OPPOSING PERSPECTIVE

There are many people that would disagree with my argument and think that all guns should be under stricter law. Others would argue that banning these guns are what makes Maryland and the counties inside some of the best in the nation, like Howard County, one of the top counties in the country. One of the strongest arguments that they would have is the less guns and the harder they are to get, also banning a lot of these guns will reduce gun crimes. That would make sense but a lot of the guns being used are stolen, some even smuggled into the US and sold on the black market. Another side of this is that we should have most of our weapons taken away, have stricter rules and safer restrictions because over time humans have proved themselves irresponsible with guns. The basic overview would be the fewer weapons available carry over to fewer guns available for crimes which equal less gun crime itself. This may not be true though, if criminals want to do something they will find a way to do it, they will find a gun on the black market or have it smuggled to them. There are numerous ways to get a stolen or non-registered gun. The problem doesn’t really lye at the people who are buying the guns and registering them in their own name. We need to find a way to stop the smuggling of guns and the black market transfers. Another thing that is expected of Martin O’Malley would be to sign a bill limiting clips to 10 bullets, the argument there is that it is going to be harder for a shooter to unload a lot of ammo. In reality if the shooter wants to shoot sixty people they would have to bring 6 clips instead of two of the 30 bullet clips. It would not make much of a time difference either, changing a clip can be done in less than seconds. So the argument there would be understandable but it doesn’t really do much. Overall I do think that the little steps that the government is taking to make it hard to get a gun is good and they want to help but I also think that there are other ways that they can improve the system and stop shootings and disasters from happening involving gun crimes. 

MISCELLANEOUS

                How should we change the law? Overall I think that the real problem is with handguns. Also the real problem does not fall on the people who are buying the guns. It seems to be the children of the people buying guns, it also seems that guns are being stolen and used in crimes. To filter out the people that could be a risk of owning a gun we should have a better way of evaluating them other than a background check. One thing we could do would be to give people who are interested in buying a gun or are buying a gun, a questionnaire. This questionnaire would ask things like who else lives in your house? How old are they? Do they have any type of mental disability such as schizophrenia or depression or anything else? Then it would ask if they do have these things how are they storing their guns? Do their kids have access? What are you using the gun for? Protection? Sport? And if they answer no give them a gun lock, sell them a gun safe, or some other way of storing the guns safely. Then another thing that I think would improve gun safety would be to have an association of case workers that can look at these questionnaires and follow up with these people randomly whose report seems to be risky or sketchy. They would go to the house and just ask to see if the guns are being stored safely, if the kids seem to be at risk take other precautions. If we were to change the application process to something along these lines where people could possibly receive fines and consequences for not storing their guns properly, children and other people with bad intentions with their guns would have a harder time committing a crime. With this type of system in place, and a better way of applying for a gun, chances of things like the sandy hook elementary school shooting would go down significantly. If you heard the story it was a young guy with violent schizophrenia just picked up a few weapons that were laying around the house, killed his mom, the 20 kids, 6 teachers and himself.  If this system was in place, this is something they could have caught. 

ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE

The topic if gun control brings up a lot of ethical issues. One of them being that guns represent an old custom of the west and freedom, but recent poor judgment by young adults have forced us to create strict laws stopping the availability of guns. Some people would argue that guns should be completely illegal and others think that they there shouldn’t be as many restrictions as there are. The problem with guns being available to teens and young adults is that there are between 500 to a 1000 accidental deaths by a gun every year. There are also purposeful shootings, for example the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting where 20 kids and 6 teachers were killed. The AR-15 was used during this shooting. Maryland has now banned that gun and you are not allowed to own it. I don’t think that the next time someone goes on some sort of rampage and wants to kill people that they are going to not pick up the AR-15 because now it’s illegal in Maryland. There will still be plenty of AR-15s out there because it was one of the best-selling guns in the nation. Plus the people who are buying the guns are not usually the people committing the crime. So the ethical issue lies at the people who buy the guns not being careful with where they keep the guns. They tend to keep them at easy access for children which cause accidental deaths by the gun and school shootings by mentally unstable people. The ethical issue is if we allow people to own guns and more dangerous types that they should be more responsible with how they store them. One ethical problem I do agree with is handguns, most of them should be outlawed especially the high caliber handguns. But the other half of the ethical issues is that they want to ban rifles and semi-automatic weapons in which there is no problem. As I have stated earlier in this essay fewer deaths by rifles have been reported than deaths by hammers. Lastly they want to limit magazines to ten bullets, that does not really do anything to stop criminals, they are just going to get more magazines to bring with them, and it will just annoy sport shooters. Overall I think they are moving toward the right direction with handguns but rifles and semi-automatic weapons don’t need any improvement in law. 

