Gun Control

Gun Control, Why Too Much Is Bad

Gun Control, Why Too Much Is Bad

Controlling access to firearms will not make shootings happen less frequently. While the media prefers to report and sensationalize the shootings committed by 'loners who kept to themselves until they finally snapped ', the average gun violence incident happens among the already present criminal element. Therefore, taking firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens will not only do nothing about criminal access to such weapons, but will rob otherwise honest and forthright citizens from being able to defend themselves from such villainy with equal measure. Gun control is vital, but not to the point of over control. Having the rights to our 2nd amendment is vital and increasing control won’t stop violence and taking away those rights will cause more violence. We as humans are prone to violence and predation (without the eating part) on one another simply because of our brain size and how we evolved. Humanity, not just Americans, has a fixation with violence. We are natural omnivores who achieved our brain size due to a combination of scavenging from other predators ' kills and a healthy dose of predation ourselves. Higher brain size requires a higher level of aggressiveness in a species in general. This is amplified by being a highly social species that competes with itself for territory. Further, human aggression against members of its ' own species has a storied history: it 's called *Human History*. We have a long tradition of treating others like so much offal when it comes to keeping our individual or small collective best interests at the top of the theoretical totem pole, either justified as nationalism, 'Manifest Destiny/Right to Hegemony ', or simple avarice. Think what you will, ecological hardship made primates of the genus Homo an acquisitive family capable of thinking ahead for perceived future scarcity, and willing to use said foresight for, but more commonly against, others of its ' own. To that end, we, as a species, are highly inclined to resort to violence for instinctual reasons. Trying to program that out of our genome is more difficult than sending a man to Pluto and expecting him to come back sane with present technological capacities. A pointless and impossible effort on anyone’s part to try and attempt in regards to altering how we evolved throughout history. However society as a whole has never acted kindly on gun violence anyway. The first guns were made as weapons of war, but were not entirely practical for that. Earliest guns were fashioned into the all too familiar fashion of cannons. Better metallurgy led to making guns smaller and lighter, and eventually resulted in the shoulder-fired arms such as muskets and blunderbusses. Now we have handheld weapons that can destroy vehicles and level buildings. With this in mind it is a no brainer why vengeful people would seek retaliation with a firearm, and because of military advancements it is why people look at guns with disdain. Adding this with the fact there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who have little to no training in weapon safety which can lead to horrible acts like school shootings. When it comes to the news or any other media, relaying information is absolutely atrocious. To quote Rolf Dobelli, “Our brains are wired to pay attention to visible, large, scandalous, sensational, shocking, people related, story-formatted, fast changing, and loud, graphic onslaughts of stimuli. Our brains have limited attention to spend on more subtle pieces of intelligence that are small, abstract, ambivalent, complex, slow to develop and quiet, much less silent. News organizations systematically exploit this bias.”(“Avoid News Towards a healthy Diet”). That in and of itself is true, you see this everyday in the news. All the news media does in this day in age is to capitalize on the downfalls of anyone and anything. Not too often does a good, heartwarming story surface on any action news program to enlighten us of the good the people of any nation can do. The news is also produced from journalists who, like all people, are biased in anything they write. They write what they feel about the subject more so than what the actual purpose is of whatever may be going on. With the case on gun control, any school shootings that happen primarily focus on how many casualties there were and how awful and terrible the act was as well as focusing on how debased of an animal the shooter was. Yes that may seem important and relevant but it really is not. No one needs that information, what we need is what happened and what was the motive behind it, not the mind set and how vile the person who did it was. Dobelli even says “Stories are selected or slanted to please advertisers (advertising bias) or the owners of the media (corporate bias), and each media outlet has a tendency to report what everyone else is reporting.”(“Avoid News Towards a healthy Diet”). How often has the news depicted the war in Iraq as labeling Muslims as extremists and terrorists? Way too much and often enough to make anyone sick and tired of beating a dead horse when it comes to this “labeling”. As a veteran who has been deployed overseas I can attest this is not the case in any means, our media labeling is a fallacy in its own right. To quote again from Dobelli, “Many news stories include predictions, but accurately predicting anything in a complex world is impossible. Overwhelming evidence indicates that forecasts by journalists and by experts in finance, social development, global conflicts and technology are almost always completely wrong. So, why consume that junk?”