Why Making Gun Control Laws Stricter Simply Won't Work
The second amendment of our constitution states that “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” I believe that self defense is a basic right. I also believe that if firearms of any kind are taken away from citizens, we would be left susceptible to control by the government.
Firearms have been used in the defense of countless citizens. According to John Lott, a gun rights activist “for each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3%, rape by 2% and robberies by over 2%”. Women need to be able to defend themselves if they are being attacked. Also according to John Lott when a woman is carrying a concealed handgun it reduces the murder rate three to four times more than a man carrying a concealed handgun. According to the U.S department of Justice when a woman is armed with a gun only 3% of rape attacks are committed. In 1966, the city of Orlando responded to numerous sexual assault cases by offering classes for women to learn how to handle a gun, and the amount of rapes declined by nearly 90% the next year. According to The Journal of Criminal Law there have been 2,500,000 annual self-defense cases involving firearms; 192,500 of which were women who defended themselves against sexual abuse. According to the NRA (National Rifle Association) people need their guns for self defense as guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes per year or 6,849 per day. Do you really want to take away a gun from a woman who is trying to defend herself?
For the people who want to make our gun laws stricter, this will not help. According to Thomas Sowell who is a political philosopher, in the 20th century when the murder rate decreased, gun ownership doubled, and in London in 1954, there were only a dozen armed robberies. By the 1990s after decades of tightening gun ownership restrictions, there were more than a hundred times as many armed robberies. According to The Atlantic, different countries like Russia, Brazil and Mexico all have stricter gun control laws then the United States and they have less gun related murders. Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the US but in 2016 they had 4,331 shootings and 762 homicides.
According to the Washington Post, the current age of a mass public shooter is between 20 and 49 which shows that increasing the minimum age for purchasing firearms would not target the main perpetrators. John R. Lott says “that states with the largest increase in gun ownership also have the largest drops in violent crimes”. This just goes to show that making gun laws stricter just simply will not work.
The definition of a criminal is someone who does not follow the law. According to the National Institute of Justice 5 out of 6 gun-possession felons obtained guns from the secondary market and by theft.
People also want to ban “assault weapons” but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, criminals are five more times likely to carry single shot handguns then they are to carry an “assault weapon.” A ban on “assault weapons” will not save very many lives; six out of every ten mass public shootings are carried out by just handguns. According to Mark Gius a November 26, 2013 study found that between 1980 and 2009 “assault weapon” bans did not affect the murder rates at the state level. There are millions of firearms in the hands of civilians and they are used for many different things such as hunting games, sports games such as “three gunshots” and self defense. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics only 6% of criminals use “assault weapons” and fewer than 2.5% of criminals use these firearms as weapons. Very few criminals or mass shooters have used “high-capacity magazines” and in some of the biggest mass shootings in U.S history the criminal used low capacity weapons. According to the FBI in only 3% of firearm homicides did the criminal use rifles of any kind. A Review of mass shootings from 1982 through 2012 found that 66% of the weapons that the criminal used were handguns and 14% were “assault weapons”.
Mass shooters want to go to areas where the people don’t have anything to protect themselves and are vulnerable, places like the Colorado movie theater, the Charleston church or Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida. Criminals are also 87% less likely to go to areas where people are armed and not vulnerable. According to Fox News 98% of mass shooting attacks happen in areas where guns are banned. I believe that if we have someone that is on school campus’s armed, and properly trained it will affect the the safety of the students in a very positive way.
People are the problem, not guns, including all the different people that are trying to push gun control laws. When there is a drunk driving accident we blame the driver, when there is a bombing we blame the bomber, when there is a shooting we blame the gun. These people are either in defiance or blindness of the facts.
