Essay, Research Paper: Gun Control

Everyone in the United States of America has an opinion on gun control regardless of their age, race, or religion. From within those opinions arguments are formed. People are arguing about gun control at their jobs, at their schools, and sometimes at their places of worship. On one side of things there are the people that support gun control like certain politicians or political organizations, teachers, police officers, and so on. On the other side of things there are the people that are against gun control, people such as hunters and various types of criminals. When it comes down to sensitive topics like gun control, there are very few people that do not choose a side. The Second Amendment, like all Amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights, is not absolute. There are vague legal boundaries that have been set down thus far which answers some questions, but leave many more open (Sanders).
Over the past few years there have been many incidents when children bring guns to school and shoot their fellow classmate(s) and/or teacher(s). The most recent and probably most tragic happened in 1998 at Colombine High School in Colorado when a group of students entered the school and murdered several students and a teacher. The first thing that everyone wondered once they finally heard the news is how the children got the guns? Supporters of gun control believe that if there were harsher gun laws, a lot of the school shootings would have never taken place and a lot of lives could have been saved. In a Brooklyn, New York federal court case brought against gun makers by individual people, a jury found that 15 of the gun making companies had negligently flooded southern states with guns, where control laws that are lax, and fed a black market of guns to states with more stringent controls, like New York (Nesbitt). This proves that if gun control advocates can win in a place like New York with tougher gun control laws, they can win in almost any major city, which could also lead to the federal government passing more gun control laws.
In Georgia, pro-gun forces scored a victory when Governor Roy Barnes, a Democrat endorsed by the National Rifle Association while campaigning, signed legislation that keeps all the cities in that state from suing gun manufacturers (Nesbitt). Though it is not right, it is obvious that street gangs and drug dealers have a say in this argument. Starting from the bottom of the cycle to the top: if street thugs didn't have guns, how would they be able to protect themselves and the drugs they sell in order to make a living, who would they intimidate, what authority would the police and drug enforcement officers have over criminals, and how would they protect themselves? Without guns the crime rate would decrease rapidly, crime fighters would be out of business, and many people would be unemployed. In rural areas and in farming communities there are also some people that like to hunt. Without a gun they would not be able to hunt, which could have a positive or negative affect on their community. The positive affect would be that some endangered species would be given the change to multiply and survive. The negative affect would be that the hunters would not be able to provide food for his family and a lot of over-populated and dangerous species would continue to grow.
According to one Web site, every hour in the United States someone under the age of 25 dies from a gunshot wound. There are also nearly 200 million firearms in this country and a new one is produced every eight seconds ("Gun Violence").


Word Count: 616