(“Avoid News Towards a healthy Diet”). A question I always ask myself when it comes to the media. We don’t need all of the senseless and useless information, just get down to the point and deliver what we need to know. We don’t need a full oral history on the subject at hand, or similar events that have happened in conjunction to whatever event that the media is trying to relay. An example of this is with the recent Connecticut school shooting. We don’t need a recap of columbine or VA tech or the Aurora CO shooting. However without the media how else would we get our slice of information on a daily basis? We wouldn’t, and if not for the media we would all be bumbling around without a clue because no one knows what is going on in the world, and information upkeep would be nonexistent. As much as the media can mislead us or give us incorrect information, it is still an important part of our culture as humans to know what is going on in our world, and with Americans, we need to know simply because it is our right. To give a brief recap on American history, America 's founders fought the Revolutionary War to throw off British tyranny. Most of the revolutionaries owned and used their own guns in that war. After the war, in 1789, the 13 American States adopted the Constitution, creating the federal government. Before ratifying the Constitution, the people demanded a Bill of Rights to prevent our government from depriving them of their liberties as the British had done. Knowing this will know that along with that, we were granted other rights as citizens that were believed to be important and vital to how our country is run. A staple in that was adding the right to defend ourselves. When swords fell to the wayside and firearms were more popular to have, owning one was made important with the 2nd Amendment to the constitution. If you look at it now gun control advocates are much like the alcohol activists back during the prohibition. The activists back then thought alcohol was bad, so they thought banning it was a good idea and look what happened after that in terms of crime. Even though alcohol was banned it spawned in turn a wave of violence that made the era well known and popular in all forms down to movies television shows and novels. From this organized crime in regards to booze was created, there were illegal breweries, and don’t forget the rise of the Moonshiners out in the farmlands of states all across America. By doing the same with guns we are giving organized crime another reason to flourish and prosper. We did the same when we made drugs illegal; it only made the problem worse. Now drug trafficking is the most lucrative businesses when it comes to organized crime. Banning and outlawing anything does not fix anything. Banning guns will simply give gangs an opportunity to make more money by selling them illegally and violence will only spike. Many law abiding citizens will give up their weapons if they are banned, which leaves them defenseless and in turn makes them vulnerable to criminals with firearms which in its own right is violating the constitution because you will be taking away people’s rights to defend themselves because who brings a knife to a gun fight when most home invasions are done at gun point? Now, limiting gun ownership is a viable alternative. By having people own a license to even BUY one and having a mandatory gun safety operations class that is included in obtaining the license would work. By doing that the people who own a gun are versed in it, and know how to operate and store it safely in their homes. All in all, there are many ways of controlling the ownership of a fire arm, but to use extensive measures is a bad thing. Violence with firearms is also a more viable and easier method to committing violent crimes than with any other form of weaponry. Banning firearms out right can lead to even more devastating results with organized crime and may other violent outlets that would utilize firearms in a violent manner. Gun control is vital, but not to the point of over control. Having the rights to quote one of our founding fathers Thomas Jefferson; “The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it”. This is a statement our government should fear outright simply because if the government takes away rights, the people will revolt and violently. References * Ballaro, Beverly; Finley, Laura. Points of View: Gun Control. 2011, p3-3. 1p.Reading Level (Lexile): 1400. * Bowman, Jeffrey; Newton, Heather. Points of View: Gun Control. 2011, p2-2. 1p. Reading Level (Lexile):1170 * Dobelli, R. (2010). Avoid news. Retrieved from http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf * Lee, M.; Stingl, Alexander. Points of View: Gun Control. 2011, p1-1. 1p. Reading Level (Lexile):1400. * Wilson, Brian.Points of View: Gun Control. 2011, p5-5. 1p. Reading Level (Lexile): 1290.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_(genus) * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_firearm * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States *

References: * Ballaro, Beverly; Finley, Laura. Points of View: Gun Control. 2011, p3-3. 1p.Reading Level (Lexile): 1400. * Bowman, Jeffrey; Newton, Heather. Points of View: Gun Control. 2011, p2-2. 1p. Reading Level (Lexile):1170 * Dobelli, R. (2010). Avoid news. Retrieved from http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf * Lee, M.; Stingl, Alexander. Points of View: Gun Control. 2011, p1-1. 1p. Reading Level (Lexile):1400. * Wilson, Brian.Points of View: Gun Control. 2011, p5-5. 1p. Reading Level (Lexile): 1290. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_(genus) * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_firearm * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States *