Do We Need More Gun Control Laws? Essay, Research Paper

Does allowing people to own or carry guns deter violent crime, or does it cause more citizens to harm each other? Wherever people happen to fall along the ideological spectrum, their answers are all too often founded upon mere impressionistic and anecdotal evidence. In this essay, I plan to point out the facts for each side of the coin, and then share my own feelings on the subject. It has been said that by arming the citizens of our country, their safety will be compromised. This is because if we make guns easier to access, criminals will be more apt to use them. A good example of the effectiveness of gun control can be seen when comparing Seattle with Vancouver. While both cities are nearly identical, Vancouver s increased gun-control laws have allowed it to have a 13.5% lower aggravated assault rate. The aggravated assault rate while using firearms was nearly eight times lower in Vancouver. Homicides were also nearly 50 percent lower in Vancouver. I took the liberty to search for the results of gun control in other countries, and found that in Australia, they put several gun control laws into effect in 1920, and in 1927 the homicide rate greatly decreased. This further proves the point that gun control is a necessary tool. The Brady bill was a great idea. The whole point behind it was to stop premeditated violent crimes. The idea is that if someone gets angry enough to want to commit murder in a fit of rage, the five-day waiting period on purchasing a firearm would give the potential murderer time to cool down. However, upon more research, I ve found that gun control can cause crime rates to increase. While in Vancouver and Washington D.C. had cases where crimes went down after the passing of gun control laws, New Jersey, Hawaii, Taiwan, and Jamaica all reported increases in violent crimes after the passing of gun control laws. Guns can actually be a huge help in preventing crimes. Each year, potential victims kill from 2,000 to 3,000 criminals, and injure an additional 9,000 to 17,000. Private citizens account for only 30 accidental killings each year. Police officers account for over 330 a year. Criminals succeed in taking a gun away from an armed victim less than one percent of the time. Also, police officers carry guns but rarely use them. It is the implicit power of these guns that helps to stop crimes from being committed. Switzerland has one of the lowest murder rates in the world, and it requires all able-bodied males between the ages of 20 and 50 to have a military-issued automatic weapon, ammunition and other equipment in their dwellings. Israel also has one of the lowest crime rates, and it depends on its widespread civilian gun possession to help fight terrorism. These countries experiences help to show that widespread gun possession is compatible with low crime rates.

Violent crimes are more common among African Americans than Whites, lower-income than higher-income, younger than middle-aged, single than married, and urban than rural; all contrary to patterns of gun ownership. Here are several examples of how gun control can hurt the general public. In Killeen, Texas on October 16, 1991 George Hennard crashed a pickup truck through the front of a Luby s Cafeteria, got out with two semiautomatic pistols and methodically killed 23 people in ten minutes before police finally arrived and killed him. Dr. Suzanne Gartia, who watched as her mother and father were shot to death, said later that she had left a pistol in her car outside the cafeteria because Texas law forbade carrying a weapon. From where she lay, she said, she had a clear shot at Hennard early on and she would have taken it. She was quoted later on saying, We were sitting ducks and that just makes me so blasted mad. I ve got a right to protect myself. Two months later, two armed robbers herded 20 customers and employees in an Anniston, Ala., Shoney s restaurant into a walk-in refrigerator and held the manager outside at gunpoint. The robbers spotted Thomas Glen Terry, a customer, hiding under a table and began shooting at him. Unlike the situation in Texas, Terry, who had a permit, was carrying his .45 caliber handgun. He shot back, killing one robber and wounding the other. The manager and hostages were released, unharmed. These two cases outline why we have too many restrictions on guns. If we were to increase these restrictions, honest citizens would have even more trouble carrying guns, and the criminals would be the only ones who were able to access them. Even if we were to outlaw guns entirely in the U.S., criminals would be able to smuggle them in from other countries. I feel that we can t stop or even slow the crime rate by putting more gun laws into effect. The only thing that more laws would create would be putting gun dealers into the same boat as drug dealers. If criminals want guns bad enough, they will go to any costs to get them, regardless of the law. Although firearms are used in about 12 percent of violent crimes, it is unlikely that any kind of gun control legislation could remove more than a handful of these guns from the criminals. Most criminals didn t obtain their guns from conventional sources. Gun control laws may just as well be called victim disarmament laws as they take guns away from law-abiding citizens, and not from criminals.