Gun Control
By: Glenn Bigsby
Narrative
Gun control is a highly debated topic in the United States. I chose gun control for this project because I strongly believe United States citizens should be allowed to keep the freedom granted to them by the founding fathers in the second amendment to the constitution, to own and carry fire arms as a means of protection and for use in sport. Without guns our country would not be the same. I believe crime rates would rise dramatically because criminals would know the good people would have no protection against them. Animal population would also become out of control because without hunters, the populations would rise and there would be more incidents in which people have bad encounters with wild animals.
A Revolver
Here is a revolver.
It has an amazing language all its own.
It delivers unmistakable ultimatums.
It is the last word.
A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.
Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery hide behind it.
It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.
It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.
It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.
It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.
When it has spoken, the case can not be appealed to the supreme court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction nor any stay of execution in and interfere with the original purpose.
And nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the old belief that God is always on the side of those who have the most revolvers.
- Carl Sandburg
What Guns Control
Every time some nut activates a trigger,
The desire to diminish the Bill of Rights grows bigger.
Instead of thinking how the victims might have won,
Demented minds focus on controlling the gun.
Now our Founding Fathers knew the danger of guns,
Having lost so many friends, brothers, and sons,
But to the people they still granted this power,
So criminals and governments could not make them cower.
And while guns often accompany a crime,
Other instruments are used a good part of the time:
Like a truck and fertilizer, a box cutter and a jet,
And no one proposes a ban on these yet.
There’s the car and the water at ol’ Chappaquiddick,
And O. J. and his knife, now those were pathetic.
And liquor and drugs steal our daughters and sons,
At a much higher rate than people with guns.
But the difference between these other devices,
And the one whose existence is in such a crisis,
Is that the one with bullets and sights,
Is granted to us in our own Bill of Rights.
So before you violate The U.S. Constitution,
You’d better consider its authors’ resolution.
For the reason they wrote Amendment # 2,
Was to control the power of politicians like you! - anonymous
Guns
People are good, people are bad.
Guns are neither good or bad.
People kill people, Guns don't kill guns.
People say "guns are bad", yet they cannot pull their own trigger.
Guns are not bad, people are bad. -Glenn Bigsby
Persuasive
The United States government should not put controls on guns. There are several reasons guns should not be controlled, but just three of them are: areas with more guns have less crime, it is a constitutional right, and many United States citizens use guns to feed their families. These are two very important things when it comes to gun control.
There is much to offer when it comes to the logic of why people should be able to legally have guns. United States citizens should be allowed to keep the ability to own guns and keep them in their home or on their person as a powerful form of defense. If gun control laws were passed and someone decided to break into a home where a family lived with no form of protection, the victim’s family would stand no chance and most likely end up dead. If an intruder were to reach for a small child, there would be no mercy, but if a gun were present in the home the intruder wouldn’t even get the chance to think about harming a child.
Another main factor as to why guns should not be controlled is the fact it is a constitutional right. The founding fathers wrote the second amendment to the constitution because they knew it was the best way for people to protect themselves from the dangers of the world. It was the best solution then, and it is the best solution now. Guns are the greatest form of protection in the United States.
Guns are not only used for protection, they are also used for hunting. Many United States citizens use guns to hunt animals so they may be able to provide food for their families. Without guns many people living in the northern regions of the United States would go hungry during the winter because they do not have access to a store to buy food.
The United States Government has no right to control guns owned by its citizens. The more citizens that have guns, the lower crime rates would be. The second amendment clearly states the right to bear arms, and people use guns as a tool for survival. Taking away guns is taking away freedom, and the United States claims to be a free country.
Why the picture?
This Photo demonstrates how little politicians know about personal protection, and what happens when the bad guys have guns and the good guys do not.
Firearm Control
Firearm laws should remain the same and should not be further constricted just because a few people are irresponsible with them. Firearm control is one of the most highly debated topics in the world. Firearm control ranks up with the death penalty and abortion as one of the most popular topics. Our nation seems to be almost fifty-fifty on weather Firearms should be more controlled or weather their control should remain the same. There are many different reasons firearm owners may have on why the firearm laws should remain the same, but there are also many things that support the idea of further constricting firearm control. Most firearm owners have very unexciting experiences with them, while people whom do not own firearms, or have any experience with them, just hear and see the corrupt things that are happening in the world on television. People need to under stand both sides of the argument before making any decisions when they are oblivious to the facts and ideas of the other side.
