Gun control in America is a highly controversial issue. American citizens who oppose gun control may not understand what they are opposed to. Gun control, though currently an issue, is not new to the United States. It began in 1791 with the Bill of Rights and continues throughout the years to current day. According to the Constitution of the United States, the Second Amendment of the Constitution states, “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.” Whether the Second Amendment gives unequivocal rights to individuals to bear arms or that it only pertains to states militia and firearms should be tightly regulated by the government, reasonable measures should be taken to minimize the harm caused by guns. An individual’s right to own guns should always be weighed against the collective good of society.
This can be accomplished by seeking a balance between freedom and reasonable regulations. This year there was a new gun law added to the long list of gun laws. In Colorado and Oregon the law was passed with a huge margin. The law states that you cannot buy a gun at a gun show without a background check, and for it to be a gun show there only needs to be 3 or more people One of the main topics on gun control is whether or not they are an effective way of self-defense. How would we know whether or not a gun is a good mean of self-defense or not? Well some of those questions are answered by the report done by a criminologist working at Florida State University. A criminologist by the name of Gary Kleck researched data from the Department of Justice while at Florida State University.
He learned that victims which have defended themselves with a handgun during a robbery or an assault, have the least chance of being injured, or the crime being finished out. Anti-gun people say you don’t need a gun to help save your life. You can just try and escape, reason with the offender, or use physical resistance (other than a handgun), and that will work, which was not true. Gary Kleck discovered by doing all of those things, there is actually a larger chance of injury and the crime being completed. These statistics are the same when it comes to burglaries. Most of the time when the victims resisted with a handgun, there was a less chance of the crime being committed or the victim being hurt. Another topic that is discussed over and over is that of accidental gun shots. Many of the anti-gun groups say that is a major problem with guns.
Again Gary Kleck the criminologist says something different. He says they are actually very rare. In is estimations only 2 percent of fatal gun accidents occur during defensive gun use. He estimates only about 30 per year. There are about 2 million defensive gun uses each year, which would mean that fatal gun accidents are less than 1 in about 65,000. Anti-gun groups say to make the gun childproof. The percentages of felons who have had an occurrence with an armed victim and have been scared off and not finished their crime is a lot larger than most think. About 69 percent say that they know a criminal who as also been scared off because of an armed victim. Also about 57 percent say that they are more worried about meeting up with an armed person than they are about running into the police. A lot of the time people are told how bad the violent death rates are.
Like a report by the Los Angeles Times. It says that there are over 34,000 gun deaths in the U.S. A lot of these articles are written by people who are against guns, so they make sure they do not give the entire truth. They try to make guns sound a lot worse than they really are. For instance in the Los Angeles Times, they forget to tell everyone that over half of those are actually suicides. This is how it usually is with the anti-gun groups. They only tell part of the story and do not add all of the details. It only tells you that since 1970 the number of guns has been increasing, but they forget to tell you that the homicide rates have not been going up. The percentage of people owning guns has gone down from 49 percent to 40 percent, but the violent crimes have risen and fallen. The number of gun owners does not affect how many crimes are committed.
Another report says that guns are about 43 more likely to kill family members than to kill a criminal. But they leave out that of those 43 deaths, 86 percent (37) were suicides. The gun war has been going on for years. Every person has a different point on how guns should be dealt with. Ever since the beginning of man the constitution says that we have the right to keep and bare arms. People will always be trying to get rid of handguns, and there will always be people that will be fighting to save them. No matter what is said there is one quote from the National Rifle Association that should be remembered “Guns do not kill people, people kill people.”