I am in favor of gun rights. Have I lost your support yet? Are you leaving the article? Or do you want to hear me out? Hey, good! Glad to hear that you're willing to keep reading. Here's why I support gun rights:
I believe all citizens have the right to arm themselves for self-protection. Even if we outlawed guns, they would still exist in the hands of muggers and criminals, and we would be removing. Looking at the origin of the right to bear arms, it was our way of saying "Hey, you shouldn't disarm your people. We should have the right to rebel if it comes to it, without it being a one-sided fight." To quote V for Vendetta (great movie, by the way), "People should not fear their governments. Governments should fear their people."
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All these stats are according to a federal report which covered percentages from 1977 to 1991 -- the figures may have changed somewhat, but with a 24 year sample period, I'm pretty confident in the stats.
So, that's point #1. We should restrict firearms from anyone with an arrest record. I'm all for allowing appeals, and I think that for many things, an appeal after seven to ten years would be completely reasonable. There are certain things for which I do feel that appeals should not be allowed. Namely, prior violent crimes involving firearms, prior cases of rape or sexual assault, prior cases of manslaughter or murder, or prior cases of theft/robbery/burglary/mugging involving a firearm.
Here's point #2. We should mandate a psychological evaluation by a court psychologist prior to owning firearms. There are plenty of people who have not yet committed any violent crimes who are not sane enough (in my book) to own firearms. I don't want criminals walking around with guns, but if we can prevent those with a high likelihood of committing crimes from having guns, that would definitely be