Gun Control, Why It Won’t Work

Todd Gannon

Period 2

Advanced Composition

Gun control is a very controversial subject now days in politics. My personal view on gun control is that it will never work. I’m am just fore warning you that this paper may be a little bias, but I’ll try to give views from both sides.

Many gun control activists believe that the solution is simple; ban all guns and there won’t be any crimes committed with guns. Obviously this is not the answer but there are people that believe this would work. There are also a lot of people that know this would never work. The main reason is because criminals are not going to care if the crime they are committing is with an illegal weapon or not. They are already committing a crime, what’s one more going to hurt. A majority of crimes committed with guns are committed with illegally bought firearms. If you were to ban guns completely the only people that would not have guns are the laws abiding citizens who want to protect themselves.

A large number of gun control lobbyists say that they want to protect the sport of hunting, which is wonderful; but what about our fundamental right and ability to be able to protect ourselves against others who intend on doing harm. I think that I am safe to say that most people, if ever put in a position where they needed to protect themselves, would, at least, want to be able to match firepower with the aggressor.

The Second 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.

One of the main reasons the second amendment was set up was to keep the government from having more firepower than the common people have. Now I’m not saying that we should be able to have fully automatic weapons and explosive devices like the military has. However, I do believe the government does not need to take away what we have. The reason the second amendment is set up the way it is, is to keep the government from becoming to powerful, or even becoming a dictatorship.

I know that gun control will never work the way it is meant to work, but I also don’t have a lot of other ideas. It doesn’t seem that anyone else really does either. One idea I do have seems kind of extreme at first. It is based on a law in Sweden. In Sweden if you are a male and 21 years of age you are required to own a gun. This policy was established so that all men are able to defend their country against foreign threats. Sweden also has the lowest crime rate in the world. I believe the crime rate is so low because people are afraid to commit a crime against another person because they know they have a gun. Let’s say you’re a criminal and you want to rob some one. Are you going to rob John who owns numerous guns, or are you going to rob Bob who doesn’t know what a gun looks like. It’s a pretty simple decision to make.

It seems as though we are just passing all these laws for the sake of passing laws, so that it at least looks like we are trying. The only thing that is going to stop the crimes are the people themselves. People need to be more understanding towards each other and parents need to take a larger part in their children’s lives.

Word Count: 607