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The Effects and Consequences of Gun Control Essay

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“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The right of all Americans to bear arms is a right the Founding Fathers held to equal importance as the Constitution itself. Gun control laws directly violate this right and therefore should not even be under consideration. Even if that issue is overlooked, gun control advocates state that in order to reduce firearm related violence, gun control laws must be implemented to remove the violence caused by firearms. Although this may seem reasonable, the consequences of such laws are ironically counterproductive; they exacerbate the problem instead of fixing it. Besides the fact that the American …show more content…

The United States’ homicide rate (5.9 deaths per 100,000 people as of 2005) is higher when compared to other countries: Sweden with 1.3, Canada with 1.5, and Australia with 1.3. To go along with these rates, America has a higher gun ownership with 39% when compared to Canada with 29.1%, Australia with 19.4% and Sweden with 15.1%. Many argue that these statistics prove the effectiveness of gun control. Fewer amount of guns equals less crime. Though the arguments seem to have good, empirical statistics, they are actually riddled with holes. Kellermann and Reay’s 43-1 Statistic is nowhere near exhaustive and made significant assumptions that should not have been made. For one, the statistic recorded the crimes with deaths while having no way to account for the number of crimes prevented because of the use of firearms (Heumer 10). Many crimes are stifled and prevented when the victim pulls out a gun. The sheer thought of being shot stops many crimes. This, in-turn, also skews their results for self-defense. They needed to account for the numerous crimes prevented from the use of firearms through self-defense, which would greatly impact the ratio. The shortcomings of the 43-1 Statistic do not end there; thirty seven of the forty three deaths used in the ratio were from suicides. The inclusion of suicides in this statistic implies that the removable of guns would have prevented 100% of these unfortunate deaths. If

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