Stephanie Kelly
Joel RehmetEnglish 1010
November 20, 2018
Does Gun Control Reduce Crime?
It is a legitimate concern of citizens to diminish firearm deaths in the United States. Every day more teenagers are killed by gunfire than any other age group. Murder is the second leading cause of death for adolescents 10-19 years old. Murder is the number one cause of death in adolescent black males. Most youth crimes are carried out with handguns.
Heated arguments always occur when people who are determined to control firearms and the individuals who believe in no gun regulation discuss this issue. On one side, some gun control backers want to see the government regulate firearm producers, vendors, and owners to the point that no citizens can carry a firearm. When all is said and done, the gun control community want to make it impossible to obtain a handgun, which is a supply-reduction strategy. On the opposite side, the National Rifle Association (NRA) insists that the Second Amendment ensures every resident a right to “bear arms.” Consequently, the NRA battles all endeavors to control the manufacture, distribution, and sale of firearms. The NRA and its partners believe that lawbreakers using firearms should receive harsh punishment for their crimes, which is a demand-reduction strategy.
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Gun control backers believe that the government ought to confine the accessibility of handguns to reduce violence. These include: handgun availability for use equals more violent crime; owning a firearm increases a person’s risk of being killed; keeping firearms out of the hands of lawbreakers counteracts violent crime and removing firearms from lawbreakers diminishes violent crime.
The NRA scrutinizes pro-gun-control contentions and offers an alternative stance for diminishing violence. Their stance includes: firearms don’t kill— individuals kill with firearms kill; there would be less violent crime if more people carried guns to protect themselves; gun-control laws are unlawful because they violate the right of the people to keep and bear arms, which is unconstitutional. Waiting period laws, for example the Brady Bill, are the initial step on the course to a police state; firearm control laws do not reduce violent crime; and an alternative to gun control—harsher sentences for people who carry out crimes with guns—will deliver more noteworthy decreases in crime and require less sacrifice with respect to gun owners than gun-control laws CITATION htt1 l 1033 (htt1).
Defenders of gun control propose that a portion of the reasoning against gun control are invalid. For instance, they refer to insights that support the fact that if more citizens carried firearms to protect themselves, there would be a little decline in crime since crime victims rarely use weapons anyway. What’s more, they point to the fact that, up until now, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to peruse the Second Amendment as allowing an individual a personal right to bear arms, yet rather as an affirmation that Congress ought not to do anything to uproot state militias or the National Guard. The case frequently referred to is U.S. v. Miller CITATION Chr18 l 1033 (Skelton), which maintained a law confining ownership of a certain kind of shotgun.
Extra invalidation of anti-gun-control focus includes the statement that if more states passed mandatory sentencing laws for offenders who use firearms in the commission of crimes, crime would be unaffected in light of the fact that in the past such laws have failed to cut crime. Gun-control advocates believe that if more states had waiting longer periods and stricter background checks, they would not introduce a police state, pointing to the fact that in spite of Congress passing the Brady Bill in 1994, it has yet to set off a chain of further advances prompting the establishment of a police state and that there is essentially no coherent reason to surmise those waiting periods will cause the rise of a police state CITATION htt1 l 1033 (htt1).
A noteworthy inquiry is whether or not gun-control laws reduce crime. Up to this point, handgun bans have not succeeded in having any significant effect on homicide rates in view of the extensive number of handguns available for use preceding the bans. Endeavors to ban the fabrication and importation of handguns have fizzled in light of the fact that they invigorate the beginning of a black market for firearms like the black market for drugs. Laws designed to keep handguns out of the hands of lawbreakers, adolescents, and mentally disturbed individuals have not been successful at reducing crime because criminals either have firearms already, can steal them, or buy them illegally. Waiting periods and background checks have prevented a few lawbreakers and adolescents from getting firearms, however, it hasn’t stopped them from stealing them or buying them illegally through the black market.
Taking weapons away from criminals is a good idea, if it would actually work. The best example of this approach is from the mid-1990s. Kansas City police officers made proactive arrests for illegally carrying concealed weapons, in gun-crime problem areas, through the use of traffic stops and field interrogations. This significantly reduced gun crimes in the city and is potentially a sustainable pattern for others to follow CITATION Law95 l 1033 (Sherman).
Works Cited
BIBLIOGRAPHY n.d. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/brady-bill-signed-into-law.
Sherman, Lawrence W. “Kansas City Gun Experiment.” National Institute of Justice (1995).
Skelton, Chris. Justia US Supreme Court. 2018. <https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/307/174/>.
