Why Gun Control Laws Should be Scrapped
Introduction
Columbine High School, Westroads Mall in Omaha, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, and Lane Bryant in Tinley Park are places that have more than one thing in common. These places are sites where numerous victims have fallen prey to vicious gunmen who shot them to their untimely demise. Surprisingly, all these places are gun free zones.
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Although there are laws that prohibit carrying guns, the gunmen in these situations obviously did not abide by the rules. Yet, it is the unsuspecting citizens who were killed, injured, or mentally scarred by these law-breaking gunmen and they were left so defenseless.
While some people believe that gun control will lower the rate of violent crimes, taking away the constitutional right to bear arms infringes on our rights and poses a threat to self defense.
How many lives at Columbine, Westroads Mall, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, and Lane Bryant could have been saved if the law abiding victims and bystanders had been allowed to carry a gun for self defense?
Thus, outlawing guns is not the key to the spate of violence because the root cause of all of these events is that only outlaws have guns, while law-abiding and responsible people are left at their mercy because it is difficult for ordinary citizens to own a gun to defend themselves and their loved ones.
Although the gun control debate has become convoluted because it the arguments revolved on statements like people can sometimes be irresponsible and they might abuse the use of these guns, putting all the blame to gun ownership as the cause of all crimes and violence is irrational.
States and countries that have strict laws on gun ownership have not yet proven that these can be effective in reducing crime rates. In fact, there are even convincing data that show states and countries that have stringent gun control laws have more crimes and violence occurring than those countries that freely allows their citizens to own guns.
In this paper, we will focus on facts that prove that gun laws are ineffective and we will try to counteract on the arguments raised by proponents of gun control. By trying to see how they all miss the point why gun ownership should be supported by all law-abiding citizens, we will be able to suggest the uselessness of these gun control laws and the need of these laws to be scrapped.
Can Gun Control Laws Reduce Crime Rates?
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Gun control laws are established in order to deter crime and violence. In the United States alone, latest data show that there are almost 270 million firearms and 40 percent of this is in civilian ownership (See Figure 1). With a rough estimate of 20,000 gun control laws in effect at the federal, state, and local level, these statistics show that stricter gun laws cannot be effective in reducing gun ownership.
Figure 1. Recent gun ownership survey of countries (from Economist.com, 30 April 2008)
Also, although U.S. has the most guns in all countries, South Africa and Colombia has higher gun murder rates than the United States. This goes to mean that it does not follow that reducing gun ownership can easily reduce gun-induced crime rates.
Previous studies that have been done in the 1970s and 1980s have similarly found no evidence of gun control laws being able to deter violent crime rates. With the use of scientific analysis and comparative data, Murray (1975) suggested that “gun control laws have no significant effect on rates of violence beyond what can be attributed to background social conditions.”
Furthermore, he found out that “controlling for basic social factors, the data show that gun laws have no significant effect on access to firearms” and “differing rates of access to handguns had no significant effect on violent acts.” Wright and his colleagues (1983) also agreed that there is little empirical evidence linking gun ownership is directly linked with changes in criminality at the individual level.
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