Argumentative Essay On Gun Control

Gun rights have been an issue in the United States for a very long time; especially recently with the amount of mass shootings in this country such as the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the many other examples which have brought America’s attention to gun control. Some people believe that guns, or in some cases, certain guns should be restricted or eliminated completely. However, the right of Americans to bear any sort of arms is not just a wild idea pulled out of the air, it is a constitutional right. There is a reason that gun control laws and weapon restrictions have not worked in the past, they are wildly unnecessary. This is because assault weapons are not the weapons being used in a majority of shootings, mass killers do not

There have been several horror stories in the past few years of mass shootings committed by the mentally ill. It must be made clear that these mass shooters do not accurately represent the vast majority of gun owners, or the mentally ill for that matter. New York State has a law in place which states that a therapist must file a report to the police—using common sense, of course— if they believe that a patient or client is likely to cause harm to themselves or others. The concern that mental health professionals have is that with this law in place, the mentally ill may not be completely honest with them and therefore they will be unable to help them properly (Cramer 1). The vast majority of people with serious mental illnesses do not have violent tendencies and only a small percentage of gun violence is perpetrated by the mentally ill (McGinty 1). Journalist Clayton Cramer brings up a good thought, “Moving gun murders into non-gun murders takes away excuses from the gun control movement--and we can hope that perhaps it may cause a few people to start asking the question, ‘Maybe it's not the guns? Maybe it's the mental illness that we aren't treating?’” (Cramer 3). In this quote, Cramer draws attention to the fact that it isn’t the guns that are the problem. It is the fact that the government is focusing more on gun control laws than on actually helping people with mental disorders before they have outbursts and hurt people. They need to stop trying to find a scapegoat in a vulnerable group that is already heavily stigmatized like the mentally ill, and start looking for an actual solution to the gun violence problem in this country. Taking away people’s guns is not the solution either. While the conditions of the mentally ill should be addressed, that issue is completely separate from the one at hand here. They only cover a small percentage of the people involved in gun violence in