Gun Control

Gun control is a controversial issue, opposing and splitting the American society, it is a crossway of different arguments and states on whether there should be stricter gun laws. It could be argued that on the one hand guns provide safe and security, fun and adventure for some people; on the other hand there are horrific and terrifying losses of innocent lives. Guns do not provide safety, nor smile or happiness, nothing but increasing the crime and death rate, thus is the black side of the today's modern society, contributing to the destruction of the balanced harmony of life.

It is widely believed that guns presence is the major reason for the increasing numbers of murders, assaults, suicides, crime in one word. Pro gun control advocates argue that the more guns there are, the more crime there will be. Referring to the study of Wright and Rossi (1976) guns are involved in most homicides, and only a small percentage are non-gun, which implicates that criminals would not commit a crime if do not posses a gun. As noted by Kopel (1988) there are about 200 million guns in the United States, of which 70 million are handguns. Every year thousand are killed by gunfire and hundreds thousand more are injured or threatened in assaults and robberies. A gun control would apparently decrease the numbers of owned gun, and with that the crime rate and homicides. According to Berkowitz (1993) in 1998 some 12,000 homicides involved guns and about 640,000 crimes are committed every year as stated by the U.S. Department of Justice. Gunfire leaves behind dead laying a whole lot of Americans. According to Cook (2000) in 1998 there were about 30,700 firearm deaths, a rate of 11.4 per 100,000 Americans. An annual firearm death count in the United States is the same as the fallen soldiers in the Korean War. Gun control do effect the number of homicides, the stricter it is , the fewer the losses. As noted by Weathers (1993) in 1990, handgun homicides claimed 13 lives in Sweden, 87 in Japan, 68 in Canada, 22 in Great Britain and 10,567 in the United States.

It is often alleged that having a gun at possession in your home would make you feel safer and more secure-provide you with protection. Then the existence of the police as an organization for maintaining law and order is not justified at all, and the people put themselves in a primary position for their own security not willing to put their lives and liberty in the hands of police. Moreover it is believed that criminals would not attack a potential victim who is known to be armed with a gun. However that is not the case as gun control supporters state that only 2 burglars out of 1,000 are driven off by armed homeowners according to Kopel (1988). Cook (1991) states that only 3 percents of victims were able to deploy a gun against someone who broke in while they were at home, leads us to a conclusion that owning a gun will not contribute to the increasing of the security at home.

Guns do not have any limits, do not recognize country and age borders, do not differentiate sexes, political oriented people, do not have cultural discrimination, guns are democratic weapon for murder. Notwithstanding the death toll, guns leave a large black spot on many more people sustaining nonfatal gun wounds, which would make them crippled for life. Consequently children are among them all, innocent victims of the not well regulated gun laws. In a study of Paediatrics for Parents journal (1993) every morning about 100,000 children go to school with guns threatening their safety and the safety of other people around them. An increase of 93 percent in murders committed by teenagers is registered in the past ten years. It is more than obvious that