2 Pages “The United States has 88.8 guns per 100 people, or about 270,000,000 guns, which is the highest total and per capita number in the world.” (ProCon.org.) This statistic may not come as a surprise to most. What may shock you, however, is how gun control can actually hurt your communities, and in more way than one. To begin, when guns are taken away from citizens, they may no longer be able to defend themselves. Crimes are committed when there is a “motivated suspect, an opportune target, and a lack of a guardian.” (Peterson, 2013) When our “opportune target” loses their firearm, they lose their guardian. Real-world examples of this are plentiful. Two The Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shootings both had to rely on police to subdue their …show more content…
Senate bill S.649, introduced by Sen. Harry Reid in 2013, greatly oversteps just sales of firearms. The bill states that “It shall be unlawful for any person who is not licensed under this chapter to transfer a firearm to any other person who is not licensed under this chapter.” (Kopel) Simply put, this means handing any gun to another person can be a federal crime. Say you were hunting with a friend, and have your friend put your gun in the car, or such. You would now be a felon! Even if you were teaching firearms safety, if your pupils handled the gun, you would be a criminal. Obviously, this is a far too severe punishment for an unjust law, and it should be …show more content…
However, when gun control laws are implemented, it is proven that crime rates will not decrease. In 1999, 6.3 million violent crimes were committed in the U.S. (Laws.com) These violent crimes include rape, sexual assault, robbery, and assault. It was shown that only 8% of these crimes involved usage of a firearm. In the early 1970’s, around 19% of murders involved guns. When gun control laws were implemented, the rate raised to about 50%. (Laws.com) Here we see a dramatic increase that could actually attribute a lack of guns to an increased murder rate. Lastly, after Texas implemented concealed carry laws, it’s crime rates dropped 50% faster than the rest of the U.S. (Laws.com) Because of this, we cannot conclude that violent crime is correlated to firearms. However, it is easy to spot the association between an increased gun count, and a decreased crime