The right to bear arms has been a part of this country’s constitution since its conception in 1776. Guns we originally a commodity that almost every household had. Firearms were used for hunting and protection. As the modern era came upon us, there became a lesser need to own a firearm because of a controlled police force and a surplus in food. The surplus in food and modern law enforcement, along with rising firearm crimes prompted the government to start reviewing gun laws.
Furthermore, over the past century the right to bear a firearm has been restricted by many laws. These laws are instated to help prevent accidental and planned deaths attributed by firearms. The question still stands: can gun-safety laws help prevent accidental and non-accidental deaths caused by firearms? Is the second amendment out dated in today’s world, and is there a need for some a revised version of this amendment?Gun control continues to inflame public opinion nearly a century after the first firearm law was proposed. Gun control supporters blame the high rate of violent crime and the large number of gun accidents and suicides on the easy availability of firearms and lax licensing and safety rules.
Opponents have argued that access to firearms deters crime. Gun homicides are decreasing and fatal gun accidents are at a record low rate. Many people view the gun control issue very differently. On one hand we have at home parents who are concerned with the safety of their children, from gun violence at school. They are also concerned with how easy it is for a minor to obtain a firearm.
On the other hand, there is the NRA. The NRA believes that the problem is not with firearms. The problem lies with the people that misuse them. The controversy with gun control that has developed over the past century has had many causes. Over the past century, since the first act of gun control policy was past in 1911 there has been an auterauge of gun control acts that have followed in its place. These acts have helped to insure the safety of the public from gun violence.
Prior to the 20th century, no gun laws were instated for public protection and people were able to obtain a firearm without a license or permit. Today there are over 20,000 laws (Crimes and Criminal procedure, index) that are instated which limit the use of firearms to certain individuals that do not meet the proper criteria. Law makers are continuing to navigate to a fare ground where peoples civil rights are not striped from them and to a point were peoples are safe form acts of gun violence. Even with these gun laws instated there is a continuing stream of gun related violence accruing everyday.
Events like Columbine have triggered a chain of copycat school shootings around the country. School, which at one point were looked at as a place of sanguinary, have now been thorn full force into gun violence. Many politicians and people alike believe that we are not being hard enough criminals to deter people from committing these acts of gun violence. “These young guys today they’ll shoot a whole crowd in broad daylight just to get one dead” (Guns and violence, 30). In the world today there is so much media violence shown on TV, movies, video games, and in the newspaper, it is hard to ex cape from the reality, which we have sounded ourselves by everyday.
More and more kids are using violence to solve problems. It has become such an epidemic in our schools, that the government has sent out a booklet on what to look for in kids who commit these crimes. About 350,000 booklets have been sent out to all schools in this nation to tell parents, educators, other students who might be doing the kinds of things that have happened in Jonesboro and in Littleton. There have been many advances in gun control over the years. Recently there has been the uses of gun safety locks that prevent anyone form using the gun by covering the trigger.
Also the so-called smart gun, which does not fire unless the owner is in possession of the firearm by analyzing the gun owner’s handprint. This prevents the misfiring of the gun. These new perimeters help prevent accidents but neither gunlocks nor the specially made hand print guns are required when you own a gun. These new advances have helped public safety.
The gun control topic really began to surface in the begging of the 20th when outbreaks of crime and violence had spurred lawmakers periodically to try to control the use of firearms. Gun owners have appealed to an American tradition of using firearms for sport and for self-defense to block those laws, or at least weaken them. The effect of laws on crime is hotly debated, but there is no argument that has shown continuing growth of a vast private arsenal of weapons in the United States. The modern era of gun control begins with the 1911 New York State law requiring a license to possess a pistol.
The Sullivan law won approval from lawmakers as a way to stem urban crime. This law prevents people from carrying a firearm. This is the beginning of gun control. “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants;they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides,for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man may. ”-Thomas JeffersonThe National Riffle Association or NRA the founding father’s words such as these to help back their anti-gun control speeches.
Much of the debate on gun control centers around interpretation of the Second Amendment and weather it protects collective rights of gun ownership or individual rights. Both sides argue that historical information regarding the founding fathers’ feelings and beliefs on the subject, and the compromise language they reached supports interpretation of the Amendment. However, review of the language itself seems to indicate that the arms specified were intended to kept as part of a “well regulated militia” (bill of rights, sec aned). Since the Amendment has the sort of qualifying language that is not present in the wording of the other individual Amendments. The founding fathers words used words specifying that arms be kept for self-defense and other purposes, but opted not to use such language.
At the time when the second Amendment was drafted guns were much more of an integral and necessary part of everyday life than they are today. The Amendment does not prohibit the government from restricting or regulating that right for our collective safety. “ I feel that anything that can be instated to prevent people from being hurt by gun violence should be done” (Levin). Some opponents to gun control laws such as the NRA, which believes that the restriction of gun access to an individual is a direct violation to people’s civil liberties.
They believe that more gun education is needed not more gun control. The NRA has acted against almost every gun control measure proposed or passed in U. S. history. Many people see the NRA as a law less underling which would rather protect the peoples right to bear arms then the safety of the people the right was written for.
There are then others, which believe that there is a need for tougher gun control laws. These people believe that that the government is not tough enough on gun owners and gun manufactures. The era bringing with it, a new age of violence with guns being the chose weapon. We need to do whatever we can to keep our school safe from the ravages of school violence (Levin). In politics this struggle in gun control can be summed up in one sentence, Liberals blame guns; conservatives blamed the cultural disintegration of society (Sirs). One the other hand why blame the guns.
Why don’t we blame the wretched little monsters that murder their classmate out side at recess because of the dispute they had yesterday at lunch. Don’t blame a culture where many parents spend more time watching TV than with their kids, blame the guns. Let us not blame an entertainment industry, which rarely makes a movie without massive violent scenes it is so much easier to blame guns. Blaming guns is easy. Unlike young children, it is difficult to feel much sympathy for a metallic object. For those who do not believe in individual responsibility and are loath to acknowledge the existence of evil, guns are an easy target.
America may indeed be obsessed with guns, but much of what passes as fact simply are not true. The news media’s focus on only tragic outcomes, while ignoring tragic events that were avoided, may be responsible for some misimpressions. Horrific events like the 1998 shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas receive massive news coverage, as they should, but the 2. 5 million (Guns and gun Violence) times a year there are people that use guns defensively that are never discussed. These include shooting which are stopped before they happen and mothers saving their kids from being kidnapped.
Maybe not only is there a need for new gun control acts to be admitted but also there is a need to look deep down to the route of the violence. Society needs to look deep down to what causes the problem. Gun control is becoming more of a social issue reflecting on society today. Instead of restricting guns to people, we should work in accordance to help prevent tragic events from happening instead of waiting for them to happen. Without looking into this deep well of anger so recluse inside of people, we may never stop a vast problem there is with guns today.
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