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.