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.