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Andrew Armand
Professor McGriff
ENC1102
26 July 2016
Word Count: 2,430
Gun Control or No Guns at All?
In the United States today, there is a major topic of controversy involving firearms. Gun
control is now widely debated every day in the U.S. due to the recent terror attacks and
increasing crime rates that are happening across the country. Many of you may have heard of
these attacks like the recent shooting in Orlando, where a man shot and killed several people in a
gay nightclub or the recent police shooting in Dallas. Due to these events, many people have
begun to demand that the government should do something with gun control and even talks of
banning firearms all together. The news attempts to persuade people into believing that the entire
country wants the government to ban guns. However, Jeffrey Goldberg, a staff writer for The
Atlantic and author of Gun Ownership with Stricter Controls Could Reduce Gun Violence
states, According to a 2011 Gallup poll, 47 percent of American adults keep at least one gun at
home or on their property, and many of these gun owners are absolutists opposed to any
government regulation of firearms. This means that nearly half of Americans own a firearm and
they want the government to have no involvement in the regulation of their firearms and that is
from just one poll. Im sure a large number of people would like to see a ban of guns, but thats
clearly not a possibility with nearly half of Americans owning one and statistics showing that
nearly 300 million guns are in the hands of U.S. citizens(Goldberg). Instead of banning guns, the
government should look at a more realistic approach like increasing testing and requirements for

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gun owners to help keep the second amendment intact, with self-defense, and to reduce this
senseless gun violence that seems to be happening more and more frequently.

As I have said before I think that we should not cause any interference with the Second
Amendment of the United States Constitution. According to the U.S. Constitution, the Second
Amendment states, "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". What this amendment is really
saying is that we, the people of the United States, have the right to carry any type of weapon,
including firearms, and no one, not even the government has the right to take them away from
the great citizens of this amazing country. Also, this would mean that if the government did try to
take away our firearms that they would be taking away, a well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free state. We would have no weapons which would mean we
could not fight for the right to be a free state if any situation ever would occur where we needed
to, such as if a dictatorship overthrew the democracy or we no longer had funding for the
military. The reason that we must not ban guns has nothing to do with gun advocates not wanting
to make the world a safer place, but because it really is impossible to get every single person to
turn in their firearms willingly, which as I stated earlier is over three hundred million guns. Some
people in todays world would say that if you are against banning weapons you are crazy because
guns kill people. On the other hand, I agree with the founding fathers because they had a very
good reason for making this amendment in the Bill of Rights. It was meant to protect the citizens
from any chance that democracy was over thrown and we needed something to fight back to
regain control of our country. Also, guns do not kill people, people kill people.

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Furthermore, The Supreme Court has now definitively held that the Second Amendment
protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to
use that weapon for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home
(Second Amendment- U.S. Constitution- Find Law). So this means the Supreme Court
interprets the Second Amendment saying that you can own a gun as long as you use it lawfully
and you do not have to own one in reference to serving in a militia. That statement about the
need to serve in a militia is inapplicable because we now have a military to protect us from
outside invaders; but I still agree that we need firearms. Even if the courts made guns illegal it
would be impossible for the government to take them all from the people (Goldburg). What he is
saying is that the government has no possible way to collect those firearms from people its just
not going to happen because it cannot. Also, in one of the first court cases about the second
amendment, United States v. Cruikshank, the supreme court ruled that the right to bear arms
was a birthright and that the government nor anyone could take that away (Court Rulings On
Firearms). This means that courts think that the right to bear arms is a right that no one can take
away, I agree with this to a point, however, there are several instances where I think people
should have that right taken away. For example, I think if you commit a felony crime or you have
a mental disability, or even if you have suicidal tendencies, I definitely think that you should
have your right to bear arms revoked. However, I do completely agree that just because a small
number of people misuse their firearms the government has no authority to take our guns away.
Furthermore, I think we need weapons for defending ourselves from the tyranny in this world
which brings me to my next topic.

