I believe that citizens have the
right to bear arms. I believe that I ought to have arms so that I can serve
my self’s and self-interest. I did not always
think this way. This opinion was formed in
my own life experiences and witnessing the world around me. It is a reality that there will be evil in some
people’s hearts and they will act out that evil on others. The proof of this “evil” is recorded
throughout our human history.
There are several arguments for the
right to bear arms. These arguments
include that guns are a constitutionally guaranteed freedom (the 2nd
Amendment of the U.S. constitution), used to hunt animals (a form of self-subsistence),
and used for self-defense. The last of
those statements is what is most important to me.
One may ask, “Why do you need a
means to ‘defend’ yourself when we already have laws, law enforcement, or
government bodies that seek to protect our interests?” I would argue that you could not absolutely
depend on another person/entity to guarantee your freedom and/or safety. The government protecting you is not a sure
thing. After all, tyranny has happened
in our country and other countries and it is foolish to believe that it could never happen again.
I have witnessed the oppression of vulnerable
people firsthand during my combat deployments. It was at this time did I realize that bad
guys with guns could only be stopped by good guys with guns. To relate this to the context of the individual,
I will recall a time when I was traveling cross-country with my pregnant wife (for
a military PCS move). We had rested one
late night at an interstate rest area. A
group of three men approached me demanding money. I informed them that I was concealed carrying
a gun and it de-escalated the situation (albeit, I recognize that the opposite could
have happened as well).
One may ask, “What if we eradicate
all guns, wouldn’t that end gun violence?”
Lafollette (2007) wrote that this “scale” of gun control slides from ‘no
abolition’, ‘moderate abolition’, and ‘absolute abolition’. I would argue these two parts. First, it is not possible to eliminate all
guns; someone, somewhere will manufacture guns and those that want guns will
find a way to get them. (Consider the
American prohibition of alcohol or the continuing ‘war on drugs’.) Second, I would agree that gun control could
possibly reduce or end gun violence
but it does not reduce violence. Guns or
not, evil humans will commit harm on another.
Interestingly, as guns have steadily increased in America by about 10
million per year, gun homicide has decreased 49% since 1993 (Cleveland State
University, 2013; Chon, et al., 2013).
LaFollette (2007) wrote arguments to
counter my claim – although guns themselves do not cause harm, they were
invented specifically to cause harm and thus are inherently dangerous to
society. He further noted empirical
evidence showing a positive correlation (to a .01 level) between gun prevalence
and an overall murder rate. The question
remained: Does eliminating guns eliminate murder?
The U.S. FBI reported that for 2015,
there were an estimated 1,197,704 violent crimes (U.S. Department of Justice, 2015) . Of those violent crimes, “Firearms were used
in 71.5 percent of the nation’s murders, 40.8 percent of robberies, and 24.2
percent of aggravated assaults” (U.S. Department of Justice, 2015) . While these statistics show that guns are
used in violent crime, it also shows they are not used in all violent crime. Jacob Davidson, director of Center for
Research in Crime and Justice at New York University School of Law, and a
professor of constitutional law noted that two-thirds of gun deaths are
suicide.
Furthermore, along the lines above,
one may make claim that increased gun control through legislation (i.e. even
more stringent background checks, limiting the types of firearms, etc.) would
reduce the ability for bad people to get guns or those guns that cause mass
deaths. Here is my issue with this
statement – it assumes that everyone follows the rule of law, through either
personal morals or consequences. I hold
the belief that laws only work on those who are willing to abide by them.
I concede that guns are
dangerous. I concede that people will
use guns to commit violent crimes. I
concede that a significant portion of murders are committed with guns. Yet, I still believe that gun themselves are
not the root problem with violence. If we are to find solutions to reduce gun
violence, then we must first consider what is causing people to commit violent
crimes. It is not merely a “gun problem”,
it a morality problem.
References
Cleveland
State University. (2013, April 1). Retrieved from Engaged Scholarship@CSU:
http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1679&context=urban_facpub
Cohn, D., Taylor,
P., Lopez, M., Gallagher, C., Parker, K., & Maass, K. (2013, May).
Retrieved from www.pewsocialtrends.org:
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/
Davidson, J.
(2015, 01 December). Retrieved from Time:
http://time.com/4100408/a-criminologists-case-against-gun-control/
LaFollette, H.
(2007). The practice of ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
U.S. Department of
Justice. (2015). Retrieved from ucr.fbi.gov:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/home
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