Argumentative Essay: Guns Don T Kill People

Guns don’t kill people – people kill people. I know some of you are shaking your heads and thinking how ridiculous that statement is. But, to say that guns kill people is to say that the car killed the family of four, instead of the drunk driver killed the family of four. Watch almost any nightly news and you will see a story about someone in the community who gets butchered by a drunk driver. The Center for Disease Control reported that in 2013 there were 10,076 Americans killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes. That is almost 30 of us every day. It is an unbelievable figure. Yet we rarely blame the car for the deadly crash; instead we blame the drunk driver. However, when it comes to a mad man who kills people with a gun many of us get it backwards. We don’t hold the crazy guy responsible – we blame the gun. It is a natural reaction to an unthinkable act.

But, consider this; if we dig down to the cause, it is people’s behavior that kills other people. And ultimately it is their “stinking thinking”, untreated mental illness, or criminal mindset that spawns the behavior that uses guns to kill people. Thoughts are things; they matter, and have consequences.

Following each mass murder by gun we hear the predictable call to action for stronger gun
Killers may use a pressure cooker packed with explosives and nails (Boston Bombers – 3 killed 264 injured), or bags of fertilizers stuffed in a truck (Oklahoma Bomber – 168 killed 600 injured), or a “large capacity” tub of grape flavored cyanide poison “Kool-Aid” (Jones Town Killers – 900 killed). And let us not forget how this murder business started, when Cain used a rock to kill his brother Abel. When it comes to murder, people kill people – things do not kill