James Wilson Just Take Away Their Guns Summary

The article “JUST TAKE AWAY THEIR GUNS” written by James Q. Wilson gives a detailed look of why people may take an anti-gun control stance. Reading the title, you may expect this article to be for gun control, but in the first paragraph it’s clear what side the author is on. Furthermore, he continues that getting guns out of the hands of Americans would be an impossible task. Providing evidence for that claim he states that “There are some 200 million guns in private ownership” (Wilson 1). Knowing this information, it gives us an insight on how large America’s gun collection is, and how hard it will be to retrieve all those guns. That is, only a small number of criminals tend to use these guns to their benefit which seems to be a reoccurring theme throughout the article. Deeper into the article Wilson writes about how law-abiding people use guns as self-defensive every year. Knowing this, Wilson provides evidence from Gary Kleck to state “guns are used— that is, displayed or fired — for defense purposes more than a
No, unfortunately banning guns won’t stop them from being used and will only encourage the black market to grow. While this is true, creating a law against the use of these guns will greatly stop production to the general public. Launching a government buyback will help to minimize the size of the black market and give a reason for gun owners to sell their weapons. On the other hand, Wilson states a possible solution to illegal carrying is “encouraging the police to take guns away from people who carry them without a permit” (Wilson 1). While this may stop public carrying, it doesn’t eliminate illegal guns stored elsewhere. As for frisking, its already a contentious act with many public rights groups speaking against it. Not all problems will be solved by making the use of these weapons illegal, but it’ll hopefully reduce the weapons collection the United States