Gun Control

The right of US citizens to bear arms is guaranteed to us by the 2nd amendment, but what does the second amendment actually mean? The second amendment states "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."(guncite 1). Let's look at exactly what this means phrase by phrase, "A well regulated militia," a militia is a group of people who, in emergencies, are called in to defend the rights of the people. These can be ordinary everyday people not just military personnel. And in order to be well regulated they need order and control and most importantly they need guns to perform their jobs. Next is, "being necessary to the security of a free state" this basically says that this is necessary so that our free state can be safe and secure. The rest of the amendment says, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" stating that the people have the right to, not only keep, but to bear arms and that this right should never be infringed.

The Center For Disease Control states "Although firearms-related injuries in the United States have declined since 1993, they remained the second leading cause of injury mortality in 2000, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Of 28,663 firearms-related deaths in 2000--an average of 79 per day--16,586 were suicides, 10,801 were homicides, 776 were unintentional."(CDC 1) This tell us that gun related crimes are on the decline in the US , however more recent data isn't available to let us know how effective gun laws being introduced today are. We don't even know if the current laws or laws that are being proposed will help deter gun crimes or not, they just make new laws with hopes that it'll help with little or no statics to go by.

In order to own a firearm in the United States today there is a lengthy process that has to be gone through. "States that require mandatory licensing and registration of handguns make it harder for criminals and juveniles to obtain guns from within the state, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Gun Policy and Research." (Hopkins 1) This shows that the current laws that are already on the books are hindering the purchase of a firearm for illegal purposes.