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 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 in need of a form of self-defense. The second amendment to the Constitution of the United States makes firearm ownership legal in this country.
There were good reasons for this freedom. Firearms have played a big role in the freedom that exists in the United States today. In colonial times, the average American freed themselves from the British. These average American fighters were known as Minutemen. These Minutemen, named because they would pick up their guns and go to the defense of their country on a minutes notice, played a major part in winning the American Revolution.
It was for that reason that the founding fathers of this country made the right to keep and bear arms a constitutional right. It wasnt until after the Civil War that the first gun control activists came into play. These were the southern leaders that were afraid that the newly freed black slaves would use their new political rights against them. To avoid this they passed new laws making it illegal for black people to own firearms in many states in the South. It was over a century until the civil rights activists of the 1960s were able to give the constitutional freedoms that the black people of this country were supposed to be given in the mid 1800s.
Todays gun control activists are different than those of the past. They say 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 violence to stop. 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 laws that would take the guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens instead.
For this reason the, efforts for gun control do not address the real problems of crime. The simple definition of a criminal is someone who does not obey the law. The simple definition of a law-abiding citizen is someone who does obey the law. Therefore, if we pass laws restricting ownership of firearms, which group of people does it affect? The simple answer is that gun control laws affect law-abiding citizens only. By their very nature, criminals will continue to violate these new laws, they will continue to carry their firearms, and they will find their efforts at crime easier when they know that their victims will be unarmed.
Innocent people are turned into victims when new laws make it impossible for them to fight back. An unarmed person stands little chance against an armed one. There have been laws passed that force citizens to go through a registration process to purchase a firearm. It is the law-abiding citizens who are going through these processes of getting permits so they may legally carry a firearm.
The people who go through this legal process do not want to break the law. The people who do intend to break the law will carry their guns whether or not the law allows them. Criminals will always find ways to get guns. In this country we have made illegal the use, possession, sale, and transportation of many kinds of narcotics, but it is still easy for anyone to purchase their drug of choice from street corner dealers.
Firearms and ammunition would be just as easy to obtain from these black market vendors. Today, criminals often carry illegal weapons, including sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, and even homemade guns, clearly showing disregard for the current laws that make these items illegal. The gun control advocates have argued their case by demonizing the gun itself, rather than addressing the people who commit violent crimes. They attempt to claim that possession of a gun turns average citizens into bloodthirsty lunatics. 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? And why are crime rates dropping in states such as Florida where private ownership of firearms is encouraged’simply stated, legal ownership of a gun does not cause crime. The most recent efforts of gun control advocates have been to claim that certain types of guns and ammunition are 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 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 gun for the hand that holds it. 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 America, but we should look at the problem realistically, and develop plans that would be effective. It is obvious that the 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.Words/ Pages : 1,144 / 24
