Gun Control

10 Pages 2394 Words

Gun Control

America’s Right to Be Armed The debate over gun control has developed into a very complicated issue. Several different groups have suggested limiting the use of guns and others have proposed to supporting free gun use. On one side, people who use some form of gun control imply that guns are responsible for too many deaths and injuries in the United States. They propose that laws be passed to make guns more difficult or impossible for ordinary citizens to own. On the other side are those people who oppose all or nearly all forms of gun control. This paper will propose three different issues to argue against the element of gun control. First, we need to control the people who use the guns, not the guns themselves. Second, that gun ownership is a constitutional right granted by the United States Constitution. Finally, the fact in the decrease in crime. One of the major arguments against the theory that gun control would save lives is that although two-thirds of all homicides are committed with firearms, firearm controls would have no effect on homicide, because “human nature is what it is” (Nisbet 170). Even if guns disappeared from the crime scene, criminals would replace them with knives, clubs, axes, or even fists. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. One statement favoring this position, made by James D. Wright, says: Even if we were somehow able to remove all firearms from civilian possession, it is not at all clear that a substantial reduction in interpersonal violence would follow. Certainly the violence that results from hard-core and predatory criminality would not abate by very much. Even the most ardent proponents of stricter gun laws no longer expect such laws to solve the hard-core crime problem, or even to make much of a dent in it. There is also reason to doubt whether the “soft-core” violence, the so-called crimes of passion, would decline by very much. Stated simply, these crimes occur be...