Matthew Sanders

Freshman English II

Jamie Long

2/22/2016

Gun Control: Facts and Myths

     Gun control should be lessened, because rather than solve problems, it just creates more. Crime and murder rates rise when our weapons are taken away or restricted, and people can’t defend themselves. Most people who advocate for gun control laws are uneducated about guns, giving them no right to limit ours.

     Crime and murder rates rise when our weapons are taken away or restricted. Take London, for example. “When it was legal to buy a shotgun in London in the middle of the 20^th century, there were very few armed robberies there. But, after British gun-control zealots managed over the years to disarm virtually the entire law-abiding population, armed robberies became literally a hundred times more common. And murder rates rose.” (Sowell) The same thing has happened in other countries with similar gun control laws.

     People need to be able to defend themselves. Many robberies and murders today can be stopped by a weapon used in self-defense, but our media has turned self-defense into something just as bad as being the murderer. According to this anti-gun article by Carimah Townes, “The reality of self-defense gun use bears no resemblance to the exaggerated claims of the gun lobby and gun industry. The number of justifiable homicides that occur in our nation each year pale in comparison to criminal homicides, let alone gun suicides and fatal unintentional shootings,” the study reads. “The idea that firearms are frequently used in self-defense is the primary argument that the gun lobby and firearms industry use to expand the carrying of firearms into an ever-increasing number of public spaces and even to prevent the regulation of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.” This is not true. Many lives could be saved through the use of guns for self-defense. Robbers used to be scared that a homeowner might own a weapon and be able to harm them if they were caught, but now, most people have become so afraid of guns, that robbers have more confidence that they will meet no resistance upon robbing a house or establishment.

     Most people who advocate for gun control are uneducated about guns, and have no prior experience with them. People who have never fired a shot in their life are more than willing to say how many bullets should be allowed in a clip, or what type of guns people can buy. They go ballistic when police report the number of shots fired at a crime scene, but anyone who has dealt with guns are not the least bit surprised. Many shots miss, even at close range. And sometimes even a bad wound doesn’t stop someone from being able to fire back. And according to the National Review, “The rate of gun ownership is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas.”, and “For the country as a whole, hand-gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down.” (Sowell

     So, gun control should be lessened, and more people need to be educated about guns. We could just take everyone’s guns away, as the gun control advocates want to do, but that would only just increase crime and leave people without any way to defend themselves. This is the truth: Gun control doesn’t save live, it costs lives.

Glog:
http://matt2786.edu.glogster.com/gun-control-facts-and-myths/