Yousef Ali28 January 2018English 101 HYCPersuasive EssayOn January 23rd a 15-year oldstudent at Martial County High School in Benton, Kentucky killed two andinjured twenty-one of his own classmates (Lieu).
This tragic event, along witha multitude of other incidents including those at Las Vegas, Orlando, and SanBernardino, have revitalized the debate over gun control. As politicians ponderon the policy changes needed, it’s clear that only one option that remainsplausible: further restrictions on guns and their accessibility. Through moreelaborate consumer background checks and the implementation of tenaciouslimitations on the variety of guns and ammunitions available, citizens of theUnited States will live in a safer and more secure society. Although background checks can feellike a violation of privacy, they are necessary to screen out who shouldn’t getguns.
For the welfare of society people such as violent convicts, confirmed orsuspected stalkers, and those with certain mental disorders should not haveaccess to any firearms. The Brady Act imposes a background check and a five-daywaiting period on gun purchases from a federal dealer, so mandated backgroundchecks can occur. This scenario gives a lot of power to the dealer, who gets todecide if someone is too dangerous to purchase a weapon. The issue with thesystem is that guns sold at private auctions don’t have nearly as strict lawsapplied. In most states, private auctions don’t require a background check, soanyone who can pay the money can get a gun. Even though they can only sell fourguns per year, there is still leniency to convicts who can spend the requiredfunds to get a gun. The best way to solve this loophole would be to implementlegislation that determines if a person is too dangerous to purchase and keep agun.
Defining the line between the ability to purchase a firearm and the denialof one would standardize, across the United States, the types of citizens whocan legally own such a life-threatening weapon. This proposed legislation wouldcross paths with a fundamental part of American History: The Constitution. The constitution has been thefundamental part of the conservative Republican party, and gun control has beendebated as something that contradicts the second amendment of the constitution.
That conflict of interest has fueled the Republican stance on gun control: thestance that citizens have the right to defend themselves. Many republicanpoliticians believe that gun control is unconstitutional as the secondamendment states that “the right of the people to bear arms shall not beinfringed.” (US Const. amend. II, sec. 1) If the ability to “bear armsshall not be infringed” was truly absolute, citizens living in societytoday would have the right to obtain any weapon no matter their background,age, or mental state. Whether you are republican or not, this means that mostpeople believe in at least partial gun control, but we need additional laws oramendments placed in our society to maintain public safety.
The additional laws and amendmentsthat need to be enacted would be limitations on certain types of guns.Logically, people don’t need semi-automatic or automatic weapons to defendthemselves, and they don’t need hundreds of rounds of ammunition to do soeither. Making that type of firepower and ammunition available would bedevastating and would result in more regular catastrophes such as Las Vegas.Creating legislation that would limit the total ammunition bought to reasonablelevels and only allow certain weapons not suited for mass killings must beimplemented into society for the general welfare of the people.Republicans also say thateliminating guns from society won’t matter because people will continue to harmothers by different methods.
Certainly, people won’t stop hurting others, butthe amount of total murders would decrease if we stop putting guns into thewrong hands. Guns make it easy, fast, and hard to survive from. Putting morecontrol on guns won’t eliminate all murders but decrease which is a success. An important historical example toemphasize this point is Australia’s anniversary of a mass shooting thatoccurred in 1996 which resulted to strict gun control that has led to a massivedecline in gun homicides and gun suicides. To achieve this, they had a nationalgun buy back causing the elimination of 650,000 guns, banning all automatic andsemi-automatic guns, enacted a twenty-eight-day waiting period, and newlicensing qualifications. Although this took hundreds of millions of dollarsand months to finally put it into operation it was well worth it. The outcomewas positive showing that gun related homicide rates decreased 59 percent andgun related suicide rates decreased 65 percent (Calamur). From these statisticsit is clear that more guns mean more violence, and thus less guns mean lessviolence.
This is a successful example of a first world country reducing gunviolence by further restricting guns. The United States of America shouldattempt to replicate what Australia did as this would save the lives of manyinnocent people. Guncontrol is desperately needed in America as many innocent people are beingkilled due to gun violence. To achieve this America needs more restrictivelegislation on background checks, a constraint on number of guns and ammobought, and bans on certain weapons and people. You want to ensure the safetyof our country, so let’s take into consideration the heartbreaking consequencesof unregulated guns.
Work CitedLieu,Amy. “Reporter at Kentucky shooting learned that suspect was her son.” FoxNews, FOX News Network, 27 Jan. 2018, www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/27/reporter-at-kentucky-shooting-learned-that-suspect-was-her-son.html.U.
S. Constitution. Art./Amend. II, Sec.
1.Calamur, Krishnadev. “Australia’s Lessons on Gun Control.
” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 2 Oct. 2017,www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/australia-gun-control/541710/.