Gun Control Laws Are Not the Answer

This widely known quote carries a heavy truth. You cannot blame the weapon as an inanimate object, but instead, place the blame upon the living, thinking being that activates the weapon.

When I see rallies for stricter gun control, it rubs me the wrong way. I have no hatred toward the people involved in such rallies, but simply feel sad that they fight for a thing which will not solve the violence that they yearn to stop.

Repeatedly throughout history, and in other countries beside the U.S., it has been shown that strict gun control laws do not stop violence, but instead often lead to an increase in crime.

The reasons or causes of the increase in crime cannot be defined in exact terms, but are more speculation based on human nature. Perhaps it is because the reasons are only speculations that people still think fighting for gun control is warranted. Since there is no solid explanation other than proof using statistics, perhaps gun control advocates feel that it is not a strong enough argument against their cause.

Personally, I agree with the historical statistics. Enforcing strict gun control laws will not decrease crime rates because such laws only limit "law-abiding" citizens. Criminals will not be restricted by gun laws because they can acquire weapons through underground or black markets. Places where "law-abiding" citizens would never go.

Taking that into consideration, this leaves the average law-abiding citizen unarmed and at the mercy of the criminals who purchase their weapons through illegal means. We are more open to attacks from gangs, muggers, burglars etc because they all know that it is unlikely that we would be carrying a weapon.

Conversely, if we were to allow citizens to carry concealed handguns, we would be deterring a lot of crime simply with the fact that it is possible for everyone to have a gun on them. Logically, a criminal is less likely to approach a person on the street with the intent of robbing if they knew it was extremely likely that the person could fire upon them.

As for law enforcement and the argument that allowing concealed weapons put them in more danger, this is really only true if the majority of citizens were criminals. Allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a weapon does not necessarily increase the risk to law enforcement in a substantial amount because law-abiding citizens typically respect law enforcement. Allowing the average person to carry a concealed weapon would allow law enforcement to simply go under the assumption that everyone has a weapon. This could actually help them by keeping them at the ready during any situation whereas right now they have to determine first whether someone is carrying an illegal weapon or not.

Then there is the argument that stricter gun laws would keep guns out of the hands of emotional hot-headed teenagers who get the idea that shooting people is the answer to their problems. This is probably the only point where I'd say stricter gun laws might help, with a strong emphasis on "might" because this can still happen to anyone law-abiding citizen who acquires a handgun under even the strictest of gun laws.

To prevent these types of unfortunate incidents what we need is a different type of gun law that requires anyone who has a gun to have proper protective measures in place to keep the weapons out of their children's hands. So instead of making it harder to get a gun, you require gun owners to make it harder for their children to get the gun.

When at home, all guns should be locked up or have a trigger lock of some kind on them. Some guns come with a built-in locking mechanism that requires a special key to unlock. These kinds of preventative measures make much more sense than just making it harder for a citizen to acquire the gun. After all, even if you make it harder to get the gun, once the gun is acquired, you still have the problem of having that weapon fall into the children's hands.

When "they say history repeats itself" they speak the truth yet again. Let us learn from history and not bark up the wrong tree by creating gun laws that make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to acquire personal handguns. There are much better ways to decrease violent crimes.

Here are a couple of pages that touch upon history's experience with restricting guns:

http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7212&context=expresso

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/IBDGunConFailure.html