Same Thing Error Occuring Essay, Research Paper

gun control

Gun Control Americans are faced with an ever-growing problem of violence.

Our streets have become a battleground where the elderly are beaten for

their social security checks, where terrified women are viciously attacked and

raped, where teen-age gangsters shoot it out for a patch of turf to sell their

illegal drugs, and where innocent children are caught daily in the crossfire of

drive-by shootings. We cannot ignore the damage that these criminals are

doing to our society, and we must take actions to stop these horrors.

However, the effort by some misguided individuals to eliminate the legal

ownership of firearms does not address the real problem at hand, and simply

disarms the innocent law-abiding citizens who are most in need of a form of

self-defense. To fully understand the reasons behind the gun control efforts,

we must look at the history of our country, and the role firearms have played

in it. The second amendment to the Constitution of the United States makes

firearm ownership legal in this country. There were good reasons for this

freedom, reasons, which persist today. Firearms in the new world were used

initially for hunting, and occasionally for self-defense. However, when the

colonists felt that the burden of British oppression was too much for them to

bear, they picked up their personal firearms and went to war. Standing

against the British armies, these rebels found themselves opposed by the

greatest military force in the world at that time. The 18th century witnessed

the height of the British Empire, but the rough band of colonial freedom

fighters discovered the power of the Minuteman, the average American gun

owner. These Minutemen, so named because they would pick up their

personal guns and jump to the defense of their country on a minute?s notice,

served a major part in winning the American Revolution. The founding fathers

of this country understood that an armed populace was instrumental in fighting

off oppression, and they made the right to keep and bear arms a

constitutionally guaranteed right. Over the years, some of the reasons for

owning firearms have changed. As our country grew into a strong nation, we

expanded westward, exploring the wilderness, and building new towns on the

frontier. Typically, these new towns were far away from the centers of

civilization, and the only law they had was dispensed by townsfolk through

the barrel of a gun. Crime existed, but could be minimized when the

townspeople fought back against the criminals. Eventually, these organized

townspeople developed police forces as their towns grew in size. Fewer

people carried their firearms on the street, but the firearms were always there,

ready to be used in self-defense. It was after the Civil War that the first

gun-control advocates came into existence. These were southern leaders who

were afraid that the newly freed black slaves would assert their newfound

political rights, and these leaders wanted to make it easier to oppress the free

blacks. This oppression was accomplished by passing laws making it illegal in

many places for black people to own firearms. With that effort, they assured

themselves that the black population would be subject to their control, and

would not have the ability to fight back. At the same time, the people who

were most intent on denying black people their basic rights walked around

with their firearms, making it impossible to resist their efforts. An unarmed

man stands little chance against an armed one, and these armed men saw

their plans work completely. It was a full century before the civil rights

activists of the 1960s were able to restore the constitutional freedoms that

blacks in this country were granted in the 1860s. Today?s gun control

activists are a slightly different breed. They claim that gun violence in this

country has gotten to a point where something must be done to stop it. They

would like to see criminals disarmed, and they want the random violence to

stop. I agree with their sentiments. However, they are going about it in the

wrong way. While claiming that they want to take guns out of the hands of

criminals, they work to pass legislation that would take the guns out of the

hands of law-abiding citizens instead. For this reason the efforts at gun

control do not address the real problem of crime. The simple definition of a

criminal is someone who does not obey the law. Therefore, if we pass laws

restricting ownership of firearms, which category of people does it affect?

The simple answer is that gun control laws affect law-abiding citizens only. By

their very nature, the criminals will continue to violate these new laws, they

will continue to carry their firearms, and they will find their efforts at crime

much easier when they know that their victims will be unarmed. The situation

is similar to that of the disarmed blacks a century ago. Innocent people are

turned into victims when new laws make it impossible for them to fight back.

An unarmed man stands little chance against an armed one. An interesting

recent development has been the backlash against the gun-control advocates.

In many states, including Florida and Texas, citizens have stated that they

want to preserve their right to carry firearms for self-defense. Since the late

1980s, Florida has been issuing concealed weapons permits to law-abiding

citizens, and these citizens have been carrying their firearms to defend

themselves from rampant crime. The result is that the incidence of violent

crime has actually dropped in contrast to the national average. Previously,

Florida had been leading the nation in this category, and the citizens of that

state have welcomed the change. Gun control advocates tried to claim that

there would be bloodshed in the streets when these citizens were given the

right to carry. They tried to claim that the cities of Florida would become like

Dodge City with shoot outs on every street corner. These gun control

advocates were wrong. Over 200,000 concealed carry permits have been

issued so far, with only 36 of these permits revoked for improper use of a

firearm. This statistic is easy to understand. It is the law-abiding citizens who

are going through the process of getting concealed carry permits so that they

may legally carry a firearm. Th e people who go through this legal process do

not want to break the law, and they do not intend to break the law. The

people who do intend to break the law will carry their guns whether or not

the law allows them to do so. Criminals will always find ways to get guns. In

this country we have criminalized the use, possession, sale, and transportation

of many kinds of narcotics, but it?s still easy for someone to take a ride and

purchase the drugs of their choice at street corner vendors. Firearms and

ammunition would be just as easy for these black-market entrepreneurs to

deliver to their customers. Today, criminals often carry illegal weapons,

including sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, and homemade zip-guns, clearly

showing their disregard for the current laws which make these items illegal.

And when they are caught, the courts regularly dismiss these lesser weapons

charges when prosecuting for the more serious charges that are being

committed with the weapons. The gun control advocates have argued their

case by demonizing the gun itself, rather than addressing the people who

commit violent crimes. This is the main fallacy in their argument. They slyly

attempt to claim that possession of a gun turns average citizens into

bloodthirsty lunatics. This theory falls apart under close scrutiny. If legal

possession of a firearm caused this sort of attitude, then why are crime rates

highest in areas such as Washington, D.C. and New York City which have

strict gun control laws? Simply because of the free law that allow any body

can get a gun. The most recent efforts of the gun control lobby has been to

claim that certain types of guns and ammunition are inherently evil. They

assign emotional catch phrases such as “assault weapons” and “cop killer

bullets” to broad categories of firearms and ammunition in the hopes that

people will believe that some guns have an evil nature. Most people who are

unfamiliar with firearms do not fully understand what these phrases mean, and

they accept the terms being used without question. What people do not often

understand is that the term “assault weapon” has been defined to include all

semi- automatic rifles, and “cop killer” has been defined to include any bullet

that can penetrate type two body armor. It comes as a surprise to most

people that a large number of simple hunting rifles can do both. Does

ownership of one of these weapons cause people to become mass

murderers? It does not, and we must not fall into the trap of blaming the

sword for the hand that wields it. So I?ve shown that the act of making it

illegal to own firearms does little to prevent criminals from getting guns. These

laws only restrict people who respect the law itself, the people who would

only use firearms for legal purposes anyway. And when we give people the

right to defend themselves, we find that criminals start looking for other

victims out of fear that they will become the victims themselves. We must

work to reduce crime in the world, but we should look at the problem

realistically, and develop plans that would be effective. It is obvious that gun

control laws are neither realistic, nor effective in reducing crime. Therefore,

we must direct our efforts toward controlling crime, not controlling legal

ownership of firearms.

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