The Pros And Cons Of Stricter Gun Control Policy

I have always been a proponent of stricter gun control policies. However, my position is not fed by the fact that I am not a gun owner; I know a number of people who own guns, from muskets to semi-automatic rifles like the Colt LE6920, who, like me, are of the opinion that the country, in the wake of the recent mass shootings, should take a more radical approach to the problem of guns. Apparently, my stance on the issue has relatively been biased. Upon going through some of the principal arguments by those in opposition as listed on the Procon.org website, I have found myself looking at the gun policy issue quite differently. I particularly found these three anti-gun policy arguments to be intriguing: gun ownership, not gun control laws, deters crime; gun control laws cannot deter criminals from obtaining guns; and the laws are unnecessary since markedly few people are killed by guns.

Kleck, Kovandzic, and Bellows (2016) in a study targeting more than 1000 cities that had a population of about 25,000 people in 1990 confirm this assertion when they conclude that there in deed was no tangible evidence supporting the notion that gun ownership has an impact on crime rates. If I am to believe this premise, I am likely to notice that the various mass shootings witnessed in the U.S. in the recent years were likely to have been caused by other factors such as the lack of stringent laws to ensure background checks before one can buy a gun. Even so, this argument can only be true if the number of deaths caused by the guns is relatively low compared to other major causes of