Nthan Bradley
English 10 B
March 28 2011.
A Threat to our Sovereignty and Security: A Gun Control Proposal to Keep Guns
Guns are hand-held, projectile-launching devices that fire potentially lethal, metal objects with the intent of killing someone or something. They are tools used for: self-defense, enforcing the law, committing crimes varying from bank robbery to murder to the suppression of entire peoples or races (i.e. Hitler in World War Two). Like any weapon, firearms have been used for great good and grave evil. However, good people need the firearms to protect themselves from evil criminals or governments.
After national tragedies like 9-11, school shootings, and terrorist attacks, our government, equipped with its handy mass-media, has been pushing to ban the right of United States citizens to own guns of any kind; or, at least, severely restrict that right to the point where one might as well as not have them. The problem is any law that restricts the ownership of weapons in any way shape or form beyond that of what is allowed in the United States Constitution and Amendments. Whether it is the forbidding of owning a weapon, or the requirement of having it completely dismantled, banning the public’s right to own and carry firearms provides a large variety of problems to common civilians; in more ways than one.
While the banning of firearms brings the appearance of safety to the general public, it actually proposes major issues which far outweigh anything positive affects that it could bring. Citizens are coaxed into thinking that they are safer from some immediate threats when they are actually opened up to many larger, deadlier threats.
One of the first threats can be perceived through simple common sense. When a government places a prohibition on something, it creates a look-but-don’t-touch reverse psychology that will encourage people (especially adolescents) to do that much tabooed thing.
Gun-restricting laws also “make it virtually impossible for a law-abiding citizen to have a gun ready for immediate self-defense” (Viera 10). As a result, “any kind of rule limiting guns only limits honest people from getting weapons” and leaves guns up for grabs illegally by criminals (qtd. in Drogin 1). Furthermore, “most . . . guns [come] from governments, arms dealers, or crime syndicates” which readily supply the real criminals (Burnett). It could not be more simply put then the master himself (who, I might add, wrote the second amendment): "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one” (Thomas Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria).
This issue leads to laws such as a widely debated gun restriction law in Washington D.C. where a firearm must be unloaded and dismantled if owned. In the popular Supreme Court battle of District of Columbia vs. Heller, a death was speculated at the hands of a knife-murderer. Viera, a Supreme Court judge, wonders “how, except as a club, is an individual supposed to use a handgun that is unloaded . . . to protect himself from immediate harm?” (10). He speculates further to whether the hypothetical death is at the hands of the murderer or the laws that prevented the victim from protecting himself (Viera 10).
The three-pronged problem concludes in this third step: increased crime rates. In modern day Tombstone, Arizona (where the famous 1881 shoot-out occurred), crime rates are “low by big-city standards” (Drogin 1). The fact that a large part of the populace there carries a weapon is known to discourage crime as a result of the fear of being gunned down by fellow citizens. Ben Traywick simply puts it, “If you wanted to commit a crime, would you go to a town where everyone carries a gun?” (qtd. in Drogin 1). Furthermore, (when comparing gun restrictiveness to crime rates) “Mexico has among the strictest gun control policies in the world . . . and violent crime rates are many times higher than the United States” (Burnett).
The final, most important, problem is the endangerment of the public of any government that harshly restricts gun control; because, in a magnitude far greater than any petty and/or other domestic crimes, governments are “the biggest killers of people” (Burnett n.p.). Burnett believes that the citizens of governments are most often the victims (i.e. states under Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini) and that these governments would notably disarm the targeted group before genocide, persecution, or utter extinction (Burnett n.p.). Most importantly, Burnett states in particular that “they [the governments] were aided by laws requiring firearms licensing and registration: in order to seize the guns” (Burnett n.p.). This is a very profound and undeniable truth. Again Thomas Jefferson states the obvious: “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
Even if the will of the government is benign in protecting its citizens, gun control policies often make matter worse; because when countries like Britain started enacting their laws, their violent crime rates statistically increased with every new restriction (Burnett).
The solution to all these problems (which could, often due, lead into disastrous catastrophes) is simple: gun control should by no means ever be restricted by the government; not by age nor weapon type nor criminal record nor anything else the adds or takes away from what is already written in the Second Amendment of the United States of America. In fact, I encourage mandatory ownership of at least a handgun in every household.
