Against Gun Control

Against Gun Control
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Many people stand by new gun control laws, but I am one of many Americans in which are against them. Watching the evening news or simply reading the daily paper seem impossible these days without the tragic details of a child accidently shooting him/herself or massive school shooting. Sadly many Americans opt the easy way out by choosing gun control, there are an enormous amount of detail that support my position, in which I will explain. There are many highlights that support my opinion to be against gun control. Without firearms the United States of America would have never been founded, and our founding fathers tried to find ways to build a country in a way so that the government
could no longer impose its will against the wishes of the people.
Since 1989 the Brady Campaign and allies have passed over fifty laws regulating firearms in the states. They want gun control laws to be any law that restricts the use, purchase or possession of any firearms. These laws were implemented to reduce the use of firearms to authorized members of a state’s government. But each state has its own gun laws which vary widely from loose regulations in southern, western and rural states to restrictive laws in the bigger cities. The Brady Campaign members live in a hypnotical world they believe that gun control laws can reduce violence and crime. That in the United States 71% of crimes in 2010 were committed with a firearm. That would mean that majority of crimes that are committed in United States the criminals had a gun or some other kind of firearm. So if firearms were banned in the state then crime rate would go down by 71%. Now let’s look at the real world criminals will commit their violent behavior against law abiding citizens, even if firearms were banned criminals still would find a way to firearms from places like the black market dealers and private sellers. The stats prove that owning guns makes our country safer “over the past twenty years, gun sales have absolutely exploded, but homicides with firearms are down by 39% during the same time and “other crimes with firearms” are down by 69%.” According to National Rifle Association guns are used for self-defense 2.5 million times a year. The police cannot protect everyone all the time. Pew Research surveyed 61% of men and 56% of women that said stricter gun laws would “make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families.” Nelson Lund, JD, PhD, Professor at George Mason University School of Law, stated, “The right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself is a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life” and “many gun control laws interfere with the ability to law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals.”
Activist for gun control think that if there is a handgun in the home of citizens they are five times more likely to experience a suicide than homes without guns. The mortality behind suicide the facts remain that guns make it easier to commit suicide in an outburst of rage, depression or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Still there is conflicting evidence as to whether any kind of substitution occurs. Also research has shown that when gun are kept in the home, there is forty-three times more likely to kill a member of the household, or friend, than an intruder. (Reay)
In 1989 after a shooting in Stockton, CA that killed five children and wounding thirty-five children and a teacher, before committing suicide, so efforts to create restrictions on assault-weapons at the federal government level strengthened. The shooter used a semi-automatic copy of an AK-47 assault rifle (Adams)The July 1993 101 California Street shootings, killed eight people and wounded six, before committing suicide, that shooting also contributed to pass the ban. The two of the three firearms that the shooter used were TEC-9 semi-automatic handguns with Hellfire triggers. (Bingham) The ban tried to inform the public on the concern of these mass shootings by restricting firearms that met the criteria and defined as a “semi-automatic assault weapon,” and magazines that met the criteria and defined as a “large capacity ammunition feeding device.” In 1993 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 77 percent of Americans supported a ban on the manufacture and sale and possession of such weapons. A spokesman for the NRA stated that assault weapons “are used in only one percent of all crimes”, and that they opposed the ban. These statistics being of low usage, the Department of Justice supported the ban in 1999 at a DOJ briefing. The legislation passed in September 1994 with the assault weapons ban section expiring in 2004 due to its sunset provision. That assault weapon ban expired on September 13, 2004. Legislation tried to renew or replace the ban proposed numerous times unsuccessfully. After the November 2008 election of President Barack Obama, he announced his forthcoming administration and his position was to focus on making the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent. (Obama) The newly sworn in Attorney General Eric Holder, he reiterated Obama’s desire to reinstate the ban. This reinstatement all came about when it mentioned in a response to a question at a press conference with DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart, discussing efforts to crack down on Mexican drug cartels. Attorney General Holder said “…there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons.” (C-SPAN.org) Efforts to pass a new assault weapons ban were made in December 2012 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. (Barron)
How can the government put a ban on assault weapons and the interest group wanting to put ban all firearms when in 2011, our own Attorney General Eric Holder, who had knowledge that the Department Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) was permitting illegal gun purchases along the Mexican-American borders. “According to reports federal agents sold more than 2000 guns to unknown parties as part of a plan to track the guns back to Mexican drug cartels.” They reported “that most of the guns however were lost, and the two that were found had been used to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent.” Attorney General Eric Holder denied any prior knowledge of the gun selling plan, but congressional Republicans released evidence to the disagreeing. “The Attorney General was held in contempt after Holder refused to turn over documents relating to the investigation.” (Colman)
Should adults have the right to carry a concealed handgun?
All 50 states as of 2013 permitted carrying a concealed handgun in public, when Illinois became the last state to enact concealed carry legislation. Some states required gun owners to acquire permits while other have “unrestricted carry” and do not require permits. Advocates of concealed carry spoke out that criminals are less likely to attack someone if they believe them to be armed. They cite the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that protects the rights of “individuals” to own guns. It states “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” They go on to argue that most adults who are legally permitted to carry a concealed gun are the law abiding citizen and do not misuse their firearms. Opponents of concealed carry beg to differ and dispute that increased gun ownership could lead to unpremeditated gun injures and to more gun crimes. “They oppose that concealed handguns increase the changes of argument becoming lethal, and that the Second Amendment has limits and does not mention concealed carry, they go on to dispute that society would be safer with fewer guns on the streets, not more.” Members of the interest groups that are against gun control would present reason “that guns are not the issue with gun violence and that the people behind the act will find some way to commit their crimes.” John Lotts, an economist and a gun advocate says, “I think effective law enforcement has had the biggest impact on crime rates, but I think concealed carry has something to do with it. That there has been an increase in the number of people licensed to carry.” Lott goes on to say “You can deter criminality through longer sentencing, and you deter criminality by making it risker for people to commit crimes.” And one way to make it risker is to create the impression among the criminal population that law-abiding
citizen they wat to target may have a gun.