns. In my opinion, the number of guns that exist in the US are so many that gun related crime is inevitable. However, if there are stricter laws, there is a chance that these crimes will be reduced very significantly, and citizens will feel