Why? Because whence a restriction is placed on owning weapons, it is followed my more and more until the U.S. public has nothing left (almost like modern times); these continued restrictions are often “justified” by twisted logic. If an age limit is set, it encourages the raising of that bar to unreasonable rates by the government. If guns can only be sold to those with “clean” records, it encourages forgeries and other scandals which render possibly innocent fugitives (or just ordinary citizens for that matter) defenseless against a government trying to crush them. If a limit is set on the type of firearm, the government is encouraged to reduce the public citizens to mere pistols (and they just might take that away as well). To top it all off, there should not be any restrictions beyond that of what is already written in the Second Amendment because “that [pre-constitutional] era knew no prohibitions of militiamen's possession of any type of firearms the regular army used;” meaning any citizen (or colonist in that time) could use any type of weapon that existed.
Furthermore, there should be absolutely no gun restrictions, because “In pre-constitutional times, the militia [citizen soldiers] included every able-bodied, adult, free man in every colony; and today, because of the legal emancipation of women, must include them, too” (Viera 14). It is simply our (us human beings) right to protect ourselves from any threat at any time in any way.
Having no legislation against guns may seem ludicrous to the well programmed and traumatized-by-terrorist Americans, but it will actually reduce crime rates. Switzerland, for example, has “guns [that] are deeply rooted within Swiss culture - but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept” (BBC News). They lave gun laws that are very similar to (if not exactly) the gun control solution I have proposed.
Now, whether a government is attempting to do this or not, laws that restrict the ownership and/or usage of guns are a major problem, because these laws certainly provoke corruption or the birth of any dark agenda. EVEN IF one still feels that there is no government threat, it does not erase the facts that crime rates soar when there is restrictions on guns; Switzerland is a prime example. After that, if one still feels that these laws are still not an issue, just know that one can always rationalize anything to a sick, twisted perspective if the truth can not be handled or an agenda has to be sold.
On a final note, “nothing” was wrong in Germany or Italy while their dictators, Hitler and Mussolini, brought them out of financial crisis. Jewish people did not see it coming when, BAM! Out of nowhere, Hitler began genocide on them. Where did he start? He started by making his crimes legal within his own government.
Only the citizens of a country can perform the act of revolutionizing this needed change. If the public (particularly that of the United States) fails to stand up to its oppressors, they will be crushed, indoctrinated, and utterly controlled at the whims of whoever are in power. Thomas Jefferson, one of the great architects of the United States Constitution, believes that “Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” Simply put, this means that you cannot hide yourself in and accept your gilded cage in exchange for your rights and freedoms! Guns are meant for the protection against two enemies: “criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first” (Jefferson). Do you love your family, friends, and nation well enough that you would stand up against a grave evil that is descending upon the United States?
Works Cited:
BBC Staff. “Switzerland and the Gun.” news.bbc.co.uk. British Broadcasting
Corporation. 17 Sept. 2001. Web. 30 March 2011.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1566715.stm >.
Burnett, H. Sterling. "Unwise Gun Treaty Erodes U.S. Sovereignty." McClatchy – Tribune News Service. 21 Aug 2009: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 21 Feb 2011.
Drogin, Bob. "Check My Gun? No Way, Marshal." Los Angeles Times. 23 Jan 2011: .1.
SIRS Researcher. Web. 29 Mar 2011.
Paterson, Tony. "Swiss Stick to Their Guns to Reject Weapons Control." The
Independent. 14 Feb 2011: 26. SIRS Researcher. Web. 21 Feb 2011.
Thomas Jefferson Foundation. "Thomas Jefferson in Popular Culture." Thomas Jefferson
Encyclopedia. 2008. Print.
"Thomas Jefferson." Great-Quotes.com. Gledhill Enterprises, 2011.
24 December. 2011. http://www.great-quotes.com/quote/38721
Viera, Jr., Edwin. "Gun Rights on Trial." New American Vol. 24 No. 18. Sept. 1 2008:
10-15. SIRS Researcher. Web. 21 Feb 2011.
