Due to the most recent Las Vegas massacre in which the shooter utilized a number of various illegal fully automatic firearms, the idea of gun control has now become a subject undergoing even more intense study. While one could argue that a heightened vetting process would be beneficial in the process of purchasing guns, no law can be put into place to decrease the number of fully automatic firearms in circulation because they are already illegal. If the government were to strip gun rights from the law-abiding citizen, they would then be unable to defend themselves from these illegal guns possessed by criminals who, by definition, do not follow the law. Thus, raising the question: would strengthening limitations and/or abolishing the second amendment and right to bear arms cause a positive or negative effect on the United States?

While it is inarguable that “easy access to guns makes deadly violence more common in drug deals, gang fights and street corner brawls,” there is no way to simply “extinguish [the] supply of guns” totaling around 260 million in the United States (Wilson). In order to possibly determine “how much the U.S. murder rate would fall if civilians had no guns, we should begin by realizing — as criminologists Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins have shown — that the non-gun homicide rate in this country is three times higher than the non-gun homicide rate in England” (Wilson). Therefore, it could be argued that for potential “historical and cultural reasons, Americans are a more violent people than the English, even when they can't use a gun” (Wilson). This fact confirms the idea that the murder rate won't be reduced even if, by some political or constitutional miracle, The United States became a gun-free country. However, in Richard Poe’s The Seven Myths of Gun Control, Poe disagrees with this claim. He argues the point that countries other than the U.S. have “[suffered] war, dictatorship, and genocide on a scale unimaginable to Americans” (Poe 24). While this is a valid point that other countries such as Germany and the Soviet Union have undergone infamous genocides due to inhumane dictatorships, the United States has gone through a mass genocide of their own. In the case of the Native American mass depopulation, guns were used to wipe out mass numbers of Natives, along with diseases brought with them from Europe. According to Poe, gun control activists simply like to use the “high crime rate in our cities and the occasional eruption of armed psychotics in our schools and shopping malls [to] mark us as singularly bloodthirsty people” (Poe 24).

Jeffrey Goldberg, a staff writer for The Atlantic has reached the conclusion that any form of stripping gun rights at this point in time “will have limited effects because of the hundreds of millions of guns that already exist in private hands” (Goldberg). The author then claims that the movement is now more “geared toward focusing on concealed carry and the impact of law-abiding citizens carrying concealed weapons” (Goldberg). Although antigun activists claim that concealed-carry laws would increase violence, Goldberg claims that “there is no evidence that they do” (Goldberg). Situations such as shootings on campuses “raise the question of whether properly trained students carrying firearms could actually decrease the possibility of and impact of such shootings,” or if it would cause more of a hazard (Goldberg). To date, “more than 8 million vetted and (depending on the state) trained law-abiding citizens possess state-issued "concealed carry" handgun permits, which allow them to carry a concealed handgun or other weapon in public” (Goldberg). Anti-gun activists believe the expansion of concealed-carry permits represents a serious threat to public order. But what if, in fact, the reverse is true? Could it be possible that “allowing more law-abiding private citizens to carry concealed weapons—when combined with other forms of stringent gun regulation—actually reduce gun violence?” (Goldberg). According to Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles] and the author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, “permit holders in the U.S. commit crimes at a rate lower than that of the general population” (Goldberg). "We don't see much bloodshed from concealed-carry permit holders, because they are law-abiding people," Winkler said. "That's not to say that permit holders don't commit crimes, but they do so at a lower rate than the general population. People who seek to obtain permits are likely to be people who respect the law" (Goldberg). John Lott, an economist and a gun-rights advocate “maintains that gun ownership by law-abiding citizens helps curtail crime” (Goldberg). He claims that this is due to the fact that “the crime rate among concealed-carry permit holders is lower than the crime rate among police officers” (Goldberg). Today, the number of concealed-carry permits “is the highest it's ever been, at 8 million, and the homicide rate is the lowest it's been in four decades—less than half what it was 20 years ago” (Goldberg). However, the number of people allowed to carry concealed weapons is actually considerably higher than 8 million, because residents of Vermont, Wyoming, Arizona, Alaska, and parts of Montana do not need government permission to carry their personal firearms. These states have “what Second Amendment absolutists refer to as "constitutional carry," meaning, in essence, that the Second Amendment is their permit” (Goldberg). Many gun-rights advocates see a link between an increasingly armed public and a decreasing crime rate. Lott “[thinks that] effective law enforcement has had the biggest impact on crime rates, but [Goldberg] thinks that concealed carry has something to do with it. We've seen an explosion in the number of people licensed to carry. You can deter criminality through longer sentencing, and you deter criminality by making it riskier for people to commit crimes. And one way to make it riskier is to create the impression among the criminal population that the law-abiding citizen they want to target may have a gun” (Goldberg).

