In today’s world, gun control is one of the most widely-debated and most controversial topics that people speak on. The issue 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. As the debate continues to be heavily circulated throughout the news, there are many people who disagree with the idea of increased gun control entirely 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” (US Const. Amend. II), meaning that people should be able to possess guns freely no matter what the case or the situation is. When comparing gun laws in the United States from state to state, according to the Los Angeles Time, the state known to have the strictest gun laws is California. However, according to that same source, a somewhat recent mass shooting that took place in California proves those gun laws to be pretty ineffective. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple, opened fire on December 2nd, 2015 at a large holiday party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. From this shooting, fourteen people were killed and 22 were injured, and both attackers ended up being killed as well in a gun battle with the police. Unfortunately, those extremely strict gun laws in California did not stop those criminals from doing what they did in any way whatsoever, so what makes people think any other law will stop any other criminal? 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 even end up reducing crime or murder rate much 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 Gillespie, 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” (Gillespie). He states this to prove the fact that a criminal will do whatever they want to do in order to get a gun, whether that act is illegal or not. According to Gun Owners of America, 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. A popular prosecutor in the area said the results did not turn out very well at all. Homicides ended up “increasing dramatically over the course of those next few years” (Pratt), 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, however, 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, which is clearly seen through the facts and statistics given related to that case. As a matter of fact, according to that same source, D.C. still has some of the strictest gun laws in the United States, but is still actually considered to be one of the most dangerous places to live across the entire country. All in all, this goes to show that regardless of any gun ban whatsoever, a criminal will do what a criminal wants to do. That is very sad to say, but also extremely accurate according to the many statistics out there relating to gun regulation in correlation to gun crime in the United States and elsewhere too. 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, according to Mises Institute, which states that the increase in gun control “ended up leading up to an almost total ban on handguns and many other basic guns as well” (McMaken). However, since those gun control laws were enacted, the homicide rate has increased dramatically. John Lott, a columnist for Fox News, states that 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 there. Not only did gun control not work in other countries, but it will most certainly not work in the United States either, which is clear to see if one lines up all of the facts. Along with that information, a statistic from the Crime Prevention Research 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. Rather than being oblivious to the facts, people need to start looking deep into them instead, and realize that taking away people’s guns will give a reverse effect to the problem that is trying to be solved in the first place.

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, like for self-defense purposes. The right to self-defense is a basic human right that deserves every bit of protection at every level of the U.S. government, and nobody should ever be denied that right, especially when put in situations where one is faced with grave danger. If one believes in the right to life, then one must believe in the right to have the means to properly defend that life. With increased gun control, every United States citizen would not have the opportunity to have access to any guns at all for those protection purposes. Then what do you do if someone tries to rob you, attack you, or murder you using any other form of weaponry? Unfortunately, you can not do much at that point except hope for the best, especially in split seconds like that. According to The New York Times, in 2009, four gunmen burst into a store in Harlem, New York, owned by a 75-year-old man, Charles Augusto. The gunmen demanded cash and threatened the owner and employees, pistol-whipping them in the process. Unfortunately, this was not the first time this had happened to Augusto. 20 years earlier, similar events took place in that same store, and with the owner not being defended, the criminals ended up getting away. However, this time Augusto was not defenseless and he was ready to fight back. Fearing for his employee’s lives and for his life as well, he grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun that he had purchased after the first robbery, and he fired on the four gunmen. In doing so, he killed two of them and injured the other two. Augusto recalled the events that took place that day and said, “I’m either going to kill them or they’re going to kill me. I didn’t like doing that. I didn’t have any choice” (Augusto qtd. in McFadden). Just as it was in this situation and as it is in many others as well, nobody wants to have to take someone’s life because of something like that. However, when one is faced with a situation where it is between their own life or someone else’s, with that someone else being a criminal, they usually do not have a choice. Not to mention that sometimes there is no one else around to help the victims in moments like that.  Obviously police are here to protect us and ensure our safety; that is their job. However, in fast-paced, high-intensity situations like those, one does not always have time to make that call and wait for that help. Because of that, civilian protection of our own is highly important, and owning guns to do just that is something that should never be stripped of us U.S. citizens. According to Gun Owners of America, each year guns are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of United States citizens than to take them. People easily look past this fact and fail to realize just how important guns are for self-defense, but that statistic says it all, proving that self-defense should always prevail over increased gun control in any situation. 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, more often than not, ends up saving lives of innocent citizens rather than taking them. Not only can guns help with self-defense by saving lives, but it can also help with self-defense by preventing hundreds of thousands of crimes that could have ended up leading to something much worse, such as armed robberies that could have resulted in a murder by the criminal. 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, mainly due to the important fact that we have looser gun laws in the United States than the other countries mentioned. 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” (Kleck). He believes that because of the evidence, the lower rate of armed burglaries in the United States is directly rated to widespread gun ownership. In looking deep into those statistics and many others, it is easy to recognize that guns help with self-defense purposes in a lot more ways than one, and increasing gun control would unfortunately take away that fundamental human right, leaving people without the ability to protect their own lives in situations where they may desperately need to, which usually always tends to be the case.

While some people believe that gun control will never work, there are definitely many that are for the matter of increased gun control. As more school shootings, like the Sandy Hook shooting where Adam Lanza shot 20 elementary school kids, church shootings, like the Charleston, South Carolina shooting where nine 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. Those people are for gun control because they believe, as a main, over-arching reason, that more gun control laws would potentially reduce crime in the long-run. However, there are a great deal of statistics out there that completely shut that argument down and prove it to be wrong in all aspects. A recent study done by the University of Pittsburgh shows that “nearly 80% of gun crimes are committed with illegally-possessed guns” (Ingraham).  This proves what people have been saying all along, which is that criminals, by definition, do not follow the law in any way. Crimes of all sorts will be committed no matter what laws the government tries to put in place. Taking away guns would only lead to criminals finding another means of murder, or somehow smuggling guns illegally, in the same way that illegal drugs are acquired. Because of that, increased gun control laws would do nothing to prevent crime or make U.S. citizens safer in the end. 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. According to CNS News, in January of 2015, The White House unveiled a plan that consisted of orders to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct research on the causes and prevention of gun violence in the United States. The Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council released the results of their research through the CDC shortly after. The researchers conducting the study compiled data from previous studies to help guide current and future studies, and they noted that “almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are just as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year” (Tabirian). This means that guns are used for self-defense almost just as much as they are used by criminals. Those who are for increased gun control fail to realize this because they think that taking away guns to diminish criminal acts trumps what they believe to be the small amount of self-defense related gun uses that were reported. It is definitely true that self-defense cases do not get reported by news sources as often as the other cases do, but the facts and statistics show just how important guns are for that basic right to self-defense. To add onto those reasons, many people are for increased gun control because they believe that 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. Unfortunately, increased gun control will not stop a person who struggles with suicidal thoughts and tendencies. Taking away guns will only lead to those people finding another way out. Rather than taking away one means of suicide, people should focus more on suicide prevention and awareness to decrease those statistics. 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, which clearly dismantle the argument entirely of being for increased gun control.

In conclusion, there are many reasons 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 take 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, and 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 in the long run.
