The Failure Of Gun Control Laws Essay

, Research Paper

The Failure of Gun Control Laws Americans are faced with an ever-growing problem of violence. Our streets have become a battleground where the elderly arebeaten for their social security checks, where terrified women are viciously attacked and raped, where teen-age gangsters shoot itout for a patch of turf to sell their illegal drugs, and where innocent children are caught daily in the crossfire of drive-by shootings.We cannot ignore the damage that these criminals are doing to our society, and we must take actions to stop these horrors.However, the effort by some misguided individuals to eliminate the legal ownership of firearms does not address the real problemat hand, and simply disarms the innocent law-abiding citizens who are most in need of a form of self-defense. To fully understand the reasons behind the gun control efforts, we must look at the history of our country, and the role firearmshave played in it. The second amendment to the Constitution of the United States makes firearm ownership legal in this country.There were good reasons for this freedom, reasons which persist today. Firearms in the new world were used initially for hunting,and occasionally for self-defense. However, when the colonists felt that the burden of British oppression was too much for themto bear, they picked up their personal firearms and went to war. Standing against the British armies, these rebels found themselvesopposed by the greatest military force in the world at that time. The 18th century witnessed the height of the British Empire, butthe rough band of colonial freedom fighters discovered the power of the Minuteman, the average American gun owner. TheseMinutemen, so named because they would pick up their personal guns and jump to the defense of their country on a minute’snotice, served a major part in winning the American Revolution. The founding fathers of this country understood that an armedpopulace was instrumental in fighting off oppression, and they made the right to keep and bear arms a constitutionally guaranteedright. Over the years, some of the reasons for owning firearms have changed. As our country grew into a strong nation, we expandedwestward, exploring the wilderness, and building new towns on the frontier. Typically, these new towns were far away from thecenters of civilization, and the only law they had was dispensed by townsfolk through the barrel of a gun. Crime existed, but couldbe minimized when the townspeople fought back against the criminals. Eventually, these organized townspeople developed policeforces as their towns grew in size. Fewer people carried their firearms on the street, but the firearms were always there, ready tobe used in self-defense. It was after the Civil War that the first gun-control advocates came into existence. These were southern leaders who were afraidthat the newly freed black slaves would assert their newfound political rights, and these leaders wanted to make it easier tooppress the free blacks. This oppression was accomplished by passing laws making it illegal in many places for black people toown firearms. With that effort, they assured themselves that the black population would be subject to their control, and would nothave the ability to fight back. At the same time, the people who were most intent on denying black people their basic rights walkedaround with their firearms, making it impossible to resist their efforts. An unarmed man stands little chance against an armed one,and these armed men saw their plans work completely. It was a full century before the civil rights activists of the 1960s were ableto restore the constitutional freedoms that blacks in this country were granted in the 1860s. Today’s gun control activists are a slightly different breed. They claim that gun violence in this country has gotten to a point wheresomething must be done to stop it. They would like to see criminals disarmed, and they want the random violence to stop. I agreewith their sentiments. However, they are going about it in the wrong way. While claiming that they want to take guns out of thehands of criminals, they work to pass legislation that would take the guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens instead. For thisreason the efforts at gun control do not address the real problem of crime. The simple definition of a criminal is someone who does not obey the law. The simple definition of a law-abiding citizen issomeone who does obey the law. Therefore, if we pass laws restricting ownership of firearms, which category of people does itaffect. The simple answer is that gun control laws affect law-abiding citizens only. By their very nature, the criminals willcontinue to violate these new laws, they will continue to carry their firearms, and they will find their efforts at crime much easier

when they know that their victims will be unarmed. The situation is similar to that of the disarmed blacks a century ago. Innocentpeople are turned into victims when new laws make it impossible for them to fight back. An unarmed man stands little chanceagainst an armed one. An interesting recent development has been the backlash against the gun-control advocates. In many states, including Florida andTexas, citizens have stated that they want to preserve their right to carry firearms for self-defense. Since the late 1980s, Floridahas been issuing concealed weapons permits to law-abiding citizens, and these citizens have been carrying th