Gun Control: The Right To Bear Arms

Protection and security are both important and reasonable needs. Everyone deserves the right to protect themselves and have a sense of security. However, protection and security are so easily transformed from a defensive mechanism to an offensive one. Weapons are a major key to satisfying one 's need for protection and security. Unfortunately, those weapons can also bring with them the baggage of further problems. The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States grants, "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" (Second Amendment). The right to bear arms, a right granted in the Bill of Rights, has, over time, been restricted …show more content…
The role of guns was much different even prior to the ratification of the Second Amendment. European colonists who settled in America relied on guns as a tool for survival. They used guns to hunt for food and protect themselves from the Native Americans (Gold 33). During the Revolutionary War, guns were used to gain the independence of America. The Civil War signified a great increase in firearm production, and the tools were transformed into deadly weapons. After the Civil War, tension between the North and the South was still strong, and the number of privately owned firearms skyrocketed (Gold 36). The pollution of firearms contributed greatly to their …show more content…
The relationship is difficult to determine, if not impossible. John Lott, an influential writer on the topic of gun violence and gun control, has completed in depth research regarding this relationship. His conclusion is explained in his most famous book, More Guns, Less Crime. Lott concluded that more guns resulted in less crime, guns are used more for self-defense for criminal acts, the majority of mass shootings were located in gun-free zones, guns in the hands of good people can stop mass shooting, and women are safer with guns. For a conservative and pro-gun organizations, Lott 's conclusions were accepted with open arms. However, a 47 page critique was written about More Guns, Less Crime by Tim Lambert, a Computer Scientist at the University of New South Wales (Shooting Down the Gun Lobby 's Favorite). Lambert states that Lott cherry-picked in an effort to support his views. Lott had written that more guns led to less crime, but surveys show that there has never been a clear trend showing an increase in gun ownership. Lambert picked apart Lott 's views, and Lott 's explanations weakened. None of the information within More Guns, Less Crime is correct. Lott had attempted to take the information he wanted from his research to show the results he wanted to see (Shooting Down the Gun Lobby 's