Gun Control: Should The United States Finally Ban Firearms

Guns in America have been a great part to their culture and history thanks to the second amendment which enables the right to use and keep arms. There’s has been an almost non-ending debate on gun control whether if there should be more bans, laws and regulations or not. The common malpractice of guns resulting in shootings all over the country taking many lives and injuring more leads to a large group of people to think taking away guns is the solution. Before my research, I have information regarding guns whatsoever and I consider myself pro-gun I’m not a gun owner, but I have shot firearms before for practice. What I would like to bring forward in this paper from what I have researched and learned is how more regulations in the long term contributing to the confiscation of millions of guns it’s a violation to the Constitution, can result and potentially increase today’s crime rate, and could also lead us to a possible 2nd civil war.

The right to keep and bear arms also known as the Second Amendment was added to the United States Constitution shortly after its ratification in 1788, part of the Bill of Rights. This Amendment has been debatable as there are opinions whether is outdated or should be removed by anti-gun activists who rely to gun control wanting or seeking tighter restrictions on the sale and circulation of firearms. But on the other side, citizen groups and firearms manufacturers treasure this right and argue that gun control laws threaten their constitutional rights. Unlike other countries, the United States government has and it is required to obey the limits on and powers delegated to it under the law of the land.

One of those restrictions is the government shall not infringe the right of people to keep and bear arms. Thomas Jefferson once said “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of firearms.” Not that the Federal or State governments haven’t been infringing away over the last 70-80 years, but there are limits to how far it can go. Bluntly, a gun ban would violate the Constitution on multiple levels. It would violate the 2nd and 5th Amendment at a minimum only to be challenged in court and highly likely to be struck down. A simple gun ban in America today never makes it past the signing ceremony before landing in court and dying there. How has it worked in the past, when the United States tried to ban something that a lot of people wanted and was already readily available? Alcohol? Drugs? Not so well if you ask me. If the people wish to amend the Constitution then it will be done, but that doesn’t reflect the will of the people, which is required for the Constitution to be amended.

Gun control laws do not always correlate to reduction of crime, in fact it does the very opposite. The second amendment continues to this day to be an important safeguard for Americans. American criminologist and research director at the Minnesota Department of Correlations, Dr. Grant Duwe, states that the rate of mass killings, defined as four or more fatalities in a 24-hour period, peaked on a capita basis in 1929 and was compromised mainly by familicides followed by suicide of the perpetrator and felony-related massacres. Mass public shootings a slight bit over 10% was made of mass murders, the number rose from the 1960’s through the 1990’s freeing its peak in 1991. During the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in place in 1994, the nation’s public schools were subjected to over two dozen incidents of violence through the criminal use of guns.

According to Duwe’s estimates, 32 mass shootings occurred in the 1980’s, 42 in the 1990’s and 26 in the 2000’s. The rate of mass shootings in the United States has increased over the past 30 years. I’m not in favor of killing of citizens which I believe that is something we can agree on, but the blame should be on the murderer not the arm; bad things happen because there’s evil among us. According to the United States statistics, FDA-approved prescription drugs killed 290 Americans every day resulting to 783,936 deaths by the medical system compared to 73,000 by firearms in 2015. Heart Disease is the leading cause of death in America according to the CDC, followed by Cancer, Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease, Unintentional Accidents, and Stroke. My intention here is not to compare death numbers, but to bring up that all of our actions or decisions have a level of risk. We don’t blame fast food restaurants for obesity or cars for accidents. If gun control was a panacea, then the big cities such as Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles would have been the safest places to live due to their strict control laws rather than among the most dangerous.

In the 1980’s the rate of homicide has fallen over half along with the gun homicide while gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century. Gary Kleck, professor of criminology of Florida State University found that the number of defensive guns uses may be as high as 2.1 million to 2.5 million times per year. Criminals will find their way to threaten other individuals no matter if they are breaking the law, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a gun you can use something unusual like a straw as a weapon, but if people are left defenseless, how can they help themselves in case of emergency? This can potentially increase crime rate as it encourages more criminals to commit crime having the rest of us to depend more on the police. We protect the President with guns, we protect the Congressmen with guns, we protect celebrities, sporting events and courts with guns, but defend our children with gun-free zone signs only to call someone with a gun in case of emergency. There is no law you can write, that will make the lawless obey, all you do is burden those who obey it.

America has a population of 325 million people and approximately more than 300 million guns in all. This is the highest rate of gun ownership in the planet with 89 guns for every 100 people. If tomorrow we’re to get on with our daily routine and found out that the government will ban and confiscate all firearms of all types no exemptions all over the nation, how would you think the American people with react to this? You may think that banning firearms is the answer to stop our gun violence. But for the rest of us who don’t think otherwise will have to revolt and protest against.

My favorite part of the 2nd amendment is where it clarifies “well-regulated”. Funny how those who ignorantly equate gun regulation to a complete ban on guns often feel the need to recite the 2nd Amendment and leave that part out. Without the 2nd Amendment, how long do you think can we keep the 1st? Josef Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953 established gun control in 1929, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. Adolf Hitler signed a weapons law in 1938 which prohibited Jews to own guns and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews unable to defend themselves were killed. Other leaders such as Fidel Castro and Kim Jung-Il just to name a few, all of them believe in gun control and took away guns from citizens which resulted in millions of deaths combined. How ironic is that those who are calling for gun control are those who want the guns so they can have the control.

Gun control isn’t about guns, it’s about control. When the people are afraid of their own government, there is tyranny, but when the government fears the people, there is liberty. It is best to believe if we see gun control to an extreme, we could be facing a 2nd civil war with regular people like us fighting our very own government. Our forefathers did not arm the American people for the purpose of hunting, but rather to protect themselves from those doing the hunting. Sounds like a conspiracy theory, but those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Therefore, it is important that we inform ourselves with the right information to believe what benefit us and what doesn’t. Modern media has demonized the gun saying all guns are bad and should be abolish. This kind of misinformation can make people live with this idea. Usually when we think of arms, we think of killing, blood and sadness due to their use in wars or crimes. Many teenagers are speaking “how many more?” wanting gun control or total confiscation of guns due to recent school shootings. We have to think radically not emotionally and see the bigger picture here. While we can’t stop everything bad happening around us, we can sure put our efforts to try reduce it. George Washington once said “The Constitution is the guide I will never abandon.” We can instruct and educate our communities about being responsible handling firearms, train them to how to make the best use of them just how we do with knives, cars or such things that can potentially harm others. We can implement better public safety, it is tragic and sad having to hear recent school shootings.

So far not one crime has been stopped by gun control, but thousands of crimes have been stopped by law abiding people with a gun. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.

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