Kelly O’Halloran
Professor Said
Disc 1312
7 October 2014
Analysis Paper 2
People Kill People Turning on the TV to a new channel and seeing another headline about a school shooting or other gun violence is devastating no matter your view on gun control. This has sparked the discussion and debates about gun control across the nation. People’s immediate reaction is to suggest more rules and regulations about who can own a gun and how they can purchase a gun, but this is not the solution. Gun control will never be tightened. Restricting citizen’s right to own guns is counterproductive and will not have positive results. By being born in the United States of America or gaining United States citizenship you have the inherent right to bare arms …show more content…
Most civilians that own guns use them for self-defense and recreational use and never to commit crimes. Many civilians do not trust the police to respond fast enough to stop an attack, so they carry their own gun. Civilians have helped stop crimes across the country, by having a gun. Citizens actually kill more criminals than police do. Newsweek reported “American citizens using guns in self-defense during 2003 shot and killed two and one-half times as many criminals as police did, and with fewer than one-fifth as many incidents as police where an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal” (Bell). These facts show that citizens can respond faster to crimes than police can. Civilians can keep fellow citizens safer than the police can. An example of a civilian stopping a school shooting in 1997, Luke Woodham, a high school student, stabbed his mother to death then he proceeded to drive to his high school, where he shot and killed two more people. As Luke got back into his car to drive to a nearby junior high “to continue his killings, Joel Myrick, the assistant principal, ran to his truck and grabbed his pistol, aimed it at Woodham and made him surrender” (Bennett). The vice principal was able to save lives and stop the shooting before police even arrived at the scene. If the assistant principal did not have the pistol to make the boy surrender, the boy would …show more content…
A reason anti-gun advocates think that guns should be more restricted in the United States is because criminals are getting their hands on guns and using them for evil. But in most states in order to purchase a gun, the store has to go through an extensive background check. Rarely are the guns bought from licensed guns stores used by their rightful owner to commit a crime. In the Los Angeles Times, Lynn Smith wrote a reliable unbiased article about gun control from different mother’s perspectives. She interviewed a woman who owns a gun store that said, “The crime guns that officials have traced to her store have almost always been stolen from the original owners” (Smith). Therefore tightening gun control laws would not solve this problem because criminals either steal their guns from law-abiding citizens or buy them on the Black Market. If few people in the United States had the clearance to buy a gun, then the criminals would be the only armed citizens and could commit more mass shootings and violent crimes. Therefore, gun control laws should stay the same and not be made any tighter or harder for law-abiding citizens to get a
Professor Said
Disc 1312
7 October 2014
Analysis Paper 2
People Kill People Turning on the TV to a new channel and seeing another headline about a school shooting or other gun violence is devastating no matter your view on gun control. This has sparked the discussion and debates about gun control across the nation. People’s immediate reaction is to suggest more rules and regulations about who can own a gun and how they can purchase a gun, but this is not the solution. Gun control will never be tightened. Restricting citizen’s right to own guns is counterproductive and will not have positive results. By being born in the United States of America or gaining United States citizenship you have the inherent right to bare arms …show more content…
Most civilians that own guns use them for self-defense and recreational use and never to commit crimes. Many civilians do not trust the police to respond fast enough to stop an attack, so they carry their own gun. Civilians have helped stop crimes across the country, by having a gun. Citizens actually kill more criminals than police do. Newsweek reported “American citizens using guns in self-defense during 2003 shot and killed two and one-half times as many criminals as police did, and with fewer than one-fifth as many incidents as police where an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal” (Bell). These facts show that citizens can respond faster to crimes than police can. Civilians can keep fellow citizens safer than the police can. An example of a civilian stopping a school shooting in 1997, Luke Woodham, a high school student, stabbed his mother to death then he proceeded to drive to his high school, where he shot and killed two more people. As Luke got back into his car to drive to a nearby junior high “to continue his killings, Joel Myrick, the assistant principal, ran to his truck and grabbed his pistol, aimed it at Woodham and made him surrender” (Bennett). The vice principal was able to save lives and stop the shooting before police even arrived at the scene. If the assistant principal did not have the pistol to make the boy surrender, the boy would …show more content…
A reason anti-gun advocates think that guns should be more restricted in the United States is because criminals are getting their hands on guns and using them for evil. But in most states in order to purchase a gun, the store has to go through an extensive background check. Rarely are the guns bought from licensed guns stores used by their rightful owner to commit a crime. In the Los Angeles Times, Lynn Smith wrote a reliable unbiased article about gun control from different mother’s perspectives. She interviewed a woman who owns a gun store that said, “The crime guns that officials have traced to her store have almost always been stolen from the original owners” (Smith). Therefore tightening gun control laws would not solve this problem because criminals either steal their guns from law-abiding citizens or buy them on the Black Market. If few people in the United States had the clearance to buy a gun, then the criminals would be the only armed citizens and could commit more mass shootings and violent crimes. Therefore, gun control laws should stay the same and not be made any tighter or harder for law-abiding citizens to get a