
In today’s world, gun control is one of the most widely-debated and most controversial topics that people speak on. As more school shootings, like the Sandy Hook shooting where Adam Lanza shot 20 elementary school kids, church shootings, like the Charleston shooting where 9 innocent lives were taken, and police shootings and shootings attacking specific races take place, like the Black Lives Matter vs. Blue Lives Matter issue, many officials within the political system and also people in general are starting to believe that the laws placed on gun control should be regulated, and in doing so, made to be a lot more strict. However, there are also many people out there who disagree with that belief and still hold true to the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which clearly states “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”, meaning that people should be able to possess guns freely no matter what the case or situation is. This debate between increased gun control vs. decreased gun control has not only caused a lot of mayhem and disagreement throughout the political system, but it has also caused differences within people’s everyday lives as well. Although some people may think that gun control will potentially reduce crime in the long-run and better the country as a whole, the truth is that gun control will never actually effectively work in the United States or anywhere else for that matter.

The main reason gun control is ineffective is that it does not really even end up reducing crime or murder rate as a whole, which tends to be the main reason people are for gun control in the first place. If someone wants to use a gun against a particular person or a group of people in the wrong way, a law will surely not stop them. Nick Gilespie, an American libertarian and journalist, states that “the idea that it’s impossible to legislate lunacy, that no law will prevent a madman from wreaking havoc on an unwitting public, seems like common sense” (Jones). He states this to prove the fact that a criminal will do anything they can to get a gun, whether that act is illegal or not. In the later 1970’s, D.C. put in place a law that banned citizens from owning guns, leaving only police officers able to carry firearms. Obviously many people already owned guns, so those who did were allowed to keep them only if they were disassembled or if the trigger was locked. According to a popular prosecutor in the area, the results did not turn out very well at all. Homicides ended up increasing dramatically over the course of those next few years, proving that the law that was implemented was very ineffective. That gun ban was eventually taken away after the obvious failure, and since then, homicides have steadily declined. The prosecutor did admit that there may have been other factors that went along with the decline in homicides, but lifting the gun ban obviously did not result in a rise in murders. D.C. still has some of the strictest gun laws in the United States and is still actually considered to be one of the most dangerous places to live across the entire country, but the facts clearly show that homicides taken place in D.C. increased dramatically after the ban was put in place, and then later decreased after the ban and law was ruled unconstitutional. All in all, this goes to show that regardless of any gun ban whatsoever, a criminal will do what a criminal wants to do, which is very sad to say but also extremely accurate. Having more strict rules also unfortunately usually ends up in some sort of rebellion against those rules, not only with guns, but in many other situations as well, proving this ineffective in that it does the exact opposite in what we would like for it to do in the first place. Other failed gun bans come to play when you look across the world at the gun situations in England, Ireland, and Canada, and even many other countries as well. England, for example, has experienced a major increase in gun control over the years, which ended up leading up to an almost total ban on handguns and many other basic guns as well. However, since those gun control laws were enacted, the homicide rate has increased dramatically. According to John Lott, a columnist for Fox News, the first significant gun control law that was put in place in England was The Firearms Act of 1920. After that act was adopted, England reached the highest-ever recorded peak of homicides. This same instance happened in Ireland as well after a Gun Confiscation Act was put in place in 1972, and also in Canada after certain gun control laws were enacted. Not only did gun control not work in other countries, but it will most certainly not work in the United States either. Along with that information, a statistic from the Crime Research Prevention center shows that 99% of mass shootings happen to occur in gun-free zones. Some people may ask why this is the case, but the reason for that is actually pretty obvious when thought about: murderers and criminals WANT to target large groups of people; they want to put themselves in the best position to attack as many people as possible. In doing so, they target areas where they are least likely to find armed resistance, which just so turns out to be gun-free zones. These reasons alone prove that gun control is ineffective and does not actually reduce crime or murder rates at all, and in fact tends to increase them instead, which does no good for citizens in the end.

