Gun Control Essay, Research Paper

Before we discussed gun control in class, I thought that gun control was the perfect solution to crime. But is it? After spending many days in class debating gun control, I realized that there is much more to the subject than I thought. Many new questions arose in my head like: Does the government have the right to take away the freedom of owning a gun? Does gun control really decrease crime like I thought it would? Are we safer if we all have guns? These are all questions that I still do not have the final answer for, but it has made me more open minded about this topic.

For many people, guns are part of their culture. They hunt for their dinner with guns and they also hunt as a sport. Many hunters have guns that have been past down for generations in their family. These are mostly people educated on gun safety by the NRA that use their guns wisely and not foolishly. They pose no harm to other humans, so why must their freedom and culture be taken away? In this situation, guns should not be taken away from them. But where do you draw the line? If you are going to give them the right of having guns, shouldn?t others get the same right?

The second amendment says, ?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.? I think this states clearly, that people have the right to own a gun, but does this give them the right to carry with them everywhere they go? Should a woman be able to carry a gun with her while walking to work? How about a little kid walking to school? As you can see, there has to be some rules and regulations, or kids will start to bring guns to school everyday. Just because the government puts regulations on guns, does not necessarily mean that they are going to banish guns all together any time soon like some people fear. The government just needs to set boundaries to help protect the people who need it the most.

Does gun control increase or decrease crime? If you take a look at Britain, which does not allow any guns, you will see that their murder rate is low, but their crime rate is rising fast. I like this quote I found on the Internet that is responding to a person saying that we know banning guns works and reduces crime. ?Is that why Washington D.C.?s murder rate is 69 per 100,000?due to gun bans and Indianapolis? rated of 9 per 100,000 is due to lack of gun control?? I think this shows that banning guns will be a lost cause. But are guns really that bad in the U.S. today? Former President Clinton says, ?13 children a day? are being killed buy guns. According to the information I got on the Internet, in order for that figure to be true, ?One has to consider persons from 18 to 24 years of age. And since the accepted, dictionary, definition of children includes only those who are pre-adolescent, that means we eliminate 13-17 year olds and arrive at a figure close to 1.7 children per day.? Even if this is true, I think that guns should have locks on them if kids are in the house.

As you can see, I still have mixed feeling about this issue. I think that the laws that we have now are good, and reasonable. The thing that scares me is that I know that this fight will continue for some time, and it will probably be up to my generation to come up with a conclusion before the situation gets too bad.