Gun Ban Law

TO BAN OR NOT TO BAN

There is a debated topic in USA recently, especially after the terrible armed attack to a school in December 2012. The topic is whether having gun should be completely banned or not. In USA, acquiring a gun is so simple that anyone wanting to have a gun can get it within one or two days. Add to the easiness of acquiring a gun in legal ways, there are easier ways to get a gun which are called private-party sales and, of course, black market. A great number of the crimes include handgun, and these crimes are the serious problems of America right now. Although there is such a big problem, people who live in this problem cannot arrange settlement to what should be done about the problem. Some gun control supporter claim that banning all the guns would be enough to stop criminals committing crime with guns; yet, banning handguns or guns in general is not enough to prevent criminals from using guns; so, there is no use banning using of guns.

Gun ban laws prohibiting the citizens using gun fail to protect them, these laws may put them in great danger, however. Citizens who do not have guns become vulnerable to criminals because criminals are often red blooded, and they may do everything to get what they want and if their need is a gun, it is really simple to get one from black market or even from private-party sales. When you take the right of having the gun from the innocent citizens, they lose their choice to defend themselves against armed criminals.Moreover, there are quite interesting statistics about the crime rate when gun usage is banned in particular states. On September 24, 1976, Washington, D.C. placed a ban on all handguns; the ban was later overturned on June 26, 2008. Under the regulations of this law, no one other than a police officer was permitted to own a handgun. Authors Agresti and Smith (2010) state that “during the years in which the D.C. handgun ban and trigger lock law were in effect, the Washington, D.C. murder rate averaged 73% higher than it was at the outset of the law, while the U.S. murder rate averaged 11% lower.” (Agresti & Smith, 2010). A second example of the ineffectiveness of banning handguns is that of Chicago, Illinois. In 1982, Chicago passed a ban on all handguns, except for those that were pre-registered with the police department prior to the ban. According to statistics of Illinois, the percentage of crimes committed with guns varied between 40 percent and 55 percent each year during the pre-ban period. In the years the gun ban was in place, the percentage committed with guns has been 70 percent or more.(Agresti & Smith, 2010). In both examples, we can see how insufficient the gun ban laws were in the past years.

The second thing proving the paucity of gun ban laws is that there are always other ways to access guns. There are private-party gun sales and you can buy as many guns as you want anonymously. Add to that, private-party sales are not illegal, which causes serious problems when these guns are party to a crime. There is also a big gun trade called black marketing but it is an illegal way to acquire gun unlike to private-party sales. Furthermore, stealing a gun is another alternative way to have a gun for criminals because they have nothing to lose more. All of these ways whether they are illegal or not become a serious problem of citizens when gun ban regulations are realized. Everyone can understand what would be the consequences of the gun ban laws when there are these easy options to get a gun.

Some may claim that guns kill the innocent people, and so using guns should be definitely banned. However, they miss the whole point. The point is that it is not the guns killing those innocent people, it is the humans themselves killing the people or we can say their intentions are what kill the people. People having good intentions buys a gun to defend himself or his family. Nonetheless, people having bad intentions may use a gun as a murder item or may even sell a gun to a murderer. We can give the gunman attack to middle school in USA as an exaple fo this. In that situation, it is not the gun which is resposbile fort his, it is the one holding gun is guilty. Another group of people think that there is no other usage of the gun but killing people and creating crime. This group is wrong as well because there are varieties of using the gun in all of the people’s lives from self defense to hunting. There are a number of people who make a life with hunting or we can think about being a policeman as an example of occupation requires gun.

To sum up, just banning the legal ways of buying gun is not enough to hold back criminals from killing the blameless people. Even though there would be gun ban laws in regulation, criminals would find a way to get one fo themselves especially in illegal ways from black marketin to stealing a gun. As a consequence, there would be lots of unprotected people living in fear. As we can see in the examples of the states trying to use gun ban laws, it is not a convenent way to stop criminals. Also, we can’t just accuse the gun for killing the people and get out of under this big problem. We should consider people having bad intentions and their reasons to commit crime with gun and accuse this person. As Ted Nudgent says: "To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic.’’ To prevent these problematic people from using gun, we need to think a way of controling the illegal ways of buying a gun.