After recent events such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting the subject of gun control has been heavily debated. There are some people who have the idea that all guns should be abolished and there are some that believe guns should be able to be bought with almost no restrictions. Both of these statements are preposterous. For the lowest violence, America needs to come to a compromise. It is our rights as Americans to keep and bear arms; however, this should only be for self-defense and hunting. Some guns, like automatic guns serve no advantage in hunting or self-defense. Because of this, certain guns should be outlawed, but we do have the right to own guns, as stated in the second amendment of our United States constitution. The biggest thing that needs to be done is control who gets the guns much more, so that there won’t be as many murders, rapes, or aggravated assaults with guns.

To begin with, one must know what guns have done for society in the past, whether it is good or bad. Obviously, in the United States, there are a lot of guns. One might say that much of the violence is caused by the fact that there are so many guns in this country. In the United States, there are around 270 million guns in circulation. Another way to express this would be to say that for every one hundred people in the United States there are eighty eight guns. These guns, contrary to popular belief, don’t all contribute to killing, some do; however, many are never even used and are just kept in cases where self-defense is used. The media only shows us how guns are used in bad ways. For example, the only things that are shown on TV are things such as school shootings and other shootings. Guns do bad things, but only in the hands of wrong people. Columbine, Sandy Hook, and the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting: these are the things people think about when they hear guns, but all of these happened because someone that shouldn’t have had a gun had a gun. There are times when people need guns! Gun control has done just as much bad things as it has good things. The United Kingdom and Australia have both completely outlawed guns; one would usually think that crime rates would go down; however, this is simply not the case. The crime rates, in fact, have gone up for both countries. There is no way for someone to easily defend themselves when someone assaults them, so more crime occurs. Also, in 1936, gun control was enforced in Spain and because of this; Francisco Franco created a dictatorship easily because the citizens had no easy way of rebelling. Many disasters wouldn’t have happened if the victims had guns as well. Many people believed that the holocaust would have been much less severe if the Jews just had guns, as well as if the protesters at Tiananmen Square in China had guns that the Chinese would not have fired at them. It is clear that guns do bad things, but so does gun control. So controlling who gets the would most likely reduce the violence the most

Furthermore, there is a long running debate about whether enforcing gun control is constitutional. There are many people that do believe that controlling guns is, in fact, constitutional despite the fact that the second amendment of the constitution gives Americans the right to keep and bear arms. The full second amendment is, “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.” The part that is usually debated is the “well-regulated militia” part. Some people say that we do not have a militia in our country anymore. Others would say that this amendment shouldn’t be valid anymore because of the higher technology of our guns. While both of these claims are true, this does not make it constitutional to take away guns. We do have a militia, which is the National Guard and anyone has the ability to join the National Guard. Also, just because we don’t have a militia that all men are in right now does not mean that there will not be a need for one in the future, so people should have guns in the case of that. The second claim, while true, is not valid. While guns are getting stronger, the second amendment was created so that we could protect ourselves! If we are attacked as a country, the attackers will not have simply hand guns and rifles, they will have the newer semi-automatic and automatic guns. It makes more sense for us to be able to defend ourselves with the same guns that whoever is attacking us has. Going along with the higher technology now, there are some people who say since times are different then colonial times the second amendment is no longer valid (Laura Egendorf). Times are definitely different now than when the second amendment was written in 1790, but guns are still used for the same purposes as then. People then, used guns for hunting and self defense. People killed people with guns in colonial times as well! Those three things are all still true today. Even though one of those three is bad all of them are the same now as they were then, so the writer of the Bill of Rights would probably agree that the conditions are still the same and that the second amendment is still valid. Another thing one should notice it that I said, “People killed people with guns in colonial times as well.” I did not say guns killed people, because you need a human to pull the trigger for there to be someone dead. It is true that some guns aren’t beneficial for hunting or self defense on the streets. That is why in the United States there is an assault weapon ban, but we don’t need to control guns anymore than that except for maybe semi-automatic weapons. According to the founding fathers it is our right to be able to protect ourselves with guns, so naturally we should keep that right, so the answer to this long running question is yes and no. Banning all weapons is not constitutional, but banning some is.

To be able to come up with a solution to gun violence, one must look at the causes of it. All guns require a background check in order to get them; however, the background checks are not necessarily full proof. While all criminal records are generally submitted, mental health records are not always submitted. It was shown that over 11,000 mental health records were not submitted to background checks in Colorado, including the shooter that was at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado (Sam Levin). Since the records were not submitted, the sellers of the guns had no way of knowing that a person could be potentially mentally unstable and do something wrong. An easy solution that would drastically reduce gun violence is to make it mandatory for all mental health records to be submitted for background checks. Controlling the people who get guns would make a lot less people angry as well. Another thing that needs to be looked at, although many young teenage boys would be mad, is the violence in the media. Kids these days are all playing games like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, these games almost glamorize the idea of gun violence. The question is: does this make people want to use guns in a dangerous way? No one really knows the answer, but maybe limiting the amount of violence in games would help a little bit. Another cause of gun violence is how easy it is to get guns. With 270 million guns in our country, getting a gun by means other than purchasing isn’t hard. Guns need to have more security regulations, especially at stores, as people can rob stores that sell guns.

Lastly, to understand if more gun control would be beneficial, one must look at the effects gun control has had on society. Gun control has done good things. Gun violence is at its lowest point since 198l, with only 3.6 per every one hundred thousand people being killed by guns (Robert Farley). While this is a very true statement, this might not be just because of gun control. Concealed carrying is basically the idea of controlling guns with more guns. Some people argue that this is why gun violence is down so much compared to before. In states that allow concealed carrying, murder is down eight percent, rapes are down 5 percent, and aggravated assaults have gone down seven percent (Robert Farley). Since the person being attacked has a gun, the attacker will back down. It is shown that the cost saved in medical bills from concealed carrying is fifteen times greater than the costs created from concealed carrying (Laura Egendorf). There is also the fact that, for every life lost from a gun, seventy five lives are saved from a gun, shows just how much more good concealed carrying does than bad. So while gun control, does, in fact, do good things, concealed carrying is more beneficial and reduces gun violence even more than controlling guns.

In conclusion, guns do bad things, everyone knows that, but because of the fact that it is our right as American to own guns, and that guns do just as much help if not more help than taking away guns, we need to keep some guns in the United States. We need guns to protect ourselves because even if guns are illegal that doesn’t mean bad people won’t be able to get guns. Look at drugs, they are illegal, but bad people still use them. Having some guns will help protect us against those other bad people with guns. There are some guns that do need to be banned. Automatic guns are already banned and that is why some gun violence went down, but semi-automatic guns do not give many advantages in practical use of guns, they only help in warfare, so there should be a civilian ban on these. Doing this combined with other solutions mentioned earlier will help to dramatically reduce gun violence in the United States and give us a safer living environment.