Brad Newton

Persuasive Essay
2/13/11
P.5

Firearms; A Right to All Citizens

Since the advent of firearms, there has been a struggle between those who

support private ownership and those who fear it. In recent days it has become an issue

that the population feels need to be met and politicians fear. However, the issue in

today’s society there is a habit only seeing the issue in black and white. Firearm control

is a multifaceted topic that needs to be reviewed on every level. Gun control as a whole

should be designed to allow citizens to prevent crime, allowing both trains of thought to

feel more secure while protecting the second amendment.

Weapons ,in general, have been misrepresented during the last several decades.

The left wing has used scare tactics to secure the casual voter’s ballot. John Conyers

(D-Michigan) states that “13 kids a day perish at the wrong end of a gun barrel.” This

number is used by the CDC to account for the number of people under the age of 20

killed by firearms each year. What this statistic fails to clarify is that eleven of the thirteen

killed everyday are actually older than fifteen. These are not accidental weapon

discharges harming small children everyday; these are the result of gang violence that

would occur whether or not weapons licenses were harder to procure. Liberal media has

designed ad campaigns using the faces of innocent, young children to portray the plight

of gun-related deaths in America when in all reality, young children are a minority in
shooting deaths. The bulk of America, those that do not own firearms but do not have

qualms against them, have been swayed by Democratic campaigns using hollow

statistics and gruesome imagery such as that.

350,000 thousand young people, aged 16-19, are put in the hospital every year

as the result of automobile accidents. This number puts a shadow over the 13 killed by

firearms. This is not to belittle the young victims of firearms, but rather to put the

numbers in perspective. I fail to see many people get all riled up over the ease of a 16

year old to get a license even though they are much more likely to hurt someone,

including themselves, than a licensed firearm owner. Those numbers don’t even include

adult drivers. This perversion of statistics and the inability to look at the big picture has

given pistols, shotguns, and rifles the image of killers, while automobiles are not painted

as such.

It has been suggested that gun-licenses not be harder to secure, but the

regulations on storing them be upped to protect the young people in their homes. This

sounds great in theory: simply buy the gun and put a lock on it so that no unintentional

use can occur. Great. Except placing a lock on the trigger, or putting it in a safe

essentially renders it a large paper weight when the need for defense comes about.

Susan Gonzales’ story exemplifies the need for an unlocked firearm in the home for

safety. Her and her husband were sleeping in the night when two burglars came into

their home with guns loaded. The gunmen demanded that the two get on the ground. A

shot was fired by one of the two men and things went south from there on. Nancy had a

loaded, unlocked pistol in the footboard of their bed and went for it. There was a firefight
and the couple was shot several times and killed on of the gunmen. The other gunman

and the getaway driver escaped custody for several months. Without that pistol the

couple surely would have been killed then and there. The couple has stated that “it

[having firearms] really is the only way I can feel comfortable in my home.” The woman

has her condolences to the families with slain children, but she believes it is her right.

And it simply is.

Being allowed to carry concealed weapons has been misconstrued as a danger

to the public. To agree with that you must dispute the correlation between the number of

licensed concealed weapons carriers and the amount of murders going down in Florida.

In the early 1990’s murder and crime was at an all time high in the southern state. As

the ability to protect yourself increases the crime decreases. Just the idea of a firearm

causes crime to decrease.

In the early days of LoJack, essentially a GPS hidden in a car to track it if stolen,

the system was very expensive and consequentially was put on very few cars. One

would think that the limited amount of LoJack equipped cars would hardly put a dent in

the amount of cars stolen. One would also be wrong. The number of car thefts dropped

dramatically at the advent of LoJack technology even though the majority of cars did not

have it. As the risk of being caught increases the amount of people to risk it decreases.

Concealed weapons work in the same vein. Every person in Florida did not have a

firearm, but at the influx of firearms licenses crime decreased because it got less easy

to commit. This case highlights the idea of weapons benefitting society in a way many

people ignore.
 Yes, many people have been killed over the years using them. However, they

were used to kill the people. To quote the shirt worn by Happy’s old boss in Happy

Gilmore, “Guns don’t kill people. I kill people.” People kill people. You can’t blame

the gun for the crime in the same way you can’t blame a calculator in an insurance

fraud. This thought process has led to the desire for creating a new system for doling

out firearm-licenses including stricter psychological studies of the person who desires to

buy the weapon. Once again, as in the care of locks on firearms, this is all good and

well in theory but it keeps weapons out of the hands of people who want to use them to

protect themselves and their families. Everyone in America could agree that if they could

remove every unlicensed firearm in America that they would. However, this cannot

happen in our lifetime. With that in thought, everyone could also agree that there needs

to be more people licensed and trained to protect themselves and those around them

with firearms than those who bought the guns on the black market.

America’s culture is one that is obsessed with politics. Firearms are an easy

target because they can be used to do something that everyone hates, killing people.

Weapons of all sorts have saved just as many, if not more, people than they have

harmed. Firearms have contributed to the growth of America, not only with increased

ability to hunt and defend for yourself but also with the economy. A huge amount of

money is paid to American companies (Smith and Wesson, Winchester, Taurus...) for

firearms. Frankly speaking, stricter gun control would do the United States of America a
disservice by not only encouraging the spread of nonviolent and violent crime, but also

by closing down American factories with American workers. The Turner thesis

concludes that the American spirit was built by hearty men who pushed the frontier

westward, by force and intellect. America was as much built on bullet casings as it was

through fine penmanship. In an imperfect world firearms are imperfect. Much more time

should be spent on firearm education and urban development than seeking to restrict

the right of those citizens with a right to own and operate firearms. To call guns nothing

but a menace is to wrong the United States’ safety as well as its legacy. The right the

bear arms is written in the constitution and has helped to build and protect America and

its citizens since the founding over 200 years ago. I’m sorry if this paper seems really,

really ghetto; I couldn’t figure out how to print off a rubric so I just kind of wung it.