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Gun Control Laws

The record number of firearm related deaths in the country is on a record high standing at 39,773 deaths by 2018 from Data provided by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (O’Brien, et al.). This number was divided between suicides with the highest toll at 23,854, 14,542 homicides and about 500 deaths resulting from illegal interventions such as unlawful shooting from the police. For this reason supporters of gun control have become more vocal in their call for tightening gun control laws to reduce the scale of firearms in the nation and their circulation. The United States has the highest incidence of gun violence or gun related deaths among 22 other developed nations. For this reason this paper argues that gun control is necessary and not a hindrance to the liberty of gun owners.

The right to bear firearms is protected by the second amendment and is translated to mean the general population, which was viewed as part of the militia when the law was made (Aronow & Miller). Proponents of gun control argue that when these laws were made when the nation was morphing into what it is today, each state had militias which were made up of ordinary citizens. The amendment regulated these militias subject to the requirements concerning issue such as paramilitary exercise from time to time and training. This was necessary because the states feared that the federal government would use force to bend the will of the states to suit its agenda, and this is why the authors of the second amendment included the right to bear arms. Using this explanation, the paper argues that, for modern times, the Amendment refers to the state’s right to arm its own military forces such as National Guard units.

The second amendment is of course a guarantee for individuals to bear arms. Colonial laws required every male to bear arms in case of military emergencies. By guaranteeing arms for each male, it also guaranteed rights for the militia. The term the “right of the people” according to proponents of gun control as written in the Second Amendment has the same meaning as it does in the 1st Amendment, where each individual has the freedom of religion and that of assembly.

The second Amendment does not guarantee unchallenged rights to won guns. In a 2008 decision by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, the majority opinion was that the right protected by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. Felons and the mentally ill for example must be prohibited from possessing the firearms and the carrying of firearms in sensitive areas such as learning institutions, or prohibitions of commercial sales of guns. the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in June of 2016 ruled that the right to carry a concealed firearm in crowded places has never been protected by the second amendment. This ruling upheld laws in California that defined the permitting process for carrying concealed weapons in the state. Over 1,000 court cases or government activity has violated the Second Amendment as interpreted by those against gun control laws (Spitzer). This indicates how the literal interpretation of the Second Amendment does not stand in the modern world.

More gun control would reduce gun-related deaths. There is about half a million deaths from gun violence each year and by 1999 guns were the leading cause of death in the country. The issue escalated when guns were also found to be the second leading cause of death among children (Tashiro, et al.). For this reason, there are no biases in concluding that, the legal purchase of firearms possess a long-lasting risk of death. The implementation of universal federal background checks was one way of reducing firearms deaths by over 50 percent and background checks on the purchase of ammunition is projected to reduce gun related deaths by over 80 percent and requirements for gun identification could reduce deaths by a similar percentage. Gun laws have a direct effect on the reduction of firearm homicides by a rate of 14 percent, and a rise in the number of gun homicides was recorded in areas that had right-to-carry and stand-your ground-laws

Works Cited

Aronow, Peter M., and Benjamin T. Miller. “Policy misperceptions and support for gun control legislation.” The Lancet 387.10015 (2016): 223.

O’Brien, Kerry, et al. “Racism, gun ownership and gun control: Biased attitudes in US whites may influence policy decisions.” PloS one 8.10 (2013).

Spitzer, Robert J. Politics of gun control. Routledge, 2015.

Tashiro, Jun, et al. “The effect of gun control laws on hospital admissions for children in the United States.” Journal of trauma and acute care surgery 81.4 (2016): S54-S60.