Same Thing Error Occuring Essay, Research Paper
gun control
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 populace was instrumental in fighting
off oppression, and they made the right to keep and bear arms a
constitutionally guaranteed right. Over the years, some of the reasons for
owning firearms have changed. As our country grew into a strong nation, we
expanded westward, exploring the wilderness, and building new towns on the
frontier. Typically, these new towns were far away from the centers of
civilization, and the only law they had was dispensed by townsfolk through
the barrel of a gun. Crime existed, but could be minimized when the
townspeople fought back against the criminals. Eventually, these organized
townspeople developed police forces as their towns grew in size. Fewer
people carried their firearms on the street, but the firearms were always there,
ready to be used in self-defense. It was after the Civil War that the first
gun-control advocates came into existence. These were southern leaders who
were afraid that the newly freed black slaves would assert their newfound
political rights, and these leaders wanted to make it easier to oppress the free
blacks. This oppression was accomplished by passing laws making it illegal in
many places for black people to own firearms. With that effort, they assured
themselves that the black population would be subject to their control, and
would not have the ability to fight back. At the same time, the people who
were most intent on denying black people their basic rights walked around
with their firearms, making it impossible to resist their efforts. An unarmed
man stands little chance against an armed one, and these armed men saw
their plans work completely. It was a full century before the civil rights
activists of the 1960s were able to restore the constitutional freedoms that
blacks in this country were granted in the 1860s. Today?s gun control
activists are a slightly different breed. They claim that gun violence in this
country has gotten to a point where something must be done to stop it. They
would like to see criminals disarmed, and they want the random violence to
stop. I agree with their sentiments. However, they are going about it in the
wrong way. While claiming that they want to take guns out of the hands of
criminals, they work to pass legislation that would take the guns out of the
hands of law-abiding citizens instead. For this reason the efforts at gun
control do not address the real problem of crime. The simple definition of a
criminal is someone who does not obey the law. Therefore, if we pass laws
restricting ownership of firearms, which category of people does it affect?
The simple answer is that gun control laws affect law-abiding citizens only. By
their very nature, the criminals will continue to violate these new laws, they
will continue to carry their firearms, and they will find their efforts at crime
much easier when they know that their victims will be unarmed. The situation
is similar to that of the disarmed blacks a century ago. Innocent people are
turned into victims when new laws make it impossible for them to fight back.
An unarmed man stands little chance against an armed one. An interesting
recent development has been the backlash against the gun-control advocates.
In many states, including Florida and Texas, citizens have stated that they
want to preserve their right to carry firearms for self-defense. Since the late
1980s, Florida has been issuing concealed weapons permits to law-abiding
citizens, and these citizens have been carrying their firearms to defend
themselves from rampant crime. The result is that the incidence of violent
crime has actually dropped in contrast to the national average. Previously,
Florida had been leading the nation in this category, and the citizens of that
state have welcomed the change. Gun control advocates tried to claim that
there would be bloodshed in the streets when these citizens were given the
right to carry. They tried to claim that the cities of Florida would become like
Dodge City with shoot outs on every street corner. These gun control
advocates were wrong. Over 200,000 concealed carry permits have been
issued so far, with only 36 of these permits revoked for improper use of a
firearm. This statistic is easy to understand. It is the law-abiding citizens who
are going through the process of getting concealed carry permits so that they
may legally carry a firearm. Th e people who go through this legal process do
not want to break the law, and they do not intend to break the law. The
people who do intend to break the law will carry their guns whether or not
the law allows them to do so. Criminals will always find ways to get guns. In
this country we have criminalized the use, possession, sale, and transportation
of many kinds of narcotics, but it?s still easy for someone to take a ride and
purchase the drugs of their choice at street corner vendors. Firearms and
ammunition would be just as easy for these black-market entrepreneurs to
deliver to their customers. Today, criminals often carry illegal weapons,
including sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, and homemade zip-guns, clearly
showing their disregard for the current laws which make these items illegal.
And when they are caught, the courts regularly dismiss these lesser weapons
charges when prosecuting for the more serious charges that are being
committed with the weapons. The gun control advocates have argued their
case by demonizing the gun itself, rather than addressing the people who
commit violent crimes. This is the main fallacy in their argument. They slyly
attempt to claim that possession of a gun turns average citizens into
bloodthirsty lunatics. This theory falls apart under close scrutiny. If legal
possession of a firearm caused this sort of attitude, then why are crime rates
highest in areas such as Washington, D.C. and New York City which have
strict gun control laws? Simply because of the free law that allow any body
can get a gun. The most recent efforts of the gun control lobby has been to
claim that certain types of guns and ammunition are inherently evil. They
assign emotional catch phrases such as “assault weapons” and “cop killer
bullets” to broad categories of firearms and ammunition in the hopes that
people will believe that some guns have an evil nature. Most people who are
unfamiliar with firearms do not fully understand what these phrases mean, and
they accept the terms being used without question. What people do not often
understand is that the term “assault weapon” has been defined to include all
semi- automatic rifles, and “cop killer” has been defined to include any bullet
that can penetrate type two body armor. It comes as a surprise to most
people that a large number of simple hunting rifles can do both. Does
ownership of one of these weapons cause people to become mass
murderers? It does not, and we must not fall into the trap of blaming the
sword for the hand that wields it. So I?ve shown that the act of making it
illegal to own firearms does little to prevent criminals from getting guns. These
laws only restrict people who respect the law itself, the people who would
only use firearms for legal purposes anyway. And when we give people the
right to defend themselves, we find that criminals start looking for other
victims out of fear that they will become the victims themselves. We must
work to reduce crime in the world, but we should look at the problem
realistically, and develop plans that would be effective. It is obvious that gun
control laws are neither realistic, nor effective in reducing crime. Therefore,
we must direct our efforts toward controlling crime, not controlling legal
ownership of firearms.
.