Lichtblau shares observations and findings that “indicate a strong correlation between stricter gun laws and lower rates of violence” (Lichtblau). He brings to attention a study conducted four and a half years ago by authors from the Center for American Progress who “believe their findings on the link between gun measures and public safety should bolster those efforts to impose tougher restrictions” (Lichtblau). The study utilizes examples of “10 gun-crime and violence indicators for each state, including homicides, suicides and accidental shootings, and weighed them against the level” of restriction and regulation of the respective state’s gun laws (Lichtblau). The study found that “states with relatively tough gun laws, including Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, generally had much lower rates of gun violence, while those with looser gun laws — including Alaska, Louisiana and Mississippi — had higher rates” (Lichtblau). The Center for American Progress is clearly and blatantly in favor of tougher gun measures, however “Daniel Webster, an expert on gun violence at Johns Hopkins University, who reviewed the findings, said its methods were scientifically sound and expanded on previous research on the issue” (Lichtblau). He validates the research conducted claiming that he “can’t think of a study that’s as encompassing in all the different metrics — suicide, homicides, accidental shootings, mass shootings, police shootings” (Lichtblau). Mr. Webster has led previous studies at Johns Hopkins that have “found a significant increase in gun homicides in Missouri after the state repealed its gun licensing law — and a significant decrease in gun homicides in Connecticut after it enacted a new licensing requirement” (Lichtblau). However, the NRA remains unconvinced and the group’s spokeswoman, Ms. Baker, claims that “such studies “cherry picked” the evidence, and she pointed to research by John Lott as evidence that tougher gun restrictions have no real effect on reducing gun violence or deaths” (Lichtblau). She then alleges that “poorly drafted ballot initiatives in states like Maine and Nevada do nothing to prevent criminals from obtaining firearms and committing crimes. What we do know is they have unintended consequences that criminalize common practices of otherwise law-abiding citizens,” such as hunting or sports shooting, she said (Lichtblau). There are some potential regulations however that would not be unconstitutional that could be put into place to make it at least marginally more difficult for the criminally minded, for the dangerously mentally ill, or for the suicidal to buy guns and ammunition. Goldberg suggests that “mental-health professionals could be encouraged—or mandated—to report patients they suspect shouldn't own guns to the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]-supervised National Instant Criminal Background Check System, although this would generate fierce opposition from doctors and patients” (Goldberg). Additionally, the gun-show loophole could be closed and there could be longer waiting periods to possibly stop some suicides. Background checks, which are conducted by licensed gun shops, “have stopped almost 1 million people from buying guns at these stores since 1998” (Goldberg). However, there is no way of knowing how many of these people gave up their search for a gun, and how many simply went to a gun show or found another way to acquire a weapon.

