The Pros And Cons Of Gun Control Laws

The article “Gun Control Laws: Should the United States adopt stronger gun control laws?” focuses on the debate on passing stricter gun control laws. For example, supporters believe that gun control laws will decrease mass shootings and gun violence. Additionally, adopting these laws does not violate the Second Amendment, and as a result it does not limit the government from the use of fire arms when it is necessary. However, opponents argue that the gun control laws will not stop gun violence. The problem is the people holding the gun and not the gun itself. Furthermore, opponents gathered that stronger gun control laws do violate the Second Amendment. The author illustrates the debate on whether the United States should or should not adopt stronger gun control laws.

What gun control laws are going to help stop mass shootings? Even if the government banned the sale of assault rifles and guns in general,people with bad intentions are going to purchase them illegally. In the three recent mass shooting that caused many deaths, the shooters got their guns illegally with no trace of the sale on these weapons. Sandy Hook,Columbine,and San Bernardino were all mass shootings where the shooters got their guns illegally, stole the gun from family members or other people, and caused a lot of danger and harm to people. There would be no regulations to stop them because even if there were stricter gun laws, they still would be able to purchase their guns illegally.Stricter gun laws will not prevent crime,people will still get illegal firearms,and no sales to the public will reduce revenue.

Following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, lawmakers have begun reconsidering the gun laws that are currently in place. Many states have previously implemented “red flag laws” (Johnson 2). However, after the recent events, lawmakers are debating on whether or not those laws are enough. Of course, to most people, stronger gun control laws seems like an obvious decision, but it is not that easy. Gun control laws are complicated. It is a “balancing act in the United States between public safety and the right to bear arms” (Mueller 2). Lawmakers must carefully balance the safety and constitutional rights of citizens. This is difficult to do when everyone has different values and points of view.

Gun control should not exist at all in the United States. Mass shootings have almost become seen as normal event in the United States. What people do not understand is that gun control is not the answer; there are countries with little to no control that have fewer shootings. According to The Washington Post,Finland is ranked number 4 in countries with the most guns despite that they only had 24 homicides by firearm (“Gun homicides and ownership by countries” n.pag.) . In the article Did Gun Control Work In Australia “it is shown that gun control has reduced the problems but it still has not completely got rid of all firearm deaths”(Matthews n.pag.). The number of murders, homicides, or suicides do not go up due to people just owning more guns. Clayton Perry, a staff writer at the University of Maine, even points out “Stricter gun laws were in place during the Assault Weapons Ban between 1994 and 2004, but that didn't stop the shooters at Columbine in 1999 ”(Perry n. pag.). In Iceland, thirty out of a hundred people own a gun and they have zero homicides caused by guns a year(“Gun Homicides and ownership by country” n. pag.). In this day and age, everything is unpredictable, guns are a form of protection for everyone and there should not be restrictions on protection. The U.S. Department of Justice released a data brief that states, “ On average in 1987-92 about 83,000 crime victims per year used a firearm to defend themselves or their property”(Rand BJS Statistician n. pag.). The National Sheriffs Association released that the average police response time is at eighteen minutes while the average school shooting only last twelve minutes (“Embracing Technology To Decrease Response Time” n. pag.). Gun control should not exist because other countries do fine without it , high gun ownership has no link with increasing death rates , and guns are not harmful when instructions are followed.

Researchers at the University of Alabama have conducted studies trying to find links between guns and mass shootings (Michaels). There are hundreds of millions of guns in circulation in America today. In fact, “the total number of guns in circulation is at least 240 million” (Ballaro and Finley). Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, suggests that “America’s high rate of public mass shootings is connected with the number of guns circulating in the country” (Michaels). Implementing stricter gun laws would cause fewer people to want to purchase guns, resulting in fewer guns in circulation in the coming years. In the United States, “around 30,000 people die from gun fire each year. Around half of these are murders, a little less than half are suicides, and the rest are lethal accidents” (Ballaro and Finley). (2) Currently there are several million guns in circulation, and gun deaths in America are higher than any other developed country. (5) If the trend continues, the number of gun deaths will continue to increase. As stated in the article “10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down.” author Dave Gilson states that “People with access to more guns tend to kill more people- with guns. States with higher gun ownership rates have higher gun murder rates- as much as 114% higher than states with lower gun ownership rates” (Gilson). (7) More

As gun violence spreads as a controversial issue around our society, many people have different views on what actions should be taken to control this world wide issue. Some people believe that more laws should be created to stop gun violence. But there are many others who believe that guns are not the problem and the stricter gun laws will only affect law-abiding people from having them. More gun laws will become irrelevant and will not work efficiently against crime.

“The United States of America has one of the most highest homicide rates than just about any other developed country around the world, and it also has much more civilian ownership.” (Verbruggen). This is a good thing that we have freedom to have our firearms and protect ourselves from danger, however this can also be bad because letting citizens have so much freedom to buy firearms can lead to shootings in which they have. Say a person who has not committed any crimes yet, goes into an ammunition and firearms store, and purchases an automatic assault rifle with a high capacity magazine. If that person happens to have some dark thoughts, people can end up losing their life because we have too much freedom involving the purchasing of these rifles and other premium guns. However, it is important to look into why these mass shootings do occur. “Not only is there no correlation between gun ownership and overall homicide within a state, but there is a strong correlation between gun homicide and non-gun homicide suggesting that they spring from similar causes, and that some states are simply more violent than others.” (Verbruggen) This shows that with some of the cases we have involving deaths, not all of them come with being mass shootings. It is not hard for a person to grab a regular pistol and go out shooting innocent civilians, however, it is less likely that they will kill as many people as they can with an automatic assault rifle. As an overlooker of gun

