FREE ESSAY ON GUN CONTROL

GUN CONTROL

Everyone in the United States of America has an opinion on gun control regardless of their
age, race, or religion. From within those opinions arguments are formed. People are
arguing about gun control at their jobs, at their schools, and sometimes at their places
of worship. On one side of things there are the people that support gun control like
certain politicians or political organizations, teachers, police officers, and so on. On
the other side of things there are the people that are against gun control, people such
as hunters and various types of criminals. When it comes down to sensitive topics like
gun control, there are very few people that do not choose a side. The Second Amendment,
like all Amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights, is not absolute. There are vague
legal boundaries that have been set down thus far which answers some questions, but leave
many more open (Sanders).
Over the past few years there have been many incidents when children bring guns to school
and shoot their fellow classmate(s) and/or teacher(s). The most recent and probably most
tragic happened in 1998 at Colombine High School in Colorado when a group of students
entered the school and murdered several students and a teacher. The first thing that
everyone wondered once they finally heard the news is how the children got the guns?
Supporters of gun control believe that if there were harsher gun laws, a lot of the
school shootings would have never taken place and a lot of lives could have been saved.
In a Brooklyn, New York federal court case brought against gun makers by individual
people, a jury found that 15 of the gun making companies had negligently flooded southern
states with guns, where control laws that are lax, and fed a black market of guns to
states with more stringent controls, like New York (Nesbitt). This proves that if gun
control advocates can win in a place like New York with tougher gun control laws, they
can win in almost any major city, which could also lead to the federal government passing
more gun control laws.
In Georgia, pro-gun forces scored a victory when Governor Roy Barnes, a Democrat endorsed
by the National Rifle Association while campaigning, signed legislation that keeps all
the cities in that state from suing gun manufacturers (Nesbitt). Though it is not right,
it is obvious that street gangs and drug dealers have a say in this argument. Starting
from the bottom of the cycle to the top: if street thugs didn't have guns, how would they
be able to protect themselves and the drugs they sell in order to make a living, who
would they intimidate, what authority would the police and drug enforcement officers have
over criminals, and how would they protect themselves? Without guns the crime rate would
decrease rapidly, crime fighters would be out of business, and many people would be
unemployed. In rural areas and in farming communities there are also some people that
like to hunt. Without a gun they would not be able to hunt, which could have a positive
or negative affect on their community. The positive affect would be that some endangered
species would be given the change to multiply and survive. The negative affect would be
that the hunters would not be able to provide food for his family and a lot of
over-populated and dangerous species would continue to grow.
According to one Web site, every hour in the United States someone under the age of 25
dies from a gunshot wound. There are also nearly 200 million firearms in this country and
a new one is produced every eight seconds (Gun Violence).