English 1301
10/09/12
Concealed Carry Everywhere Since the beginning of our nation after the Declaration of Independence was signed, individuals have had the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Inside these ‘rights’ is the right to bear arms. Is that wrong? Should all people have access to firearms? As stated in the second amendment, we as a nation and individuals have every right to own our own weapons. Therefore, it is your right to either own a weapon or not. There are some who buy a gun, put it in their gun cabinet, and never look at it again for years. Others shoot their guns regularly at ranges, take it to go on a hunting trip, or keep it close to their bed at night if they live in areas with a high crime rate, and these are all practices of using a gun that are considered to be proper uses. On the other hand, there are those who obtain them illegally and use them to harm, murder, rape, or put fear in other citizens. Most states offer a concealed handgun license that you can get when you turn twenty-one by going through the right course in order for you to carry a weapon around legally. The right to bear arms is an important symbol of an individual’s freedoms that our founding fathers established for those who understood the proper and improper uses when you bear arms, and anyone or anything trying to take that away is morally unjust and unconstitutional. If you live in a suburb or rural area surrounding a city you usually do not live in fear of someone trying to rob, hurt, or attack you while you are walking down a street. Yet it is still good to keep a firearm around just in case one of these scenarios occur. If you live in a city with a good amount of people, it is a totally different story. We do not live in the wild west anymore so it would be uncommon to see a man walking down the street strapped up with shotguns and pistols looking like he is going to war. Now that we live in the twenty-first century we have
Cited: * Snyder, Jeffrey R. “Easing handgun licensing laws: helping the public fight back.” USA Today [Magazine] Sept. 1998: 30+. General OneFile. Web. 31 Oct. 2011 * “Gov. Bush Gets It Right, CCRKBA; Armed Citizens Reduce Crime.” US Newswire 12 July 2006. General OneFile. Web. 4 Nov. 2011 * “College Campuses Are Less Safe without Concealed Weapons” by Students for concealed carry on campus. Gun Violence. Louise I. Gerdes, Ed. Opposing Viewpoints Series. Greenhaven Press, 2011. “Why Our Campuses are NOT safer without concealed Handguns,” Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, 2008.