Gun Rights Essay

Andrew Carlisle

Mrs. Elkins

Literature

26 May 2018

Gun Rights

        Have you ever been in a home invasion? How did you protect yourself, or how would you? This is a real concern in families minds across America. When I think of having a future family, I think about how I will protect and keep them safe. Growing up I have never worried about it because I know my parents would protect me. The way they would protect me is with a gun. Today, gun control is a major concern in the news and political campaigns across America. We should keep our gun rights based on: home safety, illegal guns and the second amendment of the constitution.

We can all agree that home safety is a top priority in most American lives, but no matter how hard we try to protect our homes it is not always a realistic fact. According to fbi.gov, nationwide in 2016 there where an estimated 332,198 robberies. According to Gary Kleck, a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University in Tallahassee and author of “Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America” conducted a survey by random phone calls sampling of 4,978 households in all states except Alaska and Hawaii. Results indicating that American civilians use their firearms as often as 2.5 million times every year defending against a confrontation with a criminal, and that handguns alone account for up to 1.9 million defenses per year. In the southern states almost all homes have a firearm in their household to use as self defence in case of a home invasion.

Gun control that is proposed is not saying that all guns should be taken away, but that restrictions should be put on guns. While this does sound like it makes sense and like it might work,  it does not mean it will. Almost all drugs are illegal except for marijuana in a few states, but sit and think about how many people you know who could provide someone with illegal drugs. Hypothetically speaking almost everyone could, well this is the same with guns. Criminals find ways to get drugs just as easily as they could find ways to get illegal guns. According to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) report, there is a significant diversion to the illegal gun market from Federal Firearms License (FFL). The report states that “of the 120,370 crime guns that were traced to purchases from the FFLs then in business, 27.7% of these firearms were seized by law enforcement in a connection with a crime within two years of the original sale. This rapid ‘time to crime’ of a gun purchased from an FFL is a strong indicator that the original seller or buyer may have been engaged in unlawful activity.” No matter if gun restrictions have been risen or not this is only restricting the people that are lawful with their guns and restricting the people that are responsible with their guns. If you keep restricting guns and taking them away then the only ones to have them will be the criminals, then what are you going to use as self defense? Criminals are not affected by gun restrictions, because due to criminal records most can not buy guns legally anyways, but they still find them through black markets and criminal friends. “Let's make guns illegal, that is how we stopped everyone from doing drugs.” It will not work. Taking away the gun rights of law obeying citizens is unfair and is violating our constitutional rights.

According to the second amendment of the United States constitution “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.” I think this says it all. The constitution is what our country was built upon; and it is what our founding fathers had set for us to follow in order to become a better society that the one they came from. Myself being very patriotic just look at my boots, I find it hard to see why someone would want their rights that they are given as a free, American citizen, taken away. These amendments have kept us as a reigning world power for so long and why would anything change now? We have been so fortunate to be founded on such morals and freedoms that we have perfected a functioning society within law. Yes, the United States has been a slump lately but, we are still considered a world power and in most eyes we are still considered as top dog. So, why change something if we are already on top? Do not try to fix something that is not broken. And yes in the past year there has been more school shootings than ever but the majority of the shootings  have been by kids with their parents guns of by someone who have not been raised around guns and has been neglected by society and so they do not have respect for others or the firearm and so they reach the legal age to buy a firearm, and they use it against the ones who have neglected them and the ones who hurt them.