Government’s Ability To Take Away Our Firearms From Us: A Review Of The Second Amendment

Lately, there has been a lot of debate and controversy about gun control. Gun control is arguably one of the most controversial topics in the country. Especially when it comes to gun control compared to gun related crimes. Also according to a Gallup poll, roughly 60 percent of Americans want stricter gun laws (Shea). Anti-gun politicians are constantly pushing for more gun control laws while gun lobbying politicians are constantly battling those very laws from being passed. These new laws not only affect people who oppose firearms, but especially the people who rely on it for protection. There is much controversy surrounding this subject and people can get very passionate over this subject. It is no secret that firearms are very dangerous, but many people believe the solution is to just ban them instead of treating them as the life saving tools that they are. Also many people are misled by politicians and the media on this topic. They are always taught that guns kill people, yet this is not true. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Regardless, there will always be people who oppose firearms and there will always be those who support the second amendment. The second amendment clearly states that citizens of the united states have a right to bear arms to protect themselves and they’re families. While this should be enough to deter people on the left, it doesn’t usually work. But I’ll go one step further as to say that the founding fathers implemented the second amendment so that we the people would be able to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government. Although many people have been harmed by misused firearms, the government should not pass new gun control laws due to the Second Amendment.

The second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States clearly gives the citizens of this country the right to keep and bear firearms. People argue against the second amendment all the time by saying things such as ‘the second amendment was designed for muskets only’ and that ‘the founding fathers weren’t counting on guns to develop the way that they have.’ Guns have come a long way since the time the Constitution was written, however, I believe the founding fathers weren’t worried about the advancement of weaponry. They designed the second amendment so we could take care of ourselves, keep our families safe, and protect ourselves from a tyrannical government. So a lot people tend to stay away from arguing the second amendment because it so clearly states our rights, so people turn to social problems and others in order to continue arguing gun control. They point the finger at firearms to be the reason why so many murders occur in the United States. “It is commonly hypothesized that much criminal violence, especially homicide, occurs simply because the means of lethal violence (firearms) are readily at hand, and thus, that much homicide would not occur were firearms generally less available. There is no persuasive evidence that supports this view” (Kates). There is also proof of this when you look to the UK. They banned firearms yet the murder rates did not drop. People just changed their methods of killing each other, mainly using cars and knives. Unfortunately, in this world there will always be evil, and people will always try to kill one another. This does not change the fact that taking away guns does not drop the rate at which murder occurs.

Guns offer protection that has saved many lives, while new laws are trying to be set in place to make it harder to use a gun. Just because someone owns a gun, doesn’t mean they are going to commit a crime; however, this is not what anti-gun lobbyists want you to believe. Let’s look at a country like Iceland for example. “Gun Policy dot org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people. Also the country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test….”. In this example we are shown that just because a country has access to guns doesn’t mean that that country is necessarily violent. With this said, they do have to undergo a medical examination and a written test, we do not have to do such things to acquire a gun in this county of ours. This learner is open to the idea of having both a medical examination and other tests required before you can purchase a firearm.

Some view firearms as murderous and adverse due to the high rates of gun deaths every year in this country. Politicians are constantly stating that if they were able to implement new gun control laws, they’d be able to reduce the number of gun deaths drastically. Laws requiring firearm identification through ballistic imprinting or microstamping proved to reduce the mortality risk by a great sum. “Federal implementation of all three laws would be projected to reduce the national mortality rate – 10.1 per 100,000 people in 2010 – to 0.16 per 100,000, the study says….” (Boston University Medical Center). Saving innocent American lives is important and one of the sole purposes of government. Another interesting statistic is that “the U.S. homicide rate is 7 times higher than other high-income countries, while the gun-homicide rate is 25 times higher. Also, of importance, the gun homicide rate in the U.S. for ages 15 through 24 was 49 times higher than other high-income countries…”. Proving that the US is one of the most dangerous high-income countries in the world as pertaining to the gun homicide rate.

Taking away guns from law abiding citizens will not keep guns out of the wrong hands, it will only be removing protection of law-abiding citizens. This means it will only give an advantage to the bad guys, or bad government. Also gun violence in our country is not nearly as high as it was a while ago. “Despite the attention to gun violence in recent months, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is markedly lower than it was two decades ago…” (Cohn). Meaning that our country has declined in the area of gun crime rates, we have made great progress without implementing serious gun control policies. Another thing that we should try to keep in consideration is that the United States is very large and there is great difference in areas depending on what part of the country they are from. “There is substantial variation within and across regions and localities in a number of other realms, which complicates any attempt to find a single cause for national trends. Among the variations of interest to researchers are policing techniques, punishment policies, culture, economics and residential segregation…” (Cohn). Our country is very large and there are many differences between all the different regions of our nations. The west coast is very different from the east coast, and both costs are very different from many of the fly over states. So the people and their beliefs will change from region to region.

In conclusion, this leaner has found that there is very little chance that politicians have of being able to take our guns away. They can and will try with all their might to take away our right to bear arms, but they will not prevail in this country. Especially now since we can see examples like Venezuela, a few years ago their government took away the guns of every citizen and they then became a very socialist country and now they are a failed state, and everything is upside down there now. The people are starting to fight back but they can’t because they don’t have any weapons. This learned believes that this country was founded on the belief that big government is bad, or at least it has a much greater potential of being bad, and the people of this country will not simply roll over and hand in their guns to the government and become weak.

References

1. Clark, Andrew. “Why Is Violent Crime so Rare in Iceland?” BBC News, BBC, 16 May 2013, www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22288564.
2. Cohn, D., Taylor, P., Lopez, M. H., Gallagher, C. A., Parker, K., & Maass, K. T (2013, May 7). Gun homicide rate down 49% since 1993 peak; public unaware. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/
3. Ehrenfreund, M. & Goldfarb, Z. A. (2015, Jun. 18). 11 essential facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/18/11-essential-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/
4. Grinshteyn, Erin. Violent Death Rates: The US Compared with Other High-income OECD Countries, 2010 The American Journal of Medicine , Volume 129 , Issue 3 , 266 – 273
5. Kates, D.B. (1983). Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment. Michigan Law Review. Retrieved from http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/57mich.pdf
6. Phillips, A. (3 Dec, 2015). The gun control debate, explained in 5 questions. Retrieved (PUT DATE OF ACCESS HERE) from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/08/how-to-argue-about-gun-control/
7. Shea, Delaney. “Gun Control Proposes Controversial Discussions.” Orange Media Network, 25 Sept. 2018, www.orangemedianetwork.com/daily_barometer/gun-control-proposes-controversial-discussions/article_d4084124-09f7-11e8-a0e2-1386b8386f96.html.
8. Boston University Medical Center. (2016, March 10). Three state laws that 'substantially reduce' gun deaths. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 4, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160310214136.htm