Changes to
Current Gun Laws Need to Take Place Now
By: Mikki Dixon
Schools,
movie theaters, office buildings, and gas stations. Increasingly, the news is inundated with mass
shootings and accidental deaths caused by guns.
Gun laws should be tightened and reformed.
It
has become commonplace to turn on the news or to open the newspaper and see that
another mass shooting has taken place in the United States. The motives and excuses are as varied as the
locations. Whether it is students who were being bullied retaliating against their fellow students and teachers, disgruntled workers
who have been fired, random crimes such as the shooting at a movie theater
showing the Dark Knight Rises, or the
belt-way shootings that took place at gas stations in Washington D. C., in 2002,
it is evident that we need to reform the current gun laws.
Opponents
of gun law reformation often assert that it is not guns that kill people, it is
people. Although they are correct, if
there were tighter gun laws to control who can purchase a gun, how long the
wait time is before a purchase can be approved, and allowances made for a
thorough background investigation, we as a responsible society may be able to
limit the number of senseless shootings that take place in the United States
every year.
Opponents
to gun law reformation are also keen to point to the second amendment to the
Constitution. They say it is our
Constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms, but they forget that our
forefathers had enough foresight to allow the Constitution, a living document,
to be changed if and when it became necessary.
It is essential that we recognize the time has come, and Congress needs
to make changes to the current laws because it serves the greater good.
Proponents
of tighter gun laws are not proposing our politicians need to take away the individual
citizen’s right to bear arms; rather, proponents feel our country needs to take
action to prevent more needless deaths.
Edited by Maria Brown.
Not So Fast: Guns Don’t Kill People; People Kill People
By: Barbara Latimer
It is not uncommon when a gun
tragedy occurs to look for someone or something to blame. Too often we end up shifting
the responsibility for these horrific actions from the single person committing
the wrongdoing to gun owners in general. That is the logic that makes the
current gun debates so virulent and the prospect of certain weapons being
banned so divisive. Lost within all the rhetoric is the cognizance that guns
are materially inanimate objects, and without human deliberateness misuse is not
possible. We don’t need changes to gun laws. We need tightened enforcement of
current laws and greater access to mental health services for our citizens. Think about this, each
of the recent attackers had one thing in common: they were known to be emotionally
unbalanced with anti-social tendencies.
Exchanges between proponent and opponent assemblies on the topic of gun rights and gun control do eventually circle back to the language contained within in the Second Amendment, and the intent of said language. However, few debaters reference all 27 words of the Amendment: "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." As state militias have been replaced by national military forces does that preclude citizens from bearing arms? Historically, the Courts have said yes. They assert that the right belongs to the states and not to the persons in the states. That position, it seems, may be due for a makeover as even the President and both parties in Congress acknowledge a majority of Americans favor an individual's right to bear arms.
There are roughly 250 to 300 million guns in circulation in the United States. States have implemented varying degrees of structure around access to and ownership of these guns. In Wyoming, for example, guns and ammunition are easy to obtain with few delays or restrictions. Wyoming is a sparsely populated area in comparison to states with larger urban populations, but geography alone doesn't explain why there were only 21 murders in 2012. It may be as simple as although people owned guns, they didn't solve their problems with them.
Contrast Chicago, Illinois. It is an area subject to very restrictive gun laws, and they post more than 21 murders in any given month. Could it be that the social issues inherent in urban areas propel acts of violence, and the gun restrictions currently in place do little more than inconvenience law abiding citizens? Gun control is obviously not the end all be all solution for curtailing gun violence. If it were, these two examples would prove rather than disprove the theory that gun control curtails violence.
I accept, as fact, that gun violence needs to be decreased. I do not accept, as fact, that moving to ban certain weapons or adding more restrictions will change the situation. Perhaps we would be better served to address why these high profile shootings happened in the first place. Why do some in our society feel so alienated? Why do they want to lash out and harm others? We aren't going to figure this out without increased access to mental health services and earlier intervention. All the gun control in the world cannot close the door on violence unless we first reset the triggers that disallow some people to maintain self control.
Exchanges between proponent and opponent assemblies on the topic of gun rights and gun control do eventually circle back to the language contained within in the Second Amendment, and the intent of said language. However, few debaters reference all 27 words of the Amendment: "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." As state militias have been replaced by national military forces does that preclude citizens from bearing arms? Historically, the Courts have said yes. They assert that the right belongs to the states and not to the persons in the states. That position, it seems, may be due for a makeover as even the President and both parties in Congress acknowledge a majority of Americans favor an individual's right to bear arms.
There are roughly 250 to 300 million guns in circulation in the United States. States have implemented varying degrees of structure around access to and ownership of these guns. In Wyoming, for example, guns and ammunition are easy to obtain with few delays or restrictions. Wyoming is a sparsely populated area in comparison to states with larger urban populations, but geography alone doesn't explain why there were only 21 murders in 2012. It may be as simple as although people owned guns, they didn't solve their problems with them.
Contrast Chicago, Illinois. It is an area subject to very restrictive gun laws, and they post more than 21 murders in any given month. Could it be that the social issues inherent in urban areas propel acts of violence, and the gun restrictions currently in place do little more than inconvenience law abiding citizens? Gun control is obviously not the end all be all solution for curtailing gun violence. If it were, these two examples would prove rather than disprove the theory that gun control curtails violence.
I accept, as fact, that gun violence needs to be decreased. I do not accept, as fact, that moving to ban certain weapons or adding more restrictions will change the situation. Perhaps we would be better served to address why these high profile shootings happened in the first place. Why do some in our society feel so alienated? Why do they want to lash out and harm others? We aren't going to figure this out without increased access to mental health services and earlier intervention. All the gun control in the world cannot close the door on violence unless we first reset the triggers that disallow some people to maintain self control.
Edited by Maria
Brown.
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