Every year, drunk driving kills roughly 10,00 people, and every year some new law is passed to keep people safe on the road. Politicians are active in imposing stricter fines and harsher punishments to drunk drivers, yet in 2008 alone, guns killed 12,000 people in America, and our government is hesitant to act. We are hesitant to protect our people from the danger of firearms, yet we have no problem imposing fines and punishments for those driving under the influence. Why? Both our huge, horrible problems in our society, and we must address them as such. To say that currently, in America, the gun laws and restrictions are adequate would be wrong. First, let’s look at murders. The FBI reported that 66.9% of killings in 2008 were done with firearms, and their 2010 ‘Crime Clock’ indicates a violent crime will occur every 25.3 seconds. If over half of murders are occurring with firearms, it’s safe to assume that the absence of these weapons would reduce the number of murders. The deaths of 26 children and adults in Newtown earlier this year should’ve been enough to spur change, yet the momentum has worn off, and public opinion is swaying again. Is it really been so easy to forget the 14 killed during the Binghamton shooting? What about the Fort Hood Massacre, where 13 died? And even more recently, the shooting in the Sikh temple? Society should not need another massacre to remind us the importance of our people. If we allow this horrible pattern to continue by ignoring guns until dozens are dead, there is no doubt a tragedy like the Aurora shooting- where 12 people died and 58 were wounded- will repeat. It’s easy to write the problem off as an issue with enforcing the law rather than the laws themselves, but acquiring a gun legally doesn’t mean the recipient won’t hurt people. In the 10 years between 1998 and 2008, and only 1% of background checks caused the requests to be denied. Out of mass shootings, a more than three-quarters of the guns used were obtained legally. If one needs an example, one needs only to look back at the Newtown tragedy. Those guns were legal. Think of Jared Loughner when he opened fire on a crowd of people there to see Rep. Gabby Giffords. The gun he used to kill six people was entirely legal. Clearly, we need to work on making it tougher for ordinary people to buy guns; it’s all too easy for them to fall into the wrong hands. There’s a common myth going around that the harsher laws and practices of states and countries with stricter gun control laws don’t actually have an effect, but this is flat-out wrong. Let’s look at Japan, for instance, where guns are incredibly difficult for citizens to obtain. In 2006, only 2 people were murdered with a firearm! To look for closer examples of stricter gun laws in America, let’s compare Louisiana , one of places with looser laws, and Massachusetts, which has the most gun restrictions of any state in the USA. Between 2007 and 2010, Louisiana had averaged 17.9 gun-related deaths for every 100,000 people, in contrast with Massachusetts’s 3.4 fatalities for every 100,000 people. Clearly, stricter policies led to safer states, so why haven’t we embraced these numbers and introduced better, more efficient restrictions? The Second Amendment clearly says, “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.” Arguing that the Constitution proclaims that anyone can get any type of gun without regulations is a faulty interpretation. While it says that the right will not be infringed upon it does not say that citizens have the right to purchase any type of gun and bring it anywhere. In 1787, Constitution was ratified, but in 1787 weapons were not nearly as advance as they are now; the Founding Fathers were not discussing semi-automatics, and they were not saying that everybody should have access to one. The government’s first and foremost responsibility is the protection of its people.
Right now, a little more than 40% of American households have a gun, with over half of owners pointing to protection, target shooting, and hunting. A survey with Jenkintown found that students considered protection to be a good reason for owning a gun, with hunting coming in in a close second. However, there is a grey area between self-defense and assault, and people don’t always use good judgment. People have the right to protect themselves and should have the means to do it, but giving everyone a gun is not the best way to go about this. Think back to the death of Trayvon Martin. He was an unarmed black 17 year old who was walking home from a 7-11 on a Friday night with a bag of Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea. George Zimmerman, the 28-year-old neighborhood watch coordinator, saw him entering the gated community and thought he looked suspicious, so he called the police. Ignoring the operator, Zimmerman left his vehicle and got into a violent altercation with the teen that ended with Trayvon being shot. The incident sparked national outcry; people were furious about Zimmerman’s choice to go after the child with a gun and said the attack was racially motivated. No matter what you believe happened, it’s evident that if a gun had not been in play, there probably would have been a different conclusion that would not have ended with a dead teenage boy. We won’t ever know exactly what happened that night, but we do know that it was a gun that killed him. We also must keep in mind that even if guns are regulated well, there is always a chance of an accident. There was the 2 year old from Missouri who accidentally killed himself after finding a gun in in his parents’ closet; there was a 5 year old who accidentally killed his younger brother with a gun he discovered in the bedroom; there was a 2 year old girl killed when her 8 year old brother thought he was pulling the trigger on a fake gun. The second largest cause of non-natural deaths for kids is firearms. 43% of families with guns didn’t keep them locked away or with a trigger lock, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Accidental shootings ended the lives of more than 600 people in 2009 alone. Obviously, something needs to be done. It’s important to preserve our rights and follow the Constitution, yet we cannot turn our backs on the poor victims of the misuse of firearms. It’s disgraceful that we only pay attention when there’s a mass shooting or an accidental death; we need to act and resolve the problem before any more blood spills. Right now, our gun laws aren’t working well, as anyone whose been skimming over the headlines these past few months can attest to. We need to fix it; it won’t go away by itself. Harsher restrictions may sound ‘anti-American’ to some, but if you look at the facts it’s to protect Americans from shootings, both murders and accidents. The lives of our people are important, and we can’t allow the gun problem to continue; we need to pass stricter firearm restrictions to make it more difficult for these weapons to be used for harm.
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