Persuasive Essay On Gun Control

Every year, “more than 100,000 people in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides and suicide attempts, accidents, or by police intervention” (Elliot). This shocking statistic serves to highlight the lingering issues brought up by gun legislation in the United States and it brings to mind many vital questions. Would new bans on guns be able to stop such rampant crime? Should Americans sacrifice their right bear arms in exchange for safety? At a time in America when gun violence is becoming a real threat to the country’s well-being, the most important thing people can do is talk about the problem and try to find a way to end it. Right now, guns may seem to be the root of the problem, but taking them from well-meaning citizens could potentially

The country’s founding fathers felt that only a tyrannous government would try to keep weapons from the people, so they guaranteed the right to own them from the very beginning. In George Mason’s first annual address he famously said, “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined...” (qtd. in Rosenthal 58). This shows that gun rights were intended to ensure freedom. Although it may seem like a foreign concept to most Americans, there are governments that wish to take weapons from the people in order to control them. Though our current leadership may have good intentions, disarming ourselves now would make it difficult to defend against potential dictators in the future. The most notable example of this in history was the Nazi Party’s strict gun control policies that aided their rise to power. In Nazi Germany, gun ownership was forbidden for persecuted classes like the Jews while exempting Nazi Party members from any regulations (McCoy 110). It’s impossible to say that their rise to power could have been stopped had gun rights remained, but at the very least, maintaining gun rights could have slowed their spread of influence and granted people a chance to fight back. Perhaps the most interesting aspect to note about this is that Hitler was not the one who originally removed weapons from the citizens. Rather, it was done by the

Banning guns would be a violation of Americans’ rights, it would take guns from law-abiding citizens, and it wouldn’t lower crime rates. Instead, increased education about gun safety and improved safety features could lower the frequency of gun deaths. The high number of guns in the US is obviously not the source of our issues, and foregoing the rights we’ve held for as long as the country has existed, is not the way to fix them. But by far the most pertinent action that needs to be taken is a move towards an open discussion in our nation about how we intend to solve this looming