Should gun control laws be changed? Well, first, gun control is entirely based off the notion that people are committing gun related crimes because they have access to them and these debates are whether or not the nation should ban guns entirely. This whole rebel of gun control change is said to help reduce violent crimes (Swickard). This is a well-known debate in today’s world. Many are involved in protests all around the world, while their schools are getting shot up and are asking for changes to make gun control laws stricter. However, the fact is, guns are not the problem in this world, it is the individual. If you put a gun in a criminal’s hand, they could do whatever they wish. Gun control laws should not be changed because current laws

In Australia, they had a similar problem that we faced, but they implemented strict gun control after the Port Arthur Massacre in 1999, where 35 civilians were killed. These new laws were shown to be incredibly effective at curbing gun crime and a mass shooting has not occurred in Australia for almost 20 years. According to a 2010 study done by Andrew Leigh, a former professor at Australian National University and an Australian House of Representatives member, and Christine Neil of Wilfrid Laurier University, the new restrictions on guns in Australia have also reduced gun homicide and suicide rates by a whopping 60% and have cut gun deaths in half, despite the fact that the Australian population grew 14% in the last 20 years. As if this wasn’t enough proof that strict gun laws are effective, studies in the U.S. also show that more guns has a direct correlation with increased gun violence. Heather Timmons, in her article “Mapped: The US States With the Most Gun Owners-and Most Gun Deaths”, shows that states with more guns and weaker gun control have up to 33% more crime compared to states with strict gun control. Louisiana, a state with a gun death rate of 19 for every 100,000 people, has 45% of the population owning guns, while Hawaii, a state with a gun death rate of 2.2 for every 100,000 people, has only 6.7% of the population owning guns. The connection is clear, but gun lobbyists

Gun production is increasing drastically over the years (Horsley). Having this in mind, should there be a gun control law? People have different thoughts about it. Some may say that the guns are not the problem because they are not the ones who kill, but the person’s decision to shoot. Others believe that they are beneficially as for protection. The argument on having gun control is a controversy on protection, the background checks, and gun death statistics.

The United States has a population of roughly 319 million people yet it has an accumulative amount of 371 million firearms at its disposal. One notable example of this statistic coming into play is seen when you look at the city of Chicago. Chicago is the city with the strictest gun control laws in the country. When the Gun control legislatures were passed in Chicago, crime dropped at a rapid rate. Although after a year or two Chicago remained to be the most dangerous city in the United States due to the availability of firearms in the surrounding environment. With the wide scale implementation of gun control it is more than reasonable to expect a steady decline of gun homicides as a

“According to the Congressional Research Service, there are roughly twice as many guns per capita in the United States as there were in 1968: more than 300 million guns in all” describe in the article Guns In America, By The Numbers by Scott Horsley at npr.org. The number of guns’ sale is increasing every year. Some people might think more gun more peach, but some of them think more gun more violence. In common sense, a place where has the incredibly lax gun law, the country has the strongest culture of gun ownership, highest rate of suicide, highest gun violence per capita. In the EBSCO article, Gun Control in America: An Autopsy report by Collier, Charles W,described “the United States with less than 5 percent of the world’s population and nearly half the world’s firearms (pg. 81). United States is the little country that allows people illegal to carry a gun protect their life in the right way. They use to teach their children how to use guns when they are little. The more we learn, the more we use to. More people using gun as tool to suicide and killing another because the unlimited availability of gun sale. The more gun we have sale, the country will be becoming an armed society. As the number of guns increasing, the US homicide rate was increasing and higher than other country. In the Google scholar article, Violent Death Rates: The US Compared with OECD Countries, 2010, explain that US homicide rates were much higher than other high-income countries, the gun homicide rate in the United States was 49.0 times higher and the overall firearm death rate in the United States from all causes was 10.0 times higher”. This year, I have heard about two homicide case from customer in where I used to work. The death rate of gun violence having a certain relationship to the lax gun laws and policy. The above evidences show how gun violence has been affected to our lives,

According to gun advocates, “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” (Stossel). Many people including government officials and American citizens question whether the gun ban across the nation will actually reduce the overall violence or will it take a turn for the worse by creating a rebellion. In the past, the threat of taking guns away created an uprising in a group of outlaws’ rage and fury. There was a murderous killing spree that occurred in Oregon in the month of October that was a result of the gun control laws being put in place. No matter how many people have their guns taken away, American criminal’s sick obsession for violence will never be abolished. For this and many other reasons, there needs to be less gun control.

United States government agencies have defined an active shooter as a person “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” The FBI identified 160 active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013. Of those, 60% of the incidents occured before police arrived on scene.”(Terrades 400). These statistics alone show that gun crime is a problem in America. Many people are fighting for the instalment of stricter gun control laws. In theory, this would make it harder for people to get guns, thus decreasing mass shootings and other forms of gun violence. It will also make it much more difficult for law abiding citizens to obtain firearms. The problem isn't the guns them self, it is the people behind the gun.

Gun violence, especially that as caused by handguns, is a major problem in America. It affects millions of people annually, and the effects it has are irreversible. However, this reality does not constitute for a complete ban on the private ownership of handguns. A ban on the private ownership of handguns should not be enacted on the grounds that the United States government ought to preserve democratic legitimacy and constitutionalism, and a ban is not feasible or just in America’s political climate.