The pressing matter of gun control has been a major topic of interest in recent times. It seems that every year that passes in the United States, there is another mass shooting with the use of firearms. This topic of debate has struck controversies amongst conservatives and liberals. Each side of the issue has justifiable reasons for their beliefs, but the pros of gun control outweigh the defense of those against it. In this paper, four main points will be discussed: gun deaths, high-capacity magazines, background checks, and a comparison between US. statistics and other countries. One argument of proponents is that more laws for gun control would reduce the number of deaths by guns. Between 1999 and 2013, there were 464,033 gun deaths in the US. This accounted for 66.6% of all homicides and 52.2% of all suicides. As the leading cause of death by homicide, gun deaths beat Parkinson’s Disease, liver disease, and deaths by fire and drowning.
The American Journal of Public Health has conducted studies on the effects of gun ownership in the US. According to one of such studies, it was deduced that the “legal purchase of a handgun appears to be associated with a long~lasting increased risk of violent death” In other words, in areas where more people purchase more guns, more violent acts are committed on average In another study, it was found that for every one percent increase in gun ownership, the firearm murder rate increased by 03 percent in the states. Comparatively, the opposition to gun control believes that gun ownership prevents crime in the end. While gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, murder rate declined. However, this information cannot simply be due to higher gun ownership statistics. The 20′” century was a period of much development throughout the US, and the rest of the world.
As American society revived from the Great Depression and became more industrial, less strain on individuals, not the presence of guns, led to lower murder rates. Opponents also say that when a person is intending to commit murder, they will most likely follow through with or without the use of a gun. Crimes of passion can be committed with the use of other forms of weaponry, such as knives, scissors, rope, drugs, and any other item that can be used to kill a person. Well, if this is the case, then anything can be used to defend oneself; a gun is not necessary unless someone has the intent to take the life of another human being. John R. Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime informed readers that “States with the largest increases in gun ownership also have the largest drops in violent crimes.” In my experience, if nearly everyone in my town had guns, I would not want to leave my house out of fear; if everyone can have a gun, who can say a murderer is not living next door?
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A second argument by gun control advocates is that high-capacity and automatic firearms are unnecessary and should be banned to the general public. The use of such weapons too often turns a murderer into a mass murderer. An investigation from the website “Mother Jones” revealed that high-capacity magazines were utilized in more than fifty percent of the mass shootings between 1982 and 2012, When such weapons are used, the death rate increases by 63 percent and injury rate increases by 156 percent. The vice president of Public Safety for ShotSpotter and former ATF agent, David H. Chipman, said that these magazines “[turn] a killer into a killing machine.” Some examples of mass shootings with automatic, high-capacity firearms include a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado (where twelve people were killed and 70 others were injured in 2012) and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut (where the perpetrator’s mother, 20 children, and 6 adult staff were killed in 2012).
If such permissive gun laws allow people to murder children, when will the violence end? A recent example of automatic, high-capacity magazine gun use is the mass shooting in Las Vegan on October 1″, 2017, Stephen Paddock legally purchased semi-automatic machine guns and fired into a crowd of happy concertgoers, killing 58 people and injuring over 500. To dispute the previously stated argument, those who oppose gun control would state that such laws would infringe upon their right to defend themselves and would deny the people a sense of safety. According to the National Rifle Association, guns are used for protection and self-defense 2.5 million times a year, A study by Pew Foundation found that 79 percent of male gun owners and 80 percent of female gun owners felt safer than without a gun. Opponents to gun control say that the second amendment to the Constitution protects citizens’ rights to keep guns; they interpret the amendment to mean that guns are necessary for self—defense from attacks from domestic threats and foreign invaders.
The vice president of the NRA made the statement, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” This statement is ignorant to the fact that if less citizens, or no citizens for that matter, owned guns (especially the “bad guys”), then gun violence would not be as big of an issue. Additionally, semi-automatic and high-capacity firearms are not for the use of defense. They are for the purpose of killing as many people as possible in a short span of time; this may sound similar to the definition of mass murder: the killing of more than 3 people in a short time in the same geographical area. Why they are available for public purchase is beyond me. One outlandish argument by opponents to gun control is that background checks are an invasion of privacy. They involve a check into government databases with information on individuals’ names, addresses, mental health records, and any other facts that would contribute to gun use influence.
Senators like Ted Cruz stated they would be against any legislation that encroached on the American people’s right to bear arms without government surveillance. However, background checks are justifiably necessary when people are able to purchase firearms. The government needs to know that the people purchasing the guns are qualified and not going to use them for illegal purposes. A major point given by proponents of gun control is that other countries with more strict gun control laws have lower homicide and suicide rates than the US. Switzerland has firm requirements for purchasing guns: 3 potential owner must obtain ownership licenses and pass background checks in addition to other restrictions.
In 2007, the country was third in worldwide gun ownership rates (45.7 guns owned per 100 people). Then, in 2009, Switzerland’s gun homicide rate was 031 deaths per 100,000 individuals (that is 000031 percent of the population). Because of their more intensive background check process, owners of guns in Switzerland are more fit for the responsibility of having one. In contrast, the US ranked first in international gun ownership in 2007 with its lenient regulations and 89 guns per 100 individuals. The gun homicide rate in the U.S. in 2007 was 4.19 deaths per 100,000 people; that is 13.5 times that of Switzerland. A professor at Harvard, David Hemenway, explained that “across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides.“ The 2010 U.S. rates of gun homicides were 25.3 higher than in other populated, wealthy countries.
Even when just compared to other developed countries, the US, still soars high above the others. Clearly, something needs to change. When comparing the pros and cons of gun control, it is evident that more controls need to be implemented, 1 have known people in the Corp of Cadets at Virginia Tech who have said that they want guns just for the sake of owning guns. In other words, they want them for the image, or to look “cool.” Having guns just to tell people they have them is ridiculous to me. When the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting took 20 children’s lives and nothing changed in gun policies, I knew something was wrong with this country, If people allow other people to kill children with machine guns, they should be just at fault for what happened.
