Gun Control

7 Pages 1643 Words

Gun Control

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 illegal 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 most in need of a form of self-defense.

To fully understand the reasons behind the gun control efforts, we must look at
the history of our country, and the role firearms have played in it. The second
amendment to the Constitution of the United States makes firearm ownership
legal in this country. There were good reasons for this freedom, reasons which
persist today. Firearms in the new world were used initially for hunting, and
occasionally for self-defense. However, when the colonists felt that the burden
of British oppression was too much for them to bear, they picked up their
personal firearms and went to war. Standing against the British armies, these
rebels found themselves opposed by the greatest military force in the world at
that time. The 18th century witnessed the height of the British Empire, but the
rough band of colonial freedom fighters discovered the power of the Minuteman,
the average American gun owner. These Minutemen, so named because they
would pick up their personal guns and jump to the defense of their country on a
minute's notice, served a major part in winning the American Revolution. The
founding fathers of this country understood that an armed p...