The Pros And Cons Of Gun Control

Gun Control Laws Are Not Needed Thomas Jefferson said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Gun control laws are, still to this day, a huge issue in the United States. There is constant debate on how we solve this problem. With multiple arguments on solutions to this topic, many gray-zones follow. What makes this subject hard to tackle is that it “revolves around three major talking points: a sociological, an ethical, and a legal dimension.” The sociological part is establishing if gun laws will help reduce violence rates. The ethical point goes against the citizens “right to bear arms against the protection of citizens and prevention or crime.” In addition,

If less people, civilians and criminals both, had access to firearms, mass shootings would be less likely to happen. Take the Sandy Hook massacre for example. If the shooter did not have any firearms, he would not have had a way of killing 26 kids and teachers. The availability of guns to the shooter only gave him more of a reason to kill all the innocent victims. Stricter gun laws need to “keep guns out of the wrong hands and to better protect the public.” The article, “Stronger Gun Control Laws Will Save Lives,” by Christine Watkins states that if a state has a high number of guns in possession, the crime rate will be higher, oppose to a state that has less guns. Also, in states where gun ownership is elevated, and there are weak gun control laws that are not enforced, the death by gun rate is larger. Many people agree that if more firearms are in civilian hands, the higher the risk is for society. When purchasing a firearm through a licensed dealer, there is a mandatory background. If this background check is not complete within 3 days, the dealer has to right to distribute the firearm to the customer. This is not the case with private sellers. They do not need to go through background checks or waiting periods. This is an issue because private sellers make up 40% of firearm sales, therefore about one third of the countries firearms are given to criminals who should not have any in the

Many fail and refuse to see that guns can save lives. One bullet could be all it takes to put down a criminal who potentially could have killed a great deal of innocent civilians. There are “armed citizens/teachers who had relatively quick access to a firearm” that stopped mass school shooting (Huntwork). Anyone can agree that one death versus a dozen or more death is worth it. Wright verifies this when he states, “there are numerous verifiable causes of civilians using firearms for effective and self-defense every day.” Firearms purpose should be to help protect society. Citizens should have the choice to “protect themselves and to be empowered” against any criminal or life threatening action (Huntwork). After all, people with the intention of murder tend to go after easy targets. Others argue that restrictions on guns will not solve the issue at hand, but rather a limit on how much ammunition a person can buy and possess at a time. Then again, it does not matter the lethality of the attacker, rather the contents “in the heart of a mass murder,” that gives them an incentive to do what they want