In an interview with Fox News, Bill O’Reilly brings attention to the homicide rate in Chicago in which “every two hours someone is shot to death in Chicago, the city with the strictest gun control laws in the country” (O’Reilly). Michael Schaus argues that Chicago's high rate of gun violence coupled with strict gun control illustrates that the problem there is not about guns. Schaus contends that “rather than being a problem of guns, the real problem in Chicago is the ruling politics of the last several years” (Schaus). He claims that progressive, liberal politics created a situation that led to gang violence and criminal activity. Schaus brings light to the fact that “between one Friday night and Sunday evening [May 2-4, 2014], 28 people had been shot in Rahm Emanuel's gun control utopia,” known as Chicago (Schaus). Which, unbelievably, shows an improvement over the previous weekend, which tacked on “more than 40 gunshot victims to the city's climbing statistics” (Schaus). On top of that, with the CPD's [Chicago Police Department's] corruption and “recent scandal surrounding how they classify various crimes, it almost makes you wonder if these numbers are more "ballpark" figures than actual stats” that could possibly be higher. Since the days of former Chicago mayor Bill Thompson came to an end nearly 80 years ago the Democrats have had a “monopoly on efforts to fix violence, gang activity, and inequality in the Windy City” (Schaus). Even Chicago's police superintendent seems to understand this somewhat. Of course, being the Progressive that he is, he “glossed right over the primary culprits for Chicago's woes and instead focused on disarming the law-abiding citizens he has sworn to protect” (Schaus). He made the statements via WGN radio: “It's going to take a while to fix poverty and the breakup of the family unit, and education and jobs. But we can do something about gun laws today and we're just not doing it” (Schaus). Even though having the strictest gun control policies in the country has caused his city to have some of the highest crime rates in history, he seems to think that by making it even stricter, this would somehow decrease the failure he has already experienced. The fact is, the failure of Liberalism has brought the city to its current state of deterioration. The Chicago model of “unconstitutional restrictions on keeping and bearing arms has done little more than add fuel to the fire. Politicians, meanwhile, have been more than happy to ignore the easily identifiable, but politically tricky, origins of gang violence and criminal activity” (Schaus)

While in theory, requiring background checks seems like the simple solution to the problem, the issue is not as black and white as that. If a felon is denied a gun at the local Dick’s Sporting Goods, depending on how truly determined they are to obtain a firearm, nothing is stopping them from paying cash to someone selling them out of the back of their truck. Therefore, while background checks certainly would not hurt, they are not the answer to the far from simple predicament. Background checks vary state by state depending on the variables included in the purchase. The anti-gun establishment likes to make the claim that there are no gun laws, however this is not entirely accurate. Some states do require background checks to purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer, however there are ways around this “known as the "gun show loophole" [in which] most states do not require background checks for firearms purchased at gun shows from private individuals -- federal law only requires licensed dealers to conduct checks” (Gun Show Background Checks State Laws). However, some states have “opted to go further than federal law by requiring background checks at gun shows for any gun transaction, federal license or not”  (Gun Show Background Checks State Laws). The majority of these states have laws instated mandating that background checks are required “at the point of transfer for all firearms. Alternatively, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey and North Carolina regulate purchases by prohibiting private dealers from selling to individuals who do not have licenses/permits, which they obtain following background checks. Some states' requirements are limited only to handgun purchases” (Gun Show Background Checks State Laws). While there clearly are laws put into place to limit the selling of firearms without a background check, as Wilson points out, “even if there were even tougher limits, access to guns would remain relatively easy” (Gun Show Background Checks State Laws). This is mainly due to the fact that if a felon fails a background checked and is denied that purchase of a gun, all they would have to do is either steal one or obtain it by means of “straw purchases made by a willing confederate” (Wilson). As you can see, much like Wilson brings to attention, it is virtually pointless to instate new “background check or waiting-period laws to prevent dangerous people from getting guns” because “those that they cannot buy, they will steal or borrow” (Wilson). Therefore, it is understood why one would think that mandatory background checks would prevent guns from getting in the wrong hands, consequently decreasing violent crimes committed with the use of guns; in a perfect world this would be the case. However, as I’m sure everyone would agree, we live in a far from perfect world. 

Instead what some think should be put in place is a terrorist watchlist that the NRA claims, in a tweet, would create “due process and right to self-defense for law-abiding citizens” meanwhile keeping guns out of terrorists’ hands. In an interview with Fox News, Bill O’Reilly presented the idea of “congress debating a law that says: if you are on a federal watchlist as a suspected terrorist, then some of your rights are suspended, just by being on that list. These suspended rights could include purchasing firearms, as well on getting on planes” (O’Reilly). O’Reilly is referring to something similar to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database which is the U.S. government’s primary watch list, and what people usually mean when they refer to the terrorist watch list. “It contains about 1 million records. About 5,000 of those records — 0.5 percent — are about Americans” (Freskos). The screening database is subdivided into other lists. The most well-known of these is the no-fly list, “whose members are barred from commercial air travel that passes through the United States” (Freskos). The no-fly list contains about “81,000 names, up from 16 on the eve of September 11, 2001. About 1,000 are Americans” (Freskos). The FBI could easily add a subset category of a list of people that should not be sold a gun. They should also not sell to anyone that is already on the watchlist for a separate reason.
