In her Op-Ed Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of Guns, Molly Ivins expresses her opinion on gun regulation in the United States. She asserts that the Second Amendment is misunderstood (Ivins 324), and infers that this inhibits the improvement of stricter gun laws. Ivins feels that people who are permitted to possess guns should at least be well trained and have a lot of discipline because guns are very powerful. People who want to own guns, she feels, are obsessed with having the power to kill and she proposes to completely ban guns from the citizens of the United States. While it is true that anyone in the possession of a gun should have competent training and respect for the weapon, representatives of the people and the United States as
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During the late 18th and through the 19th century (and even today) in America the word militia is meant as a small army made up of citizens, not necessarily trained in any professional manner. The citizens of the nation are what the founding fathers knew to be necessary for the security of a free state. We today are not able to know Thomas Jefferson’s dearest wishes because he is not alive, but we can read the writings that he, as well as the other founding fathers like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote, and use them to have a clearer picture of their ideals opposed to just using one bit of text and construing it to mean whatever we want. For instance, the Federalist Papers, which were meant to support the Constitution, say on a couple of occasions that citizens should be prepared to stand alongside the army in order to defend others and the freedom of their state. The founding fathers were not against gun ownership in anyway, but instead encouraged every household to own guns for defense. If, theoretically, we could speak with some of the founding fathers today, they would be appalled at the thought of the government strictly or in any way inhibiting legal gun ownership by …show more content…
Criminals already do not obey the law so banning guns from every citizen would only increase violence because criminals who already illegally possess guns would then have the security that no one else will be able to defend themselves against a gunman. Perfect examples of this would be the multiple school shootings and other mass shootings that have taken place in the United States. The Colorado movie theater shooting and the SuccessTech Academy shooting are just two situations. These, as well as many of the other shootings have been in places advertised as “gun-free zones”. If universities or other public places for that matter would instead advertise that people are permitted to have a gun on their person, criminals might think twice before stepping in with violent intent. If the principal or other members of the faculty of a middle school were entrusted with defending their school and had a gun in their offices for emergencies, then the school would not have to wait for the police to arrive and they could defend the school themselves. They would not have to depend on someone else to save them and the children that have been entrusted into their
During the late 18th and through the 19th century (and even today) in America the word militia is meant as a small army made up of citizens, not necessarily trained in any professional manner. The citizens of the nation are what the founding fathers knew to be necessary for the security of a free state. We today are not able to know Thomas Jefferson’s dearest wishes because he is not alive, but we can read the writings that he, as well as the other founding fathers like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote, and use them to have a clearer picture of their ideals opposed to just using one bit of text and construing it to mean whatever we want. For instance, the Federalist Papers, which were meant to support the Constitution, say on a couple of occasions that citizens should be prepared to stand alongside the army in order to defend others and the freedom of their state. The founding fathers were not against gun ownership in anyway, but instead encouraged every household to own guns for defense. If, theoretically, we could speak with some of the founding fathers today, they would be appalled at the thought of the government strictly or in any way inhibiting legal gun ownership by …show more content…
Criminals already do not obey the law so banning guns from every citizen would only increase violence because criminals who already illegally possess guns would then have the security that no one else will be able to defend themselves against a gunman. Perfect examples of this would be the multiple school shootings and other mass shootings that have taken place in the United States. The Colorado movie theater shooting and the SuccessTech Academy shooting are just two situations. These, as well as many of the other shootings have been in places advertised as “gun-free zones”. If universities or other public places for that matter would instead advertise that people are permitted to have a gun on their person, criminals might think twice before stepping in with violent intent. If the principal or other members of the faculty of a middle school were entrusted with defending their school and had a gun in their offices for emergencies, then the school would not have to wait for the police to arrive and they could defend the school themselves. They would not have to depend on someone else to save them and the children that have been entrusted into their