In the past firearms have been encouraged in American homes. Many American citizens have integrated firearms into their lifestyles. In fact thirty-five percent of United States households have firearms present (Rizco 1). Firearms have been a large part of American culture and have helped shape the United States as it is today. For these reasons, the firearm culture is multidimensional, and is composed of many, very complex structures. The second amendment states United States citizens have the right to own firearms, and guarantees armed self-defense rights to individuals. In Chicago, the District of Columbia, and New York it is almost impossible to withhold privately owned self-defense weapons even with proper weapons permits. The city of San Francisco is also attempting to ban all privately owned handguns in homes of residents. There are over seventy-five million firearm owners in the United States, and over two hundred and fifty million guns, including seventy million handguns, in public circulation today (Kohn Abigail A., et al 1). The probability of the United States government controlling all two hundred fifty million firearms in circulation is nearly impossible. Contrary to popular belief, most firearm owners have very unexciting, uneventful, experiences with them, and most of these citizens are ordinary people. Many people incorrectly ridicule firearm owners because they personally have no experience with firearms, and base their ideas on what they hear and see on television. They see things including; movie theater shootings like the one in Colorado, and school shootings like the one in Sandy Hook. Many United States citizens believe firearm control will lower crime rates and prevent fire arm violence, but in places citizens are in high support of firearm control have the highest crime rates, and are more vulnerable to violent crimes involving firearms. In these cities with all the violent crimes involving firearms, defense weapons are only used twenty-nine percent of the time (Rizco 1). Firearms used in crime are almost always purchased informally from third parties, having no records of sale, resulting in them being untraceable and uncontrollable. This process is called straw purchasing. Just a few smugglers can move hundreds of firearms into the black market without a trace. If the government is going to control something they need to straw purchasing and the black market. Black market firearm trafficking is completely blamed on legal firearm owners by United States citizens. Citizens should not be forced to give up the firearms they have owned their entire lives just because someone else failed to be responsible with their allowances.
The National Rifle Association is a club that has been created for all American firearm owners and has over three million members. The National Rifle Association has one of the biggest influences on what the nation has to say about firearm control and has also internationally assisted with pro-firearm campaigns in many foreign countries. The National Rifle Association created a coalition to stop firearm violence that has been supported by forty-four civic, religious, and scientific organizations. United States firearm violence has the highest mortality rate compared to any of the other industrialized country. United States citizens kill each other with firearms almost twenty times more than the twenty-five richest nations (Rizco 2). Over one million United States citizens have died in firearm related accidents, but for every death by firearm there are six nonfatal injuries. These statistics are drastically higher than other countries including Brazil, having over thirty-eight thousand deaths each year caused by firearms. There are many projects supported by the National Rifle Association that are showing promise in lowering violence between youth and lowering their gang activity. The most successful of these projects is The Boston Gun Project. The Boston Gun Project was started by Harvard researchers in the ninety’s. The project collaborates with the Boston police department to create new environments and opportunities for inner city children, so they can stay off the streets. Because of organizations like this, children under the age of six have a 25 time higher chance of dying in a swimming accident than dying in a firearm related accident (Funk 1).
Sixty Five percent of American households have either rejected firearms completely, or do not have firearms present (Morton 1). Private firearm sales are highly unregulated, there are ways to register firearms, but law does not necessarily require it. If the government were to require registration of firearms by law there would be many positive effects, yet there would also be some negative effects. The positive effects of firearm registration and background checks include things like the firearms being more regulated and less firearms going into the hands of criminals. The negative effects include things like the continued flow of black market sales, the government having the ability to confiscate legally purchased firearms at any completely unexpected time, and it would make firearms in the United States extremely difficult to purchase. These negative effects could lead to firearm confiscation in the United States and lead many states having high carrying percentages to retaliation against the government. In Britain eighty percent of handguns were made illegal, this resulted in many protests that eventually resulted in the laws impeachment. This experience has led the United States to know these types of laws will lead to long bitter experiences. Some discretionary United States carrying permit laws already give police the authority to make decisions on who should or should not be allowed to carry firearms. This also gives them the authority to confiscate almost any firearm in legal private possession. In states like, Wyoming and Montana, nearly every household has multiple firearms. Places like this have high carrying rates also have the lowest crime rates. In Alaska everyone has hunting rifles used to hunt for food and handguns for protection from wild animals, just so they can survive. Most people cannot survive harsh winters in this climate with out firearms to hunt for food because the snow is too deep for any kind of grocery store or food mart to be accessible by delivery vehicles.
A large number of United States corporations and companies have anti-firearm opinions and do not allow their employees to have any type of firearm or weapon on company property at any time. Most anti-firearm citizens base their beliefs on things they hear in the news about public shootings with multiple murders. These anti-firearm citizens have some basis to their argument; in just five years there were sixteen school shootings with seventeen educating staff deaths, thirty-five learner deaths, and almost seventy others wounded either severely or just escaping with a few minor injuries (Gun Control 1). They also say a child in the United States at the age of twelve has an eighty-three percent chance of being involved in some type of violent crime in their lifetime (Funk 1). All of the anti-firearm crowd says defense weapons are rarely used in these situations, but what they do not know is, many public shootings are stopped by citizens with carrying permits that have weapons on their person at all times. These citizens help police in the United States because there are only one hundred and fifty thousand carrying officers on duty at any given time in the entire country.
All in all firearm laws should remain the same and not be change to the falsely reasoned and biased laws of uneducated United States citizens. The majority of citizens who carry have uneventful experiences with them, and they almost all carry firearms for defensive purposes. People need to intensely research this topic before they take on any serious opinion or have to vote on a topic similar to this. The fact is most United States citizens believe that controlling guns will lower crime rates and prevent gun violence. If the United States government were to increase firearm control, there would be fewer good people with defense weapons. Crime rates would go up drastically, and firearm violence would soon follow. If the government were to try to confiscate the two hundred and fifty million firearms in circulation, it would result in more cruel people with firearms and no good citizens with them for protection. Everyone has an opinion weather it is pro-firearm or anti-firearm, people just need to have an intimately researched foundation before they make a final decision on weather gun control will have positive or negative effect on the United States in the long run.