Polls show 9 out of 10 Americans support universal background checks on gun purchases (Elliott and Frizell). In America, there is becoming a huge problem. The problem is gun control. There have been numerous shootings all over America and a lot are pretty recent. Gun control is a term that refers to an action taken by the federal government, state, and local governments to regulate the laws on guns. This covers how they are sold, used, who is buying it, and what type of gun is being purchased.
There are two sides to this argument. The first side is if people should just keep the gun laws the same and keep auto-weapons, but should have more enforcement. The other side is that there need to be more laws to guns.
The gun control laws currently in effect to include that citizens keep full auto-weapons, background checks and modifications to the weapons are sufficient as written although better enforcement is necessary. When the constitution was made our fathers made the second amendment which states, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
” So if the law were to take away or put even more laws on guns then that would be like taking away our second amendment. America gets its pervasive gun history from colonial history, revolutionary past, and the frontier expansion. Our ancestors used the guns for hunting, protection, and even to teach the generates to come how to use a firearm.
The first claim is on how people should keep full auto- weapons.
Gun rights advocates say we should keep auto-weapons because people use them for protection, sporting events, and for just going to the shooting range and having fun(Stingl and Lee). It is also our right to own a gun and use one. Most gun rights advocates say that we protect more people with full auto-weapons than we harm them (Smith). If you think about military, police forces, and other jobs that deal with protecting people, the country and other countries. Some people believe we need to have better law enforcement around areas that might get hit the hardest. An example would be in schools. There needs to be more than one SRO in the building. Another example would just be in big events with a large number of people, like the Las Vegas shooting.
This debate on the ban of auto-weapons evolves around republicans and democrats. Democrats and city dwellers tend to favor tighter restrictions on guns, while people that live away from the city like farmers or even Republicans tend to keep the laws the way there is (Smith). The Republicans and others say that closing loopholes would still allow criminals, kids, and people with a mental illness still to get their hands on guns (Smith). It is not the guns killing the people it is the people killing the people. The second claim is how people should continue with the background checks the way they are. A background check is intended to prevent the purchase of a firearm to a criminal(Stingl and Lee). The democrats and republicans do get along with the background checks. The Pew Research Center poll found that 83 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Republicans support that background checks are making an impact(Smith).
Then once the Las Vegas shooting happened the percentage changed. The polls for all Americans then showed that 64% of Americans support putting stricter gun laws on auto-weapons and 29% oppose the idea(Smith). The laws on auto-weapons are as good as they need to get we just need to add more law enforcement. People that are buying an auto- weapons go through many steps. They have to give their identification and then the check your history(Smith). The FBI is the ones who check this(Smith). They look to see if they have been to jail, mental illness, or if they have anger issues(Smith). The seller of the gun has to be licensed sells male/female(Smith). There has been a small-scale gun seller that have claimed to be hobbyists, who don’t have to conduct background checks(Doeden). Most people think that this is the way that kids, criminals, etc have been getting guns(Smith).
This is called the gun show loophole(Smith). The first opposing view is gun laws on bump-stocks need to go on. The bump-stock is an attachment that makes a semi-automatic weapon shoot nearly as fast as a full automatic. The bump-stock is illegal to use in hunting and is rarely used to protect your home. So there is really no use for it. The bump-stock can be very dangerous. It was used in The Las Vegas shooting on a semi-auto-weapon and made it sound and react like a full auto-weapon(Smith). This is how he killed so many people from such a far distance. In the shooting, 58 people died and 500 were wounded, which made it the biggest shooting in the United States history(Smith).
The second opposing view is that more laws need to be taken into consideration, assault rifles need to be banned and more steps on background checks need to happen. Between 1966 and 2012 292 mass shootings happened worldwide and nearly two-thirds were in the United States(Stingl and Lee). Also in 2015, there were 36,000 auto-weapon related deaths in the United States(Smith). Two-Thirds were suicides and one-third was homicides(Smith). People believe that this could be prevented by banning or making more laws on assault rifles. Democrats and others say that since surrounding countries like Australia have put stricter laws on guns and how it has helped with having fewer shootings. They say that this means that the government should to put stricter laws on guns(Smith). It is not just the democrats that don’t like how the laws on guns.
Among 50 percent of people that own guns said there need to be stricter laws on gun legislation(Dilascio). The people who depend on guns for a living or who use them for protection hope that this research paper has changed your perspective of gun control or you have seen the other side of the story on why we should keep full auto-weapons, keep background check the way they are, ban the bump stock, and have more law enforcement in areas that would get hit the hardest, like schools, concerts, elections, churches, etc. The belief that if we did all these things that we would become a more united and safer country.
How to Regulate the Laws on Guns. (2021, Dec 19). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/how-to-regulate-the-laws-on-guns/