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.