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Firearms are used nearly every single day and for something other than violence; selfdefense. There is a countless number of people who are not strong enough to defend themselves
against attackers and they are able to use their gun to protect them self. Jeffrey Goldberg states
that, In the 1990s, Gary Kleck and a fellow criminologist, Marc Gertz, began studying the issue
and came to the conclusion that guns were used defensively between 830,000 and 2.45 million
times each year. Also, Trevor Burrus, a researcher at Catos Institute Center for Constitutional
Studies, and writer of Face It: Guns Are Here to Stay, states:
We have been mostly silent about just how many times Americans use guns to lawfully
and successfully defend themselves from crime. At minimum, according to the Justice
Department's own data, this occurs about 110,000 times per year. There are, however,
many reasons to suspect that this data severely under-reports the true number; other
studies have found that Americans use guns defensively between 830,000 and 2.45
million times per year.
This means that even though no one has brought up the topic to the public, many gun owners use
their gun in self-defense. Most people just want to bring up the negative attributes of having
firearms in our society, especially the news who are supposed to be informing citizens about both
sides of the story. They go on further to say that people use their guns for protection a few
hundred thousand times a year, but he says that that may be severely off because research shows
that it could be up to a few million times a year due to unrecorded incidents. This is incredible
because of how many times a firearm was used for a good purpose each year compared to how
many times they are used for bad purposes, a drastically less number, it was probably a life saver
to many people. This goes to show that guns should not be banned because they help people

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deter criminals and can save lives of innocent people from ruthless criminals who would find a
way to get guns even if they were banned.

My next point is that of a real life event where a person actually needs a gun for
protection. According to an anonymous seventeen-year-old young man from Brooklyn in the
article Why I Carry A Gun, he carries a gun because he grew up in a bad neighborhood of
Brooklyn, New York and he tells an event from his personal life about how he was forced to
shoot another man or he would be the one who ended up dead not because he wanted to cause
violence, but because it was a life or death situation. This goes to show that there are places in
our country that have a high crime rate in the case of this boy he was going to be killed by the
other man and if he did not shoot him first he would be the one lying on the ground dead at the
young age of only 17 years old. Without his firearm this young man would have been another
dead due to senseless violence, but he was able to protect himself.

Finally, this brings me to my last key topic of discussion, which is gun violence and how
we can reduce it. There have been many shootings across the country the past few months, from
the shooting at a night club, by the name Pulse, where one single man shot into the crowd of
people there, or the recent police shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge where enraged people
shot and killed several innocent officers after the police had shot African American men a few
weeks earlier. These were just crazy, purely evil acts of violence that need to be prevented.
Jordan Carleo-Evangelist, a staff writer for the Times Union in Albany, New York states that,
Successful strategies for reducing gun violence must be based on new approaches that have
more to do with focusing law enforcement on those who commit crimes than in restricting gun

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ownership. This means that the government has to try something new when it comes to gun
control because obviously taking no action or talks of banning guns are not working. The real
recommendation that he is suggesting is that maybe we increase the law enforcement division of
gun control, such as maybe creating a new agency for just regulating firearms. Even if the
government could ban guns, statistics show that the majority of the people who commit gun
related violence do not have registered guns, so all of the law abiding citizens would turn their
weapons over and have no way to protect themselves from all the criminals who the government
wouldnt even know had guns. The article later goes on to say this, which states, Laws that
restrict law-abiding citizens do little to reduce gun violence (Carlo-Evangelist). This is exactly
what I agree with, because all of these senseless mass shootings have been done by people who
should not have owned any guns in the first place. This is where I have some great plans of
action to reduce the chances of this happening again.

