The Pros and Cons of Gun Control Ashley Applegarth Salt Lake Community College

In recent years gun control has become a popular issue. Statements have been made such as Obama wants my guns. Quick stock up before the government takes them away. In this essay I am going to explore the pros and cons of gun control. I am going to provide proof of each by providing facts and not just speculation. Although a certain amount of it is guess work. Is gun control a bad thing? To what extent should the government take control of this issue? Is it really any of their business? Lets find out. The second amendment protects an Americans right to bear arms. However, some people disagree. They think that the government should have more control to protect its people. But does that mean taking away their guns? Or should the government be putting more guns into the hands of ample citizens. Taking a look at the issue lets first define what types of firearms there are. We have three general categories: hand guns, rifles, and shotguns. Also we should note that there are two types of firing styles: semi automatic and fully automatic. Semi automatic weapons fires one bullet at a time and gets the next one ready. Fully automatic fires multiple bullets at one time. This being said are there certain types of guns that should be allowed? I believe so, while I am agree with the second amendment that the American people have the right to bear arms, I believe it should have limitations. Yes I would like a firearm in my house to protect my family or for the guys to go hunting. However, that doesnt mean I need a fully automatic rifle to do so. I believe that anything fully automatic should not be legal. I do however, believe that semi automatic weapons should be allowed.

The statistics I will use are from 2009 and 2010. Did you know that in 2009 there were 307 million people in the United States and 300 million firearms? This being said that doesnt mean that almost every person in the United States had one. In fact only 70 to 80 million adults owned a gun. 40 million people owned a hand gun. It was found from surveys that 42% of the gun ownership was that of a household. Also men held a significantly larger percentage of guns than woman. Now that we have seen what and who is owning those guns lets look at why they owned those guns. 67% of people said they owned their guns to protect themselves from crime. 66% said theirs was for target shooting and 58% for hunting. This means that roughly 67% of Americans feel like they need to protect themselves from criminals. This seems like a valiant cause to me. I know that if the police had not responded yet I would definitely want something to protect myself. Looking at the regular citizen, guns seem less scary, but lets look at them from a criminals prospective. In 2008 about 16,272 murders were committed and 67% of those were committed with guns. That being said. What good would it do to make laws about gun control for criminals? The reason they are criminals is because they broke the law. Some say that this would make it more difficult for them to obtain weapons. However, I do not believe this is the case. They are obviously able to get their hands on guns legally or illegally. I think that ones that it affects are the citizens. Looking around the world at gun control we see that those governments who took the liberty to arm its citizens have seen a drop in crime rates. These rates dropped because citizens were

allowed to protect themselves. A good example of this is in the Netherlands the teachers are armed. This is how they are preventing school gun crimes. If you were a criminal which would you be more deterred by? A sign acknowledging that this is a guns free zone or a visible weapon on each of the teachers? For me knowing that it is a gun free zone just helps me know that I am committing the crime in a pristine locations. I am not going to be met with any amount of resistance until the police arrive giving me plenty of time to do what I came to do. In 1994 a survey was taken. They found that 498,000 times in a year citizens used a gun to prevent a home invasion or robbery. This is an astounding amount. To think that that many people saved themselves by simply showing a firearm tells me that we need to be arming our citizens not taking away their guns. Although the some of the statistics make the case for those against gun control, others back it up quite nicely. After looking at a couple different cities, those including Washington D.C., Chicago. The rates of murders after the gun control laws goes down. On the other hand, looking at those in England and Wales, after the gun control laws went into effect there the rates went up. So which is it? At the moment we have inconclusive data. This is why it is such a hot debate topic. There are facts to back up both sides of the argument. I think that this means we should come up with a happy medium. I definitely agree that they should continue doing background checks on those who purchase firearms. We do not want someone who has a criminal background handling a weapon thats for sure. However, what about those with a mental condition? Do you think that they should be limited when purchasing a firearm? Do you think that we could prevent many of the

incidents we see in the news by doing this? I do. I think that if we were to take some of the privileges away from those that are mentally ill we could prevent many of the tragedies that we have seen lately. I have many family members with mental diseases and the idea of them having a firearm to harm themselves or others is a scary thought. This being said I do not believe that people with mental disease should not be allowed to purchase firearms. This, to me, would be against their second amendment rights. However, I do believe that those with a psychiatric record should have to have a doctors note per say to purchase one. I believe it should be a state appointed official and I believe that the permissions should have to be renewed every year. In conclusion, gun control is a sticky issue. It is hard to know what to do. We need to find a balance so that we can keep the guns out of criminals hands while still allowing our citizens to keep them in their hands. While I do believe certain laws need to be made to prevent these sorts of issue I do not think that an overall ban would do anyone any good. I think it would do more harm than good because the reason criminals are criminals are that they broke the law. Guns are not necessarily the problem, people are. However, we cant control people and we can control guns. I think this gives anti-gun activists a false sense of security. Take away the guns take away the crimes doesnt work. Let us make laws that prevent the wrong people from getting their hands on guns and not preventing all people from purchasing firearms.

Bibiliography
Article: "Gun Ownership and Use in America." By Joseph Carroll. Gallup Poll, November 22, 2005. http://www.gallup.com/poll/20098/gun-ownership-use-america.aspx Report: "2008 Crime in the United States, Murder." Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, September 2009. http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/violent_crime/murder_homicide.html Book: Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. By the Committee to Improve Research and Data on Firearms and the Committee on Law and Justice, National Research Council of the National Academies. Edited by Charles F. Wellford, John V. Pepper, and Carol V. Petrie. National Academies Press, 2005.