Armed Citizen

4 Pages 1006 Words

The Armed Citizen
Gun control is the idea that people's ownership of and access to guns should be limited to law-abiding citizens who fall within three distinct groups: those who need guns in the line of duty like police officers, people who are collectors or members of gun clubs, and people who need guns for protection and safety. Gun control advocates believe that restricting access to guns will reduce gun-related criminal behavior and will prevent gun-related accidents. Gun control advocates have proposed various methods of limiting access to guns, primarily by the implementation of thorough background checks at all public and private gun sales. They also advocate intrusive laws, such as requiring child safety locks, storing guns in safes or strong-boxes and some have even advocated the idea of periodic "surprise" searches of gun owner's homes, in direct violation of the 4th amendment -- to ensure guns are not available to children.
By abolishing legally owned firearms; we would see an increase in crimes, not a decrease. This may bring one or two million additional crimes per year. Certainly there would be fewer deaths by firearms, but this might be outweighed by deaths from beatings, stabbings or other violence. We'd also have to weigh the cost of people terrorized in their own homes, afraid to answer a knock at the door. We may see a decrease in Firearm crime, but we would see a rise in other crimes, such as assaults and rapes, car jacking, home invasions, gang robberies on busses or subways and so on. Criminals would be secure in knowing that few citizens would be able to stop them.
The criminals are beginning to figure out that guns are locked up and many people having alarms on their homes the best way to do the crime was to wait until their victims were home, then alarms were off and they could force their way in to terrorize the victims in their own homes. And many of these incidents involve several criminals ganging up on...