GUN CONTROL
Gun Control and the Second Amendment The issue of gun control has been one of a handful of political charges that have been at the forefront of debate in the United States for over 30 years now. It is unfortunate that both the pro-gun and anti-gun lobby takes the extremes of each side of the issue to perpetuate their cause and, therefore, create a situation where the average person is misinformed about the issue. There are people who are opposed to anyone owning a gun and would like to see all members of society disarmed. ... When the data on gun related crimes and incidents are properly analyzed, it becomes very obvious that the gun, in and of itself, is not one of the roots of the problems that plague modern society. “The failure of the anti-gun advocates to recognize the vast corpus of contrary scholarship reflects that fact the “Great American Gun War” is really a culture conflict. ... In the more rural and conservative areas of the United States most people own firearms and consider the presence of a gun in their home and on their person as a very normal and natural way of life. ... If the gun were the problem, the same gun related problems would exist in all communities where the gun exists. The fact that different socioeconomic areas of the country have different problems is not the fault of the gun. ... ) Both sides of the gun control lobby fall back on the Second Amendment of the Constitution to support their arguments. ... There is also documentation to support that the founding fathers believed in the individual’s right to protect himself by the use of a gun. ... (Paine 56) The pro-gun lobby would take all this to mean that there should be no restrictions at all on gun ownership. ... Now we should look at some modern day facts that are often overlooked by that media and politicians when discussing guns and gun violence. The anti-gun lobby would have you believe that the availability of guns as a direct effect on the rate of murders and assaults that occur. During the twenty-year period from the early 1970’s to the early 1990’s, the handgun stock increased sixty-nine percent, but handgun murders declined twenty-seven percent; and forty-seven percent increased in all types of guns was accompanied by a thirty-one percent decline in gun murders overall.