The topic that I have decided to research this semester is gun violence, and I will be reviewing multiple factors of terrorism, mass shootings, and how they relate to gun control. This polarizing topic sparks interest in me because of its strong relevance in today's society and because of the enormous increase in mass killings lately. Gun control seems to be very controversial right now because there is two strongly opinionated sides to this problem that is causing so many issues lately. The predicament started with school shootings and has now became a domestic terrorist complication that has caused many contrasting opinions to arise. As a firm believer in the constitution, I have a strong opinion on this topic, which makes me very interested to do further research on it. Citizens of the United States should have the right to defend themselves, and should not feel forced to lay down and surrender. The values that have been instilled into me by my parents consist of never giving up, and the right to bear arms allows us to never surrender to a terrorist. My home town in Los Angeles, California is 15 minutes away from the latest mass shooting in San Bernardino, which puts into perspective how much of a reality this topic is. I find myself qualified to write about this topic because I am an American citizen that values my rights written in the Constitution and feel that they are being threatened.

 My first article written by Kit Daniels is called, "10 Reasons Why Gun Control Won't Work." It is most definitely a bias argumentative source that gives the reader 10 reasons outlining why gun control should not become stricter in this time of crisis. Kit posted this article on December 8th, 2015, which confirms the topics relevance. He starts out his central claim by using the recent shootings of Paris and California as evidence of the failure of strict gun laws. Paris has one, if not the most, strict gun laws in France, and California is the same scenario in America, yet two of the largest mass shootings just occurred in these two places. Kit then questions the integrity of President Obama by pointing out multiple examples of Mr. Obama supporting Isis against the Syrian government in the past. He finishes up his persuasive article by mentioning the fact that if a gun confiscation were to occur, then the second, fourth, fifth, and fourteenth Amendments would be broken! Focusing our efforts on controlling the criminals and terrorists is much more important then trying to enforce the broad term of gun control on all citizens. 

A majority of these crimes are carried out through the use of automatic assault rifles, which is very alarming to most people. My second article uses statistics to prove that America has the most armed civilians today, and are better off because of this. The author, Kyle Becker, starts of his argument by eliminating the pre-conceived notion that guns are the problem by stating, "According to the FBI, the #1 weapon used in violent crimes ...  is a baseball bat. Why is there no outcry to restrict baseball bat ownership?"(Becker) This statistic shows that it is not the gun causing the violence, but instead the person behind the gun. Kyle Becker also shows a chart of the "ten big killers" in the United States and Firearm homicides are last behind the likes of tobacco use and non-firearm homicides. This articles statistical research provides me factual evidence that will be a crucial part in my future essays.

My third article, "Gun Grabbers Put Rights In Bulls eye" takes a political outlook on this subject, which is not something I want to do very much, but is needed to present the counter-argument. It uses Obama and his administration as the leaders of the gun control enthusiasts and gives reasons to why their ideas of this issue are incorrect. The author, William Hoar, also discusses the misunderstandings of assault rifles and criticizes the media for giving these guns such a bad reputation. Assault rifles accounted for 2% of homicides last year, but are perceived to be in way more crimes than that.

I am a firm believer in our Second Amendment rights and think that bearing arms should not be messed with. This research topic presence two opposing sides, with one believing in less guns in the world and the other believing in more guns. Both sides can present strong cases, which makes this issue difficult to argue, but also motivates me to persuade those who disagree with me. In every article that I have read thus far, it is easy to determine that everyone agree there has been to many shootings in this country recently. What brings disagreements among the sources is what is causing these shootings and how we are going to fix this dilemma. There are small steps that can be taken to help insure that this country is a safe place, but removing guns from the hands of the good guys is not the way to do this. The perspectives of each different argument are so contrastive, that reading the different perspectives frustrate me in a sense and only strengthen my belief in the side I argue for. This semester I will be proving why encouraging law-abiding citizens to retrieve guns in this time of crisis is a much more effective model to ending mass shooting then that of what is being portrayed in todays media. America was built on toughness and grit, and we must not forget our right to self-defend!