Not only is gun control ineffective in the fact that it does not end up reducing crime or murder rates as a whole, but it also takes guns away from the people who do use them correctly, as for self defense purposes. Along with police help of course, citizens are what take out the people that everyone considers to be the bad guys. With increased gun control, every U.S. citizen would not have access to any guns at all for protection purposes. Then what do you do if someone tries to rob you, attack you, or murder you using any other form of weaponry? You can't do much, unfortunately, in split seconds like that, except hope for the best. Obviously police are here to protect us and ensure our safety, that is their job. However, in fast-paced, high-intensity situations like those, you do not always have time to make that call and wait for that help. Civilian protection of our own is highly important and owning guns to do just that is a basic right of the Constitution that should never be taken away from us. According to Gun Owners of America, each year guns are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of U.S. citizens than to take them, proving that self defense should always prevail over gun control. Gun Owners of America also states that "of the 2.5 million times citizens that use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers, and less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker" (Kleck). This means that using guns for self defense usually, in the end, ends up saving more lives of innocent citizens than it does taking them. A study was done in 1993 by Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist, where he studied crime rates from other countries and compared them to crime rates in the United States. He concluded that the risk of armed robbery is higher in other countries and lower in America due to the fact that we have looser gun laws than those other countries. Kleck states that “the rate of armed burglaries at occupied homes in Great Britain and the Netherlands is 45%, compared to a rate of 13% in the U.S., and comparing those rates to the percentage of armed burglaries in which the homeowner is threatened or attacked (30%), it is concluded that there would be an additional 450,000 burglaries in the U.S. in which homeowners are threatened or attacked if the rate of armed burglaries in the U.S. was similar to the rate in Great Britain” (Garrett). He believes that because of the evidence, the lower rate in the United States is directly rated to widespread gun ownership. Regulating gun control laws and making them more strict will have no positive long-lasting effects according to previous situations and studies done. Any and every country that has tried to increase gun control has ended up having a reverse effect to the problem that was trying to be solved in the first place.

While some people believe that gun control will never work, there are definitely those that are for the matter. Those people are for gun control because they believe, as a main reason, that more gun control laws would reduce gun deaths. According to CNN, “there were 464,033 total gun deaths between 1999 and 2013: 270,237 suicides, 174,773 homicides, and 9,983 unintentional deaths” (Baker). Those for gun control believe that adding gun laws will decrease those gun deaths dramatically and end up saving lives rather than taking innocent ones. Another reason people are for gun control is because they believe that guns are actually rarely used for self-defense purposes in the first place. Another statistic from CNN states that the total number of violent crimes committed between the years of 2007 and 2011 was 29,618,300, and of those crimes only 235,700 victims ended up using a firearm to protect themselves in whatever situation they were in. Those for gun control believe that it is necessary and taking away guns to diminish criminal acts trumps the small amount of self-defense related gun uses that were reported. To add onto those reasons, another reason some people are for gun control is because they believe that more gun control will, in the end, lead to fewer suicides. Suicide is a touchy subject for most, especially for those who have had to deal with it first or secondhand, so because of that people will do just about anything they can in order to decrease the number of suicides. CNN states that “between 1999 and 2013, there were 270,237 firearm suicides in the United States, accounting for about 52% of all suicides during those years” (Baker). These people for gun control believe that taking away guns will help put a stop to suicide, or atleast to gun-related suicide, and in the end it will save lives rather than taking them. Lastly, a reason people support gun control is because they believe that legally owned guns are most often stolen and used by criminals in the end. A report done by the Institute of Medicine in June of 2013 stated that “almost all guns in criminal acts enter circulation via initial legal transaction” (Hardy). This means that if someone buys a gun legally, with intent to use that gun for the right purpose, it will somehow end up in a criminal’s hands in the end, most likely. John J. Donahue, a professor at Yale and Stanford, stated that because guns can be so easily taken away and sold at particularly high costs, having more guns in the equation can actually end up somewhat encouraging more burglary and theft, which is definitely the exact opposite of what U.S. citizens want nowadays. In the end, there are many reasons that people can be for gun control, but it is clear that all of these reasons can be easily refuted. There are statistics that go against all of the facts stated relating to gun deaths and gun violence that were previously mentioned, which refutes the argument of being for gun control entirely.

In conclusion, there are many reasons for why gun control will just not work for the United States or for any country in general. It is completely ineffective when relating it to mere logic and when also relating it to the obvious statistics and studies that have already been published that have to do with increased homicides and gun violence in areas that have tried to regulate gun control by strengthening those laws. It just simply does not work and will not work if more measures are put in place by the government. People need guns for safety purposes, they need them for self-defense, and they need them to help save lives rather than to harm more. Taking away guns from people or adding more gun laws will not help people, but simply harm them in the long run because, according to studies, there are no positive long-term effects of gun control. In the end, gun control has been proven ineffective and unnecessary in a lot of ways. It will do just about nothing to better the United States. Instead of increased gun control, we can continue with intense background checks when purchasing a gun, and we can educate ourselves and learn how to use guns safely and correctly. In doing so, we will make our country a safer and happier place to live in.