In order to reduce gun violence in this great country, I propose that we have more testing
such as a psychic evaluation before you purchase a firearm, and some sort of microchips to track
down guns that end up in the wrong hands. According to Harold Pollack, the author of What We
Can Do About Gun Violence states, I want to suggest three elements of such an agenda:
controls of military-style weapons, regulations of gun purchases by people underage 25, and
stronger penalties for illegal gun carrying. So basically, what he is saying is that we should have
some restrictions on guns, such as assault rifles with large magazines and fully automatic guns.
Next, he is proposing more regulations on the gun owners under the age of 25 since some of the
recent shootings have been by young men, especially in schools. Finally, he is suggesting harsher
punishments to be enforced by the courts for those who do not obey the gun laws. I take his

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points about the military style weapons and making punishments much worse, on the other hand,
I do not agree with adding regulations to people under the age of 25 because it seems to me like
that would be infringing on the peoples Second Amendment right. Now even though I do not
completely agree with him, I do agree that people are what the real problem is, and I just do not
think that you can single out such a large group without having lots of resistance. Another
opinion of what we can do according to Judith Miller, the author of "Treasure the Second
Amendment, but Ban Assault Rifles" is as she states, The Second Amendment to the US
Constitution gives American citizens the right to own guns, but it does not give them the right to
own assault weapons. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 should be reinstated, banning
the manufacture and sale of certain semi-automatic firearms and magazines. So she believes
that there should be a restriction on assault rifles like there previously was in the past because
she thinks that those type of weapons are what cause gun violence, do to their ability to hold lots
of bullets. A number of people have proposed this law be reinstated, however, I do not think the
gun is the problem, I think that it should be illegal to own large magazines, because as I have
said before people kill people not guns. This goes to further show that we need a balance of gun
control so we do not overstep the Second Amendment.

In the end, after all my research I think that it is in the best interest of our nation to have
moderate gun control, but I definitely do not agree with banning firearms because its just giving
the government too much power over the people. I also think that we need to do much more
research on what will work the best and maybe do some smaller scale experiments. Another
subject we will also need to look at is if the guns are even a problem at all because without
people, guns are useless, maybe we should be looking towards getting people help instead of

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worrying about gun laws at all. Whatever people decide to do we need to do something. Our
country is seeing more and more acts of violence with guns and it needs to stop. To the citizens
of this great country we need to stand together against violence and take a step toward peace by
finding a reasonable method to control guns and the people who have them.

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Work Cited
Anonymous. "Why I Carry a Gun." Things Get Hectic: Teens Write About the Violence That
Surrounds Them. Ed. Philip Kay, Andrea Estepa, and Al Desetta. Youth
Communications. Rpt. in Violence. Ed. Bryan J. Grapes. San Diego:
Greenhaven Press,
2001. Teen Decisions. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 29
July 2016.
Burrus, Trevor. "Face It: Guns Are Here to Stay." New York Daily News 7 Jan. 2013. Rpt. In
Guns and Crime. Ed. Nol Merino. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press,
2015. At
Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 July 2016.
Carleo-Evangelist, Jordan. "Gun Laws Do Not Inhibit Gun Violence." Gun Violence. Ed. Stefan
Kiesbye. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. Contemporary Issues Companion. Rpt.
From
"Guns and Crime: The Great Debate." TimesUnion.com. 2004. Opposing
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"Court Rulings on Firearms." Gun Control: Restricting Rights or Protecting People? Sandra M.
Alters. 2011 ed. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Information Plus Reference Series.
Opposing
Viewpoints in Context. Web. 24 July 2016.
Goldberg, Jeffrey. "Gun Ownership with Stricter Controls Could Reduce Gun Violence." Guns
and Crime. Ed. Nol Merino. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2015. At
Issue.
Rpt. from "The Case for More Guns (and More Gun Control)." Atlantic (Dec.
2012).
Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 July 2016.
Miller, Judith. "Treasure the Second Amendment, but Ban Assault Rifles." www.newsmax.com.
2012.Rpt. in Guns and Crime. Ed. Nol Merino. Farmington Hills, MI:
Greenhaven
Press, 2015. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 July
2016.
Pollack, Harold. "What we can do about gun violence." The American Prospect 27.1 (2016):
104.Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 31 July 2016.
"Second Amendment - U.S. Constitution - FindLaw." Findlaw. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 July 2016.