SUPPORTING PERSPECTIVE

My supporting perspective is a story about a friend of mine. Recently a 17 year old girl, Michelle Miller of Rockville High school was murdered. She had a friend Adam Ardnt, 31 years old and was in the military. I believe that he had PTSD because he had many suicidal thoughts. She wanted to go into the army reserves after high school to become a psychotherapist to help people with struggles after a war. But unfortunately it was her caring that got her killed. At 9 o’clock at night she received a text containing suicidal thoughts of Adam, so she went over to his house to try and talk him out of it. He ended up killing her that Sunday night April 7^th 2013 then turning the gun on himself. She was a very popular girl in school and was a 3 year varsity lacrosse player with potential for college. When news got to the school everyone was upset and in disbelief. This is a case in which guns were not the cause of this incident; it’s the person in which they need to be evaluated. I think that is a big thing that when soldier get back from a war need to go through some sort of process and waiting period in order to obtain a gun because there are so many cases in which they kill themselves  or others because of psychological problems. I don’t believe the type of gun had anything to do with it, if it held 2 bullets or 50 it would not have mattered; he did what he wanted to do, like any criminal is going to do. If someone wants to shoot 30 people he will bring three, ten bullet magazines. Limiting things like this is not going to stop the number of people shot or the crimes being committed. People will obtain stolen guns and illegal guns. Now I am not saying that handguns are ok to own, I do think that the strictness of those should be raised. But when it comes to rifles and semi-auto’s, I don’t think that banning the AR-15, the number one best-selling gun of the nation is not going to change anything. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has findings of “60% of gun-related crimes were stolen handguns” (Zawitz 1995). The main highlights of this article were “Although most crime is not committed with guns, most gun crimes are committed with hand guns”(Zawitz 1995). Another main point was “Surveys taken by inmates show that they prefer concealable, large caliber guns and that more juveniles have guns than adults”(Zawitz 1995). This means that the guns laws for handguns need to be improved to the point where it’s next to impossible for a juvenile to get their hands on a handgun. With this kind of change, there would be a huge change is gun related crimes.

CENTRAL ARGUMENT

Gun control is making it harder for people to get guns as well as banning certain types of guns in an effort to reduce crime and mass murders such as recent elementary, and college shootings. I am arguing the point that the reduction in selection of rifle (not handguns), amount of ammo and strictness of application is not going to stop criminals from committing the crimes they do. Rifles and semi-automatic weapons are not the problem, handguns are. Statistics show that in 2011 the reported murders by rifles were 323, the reported murders by hammers were 496, and finally crimes involving handguns were 6220. Obviously the issue is with handguns and not rifles whatsoever. Also statistics show that most crimes are not committed by the people who are buying the guns and registering them. 60% of gun related crimes were stolen handguns. The reason that I think banning certain guns will not help is the example of the sandy hook elementary school shooting. The boy that went and shot the kids in the school was a schizophrenic had been diagnosed with having violent tendencies. The mother was a gun owner with many rifles and semi-automatic weapons, the thing about that was she did not lock them up. She thought it was a good idea to leave them in the open with a violent schizophrenic child in the house. I believe that when the guy decided to kill his mother he chose any weapon on the rack and it was the AR-15, a semi-automatic weapon. He also picked up a couple other weapons and moved on to the school. I don’t think that in his mind he was thinking about what is the most efficient way for me to do this; he was just a disturbed young guy and chose any weapon that would kill. This carries over to the belief of mine that the AR-15 is not the reason for the number of people dying being more or less. The young man could have just as easily picked one of the other numerous guns in the house that would have done the same thing. Also Martin O’Malley plans to sign a bill in May that limits the sale of magazines to only having the capability of holding ten bullets. I don’t think that this is going to be effective, if someone has a plan to go commit a mass murder, that person is going to bring as many magazines as is needed for what they want to do, and changing clips can be done in the matter of a second or two. I think that the route our government and legislation in Maryland is trying to take is not going to be effective; they aren’t headed in the right direction. The way I think they should deal with it is have the persons registering for a gun list the other household members, ages, etcetera as well as listing any disabilities that anyone in the household has. Also require a locking mechanism on all the weapons sold. Then I also think that case workers should check up on cases that look to possibly have risk or there is a need for these weapons to be checked that they are being stored properly. 

                    

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