Guns kill people. True.

Guns are dangerous things not to be taken lightly and in Molly Ivins essay Get a Knife, Get a dog, but get rid of Guns, she makes this fact abundantly clear through clever turns of phrase and laymen logic. She also further goes on to argue that guns should be banned and the nation would be better off for it. I would like to first point out the lack of hard evidence in her essay. Guns are dangerous, there is no denying that simple fact but they offer protection and security against an uncertain enemy and more importantly they are undeniably protected by our Bill of Rights, the one and only section of our Constitution that is absolute and final. Fact: Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. So in essence for every 1 gun used to harm another individual there are 80 others being used to protect lives and ensure that those people are able live free knowing that they are able to defend themselves. What if you were to strip these people of their right to bear arms? Would they still have be an able to defend themselves? One could pose that if you take away guns all together that these people wouldnt have been put in these life-threatening situations to begin with. False. In most situations, those that would seek to use a gun improperly e.g. armed robbery; obtain the weapon through illegal sources. Taking in account our current border policies, it is pretty safe to say that criminals will always find a way to obtain a firearm and by taking away our rights to bear them, so are you taking away our only possible way of evening out the playing field. Above all reasons though, our right to bear arms is fundamentally protected by the Constitution. More important than the fact that it is in our countries founding document it is in the section known as the Bill of Rights. This section of the document was put forth by James Madison as a way of protecting our certain unalienable rights, one of which being our right to bear arms. The phrasing of this amendment says that a militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Now in no way does this stipulate that we join a militia just so we may keep our guns. What this is saying is that should the need arise and a militia is needed (Militia by definition is a fighting force consisting of citizen soldiers) then our citizens will need to be able to have access to their own guns. Now here is the part where one could say at what point in modern times would this be necessary. I will tell you. In the amendment its say for the security of a free state, free being that the people are still in charge of the government, their may come a time in our history that we may need to overthrow our own government to protect our freedoms, as which was done in the creation of this country. Our founding fathers wanted to be sure that at all times such a thing would be possible. This will be taken away if we make it such that only the government is allowed to bear arms.

Whatever the reason may be it is abundantly clear that our right to bear arms isnt just something to do with our own personal feeling of safety. It has more to do with maintaining our rights as free people. It is about maintaining our integrity as a country and knowing at all times that we the people are in control of our government and not the other way around. And yes I so feel safer for it.