In America today there is a debate that is so large and controversial that it often reaches to the highest levels of the judicial and legislative branches of our government.  This debate has been raging for years and there has been little decision made on the federal side of government on the issue.  The state side on the other hand has been much more active in the issuing of decisions and laws on the topic.  This debate is on the issue of gun control; Gun control is the idea that the government should institute some regulations on the buying and owning of firearms.  With this debate, there comes three major parties that most of the views will be delegated to one side or the other; those three major sides being the conservative party, the liberal party, and the politically neutral party.  The conservative party believes that there should be little to no government intervention on the issues of the people. The liberal party would prefer that the government put into place strict regulations thus favoring government intervention.  The neutral party is often a mix of the two believing that in some cases the government should intervene but in other cases believing the opposite.  Over the years the state levels of government have made progress in banning certain firearms or accessories and also regulating the purchasing and selling of firearms.  The topic that is of the main interest is the effectiveness of these laws and how will the amount of these laws change.  The laws that are in effect currently do little in the way of preventing the gun violence that they were created to protect against.  The amount these laws will however increase in an effort to correct the gun violence that has taken hold in the country.  

Some believe that it is extremely hard to talk about gun control and not to be thrown into a specific group hated by the other. In the article titled “Why We Can’t Talk About Gun Control” written by James Hamblin, Hamblin goes into detail about why he believes that America can not talk about gun control with a calm head.  Hamblin has proof of this; after posting an article that he had written stating “he did not believe it was an infringement of the second amendment to require some training before a person can have a concealed carry” he was called by the vice president of Guns And Ammo which stated that he was terminated (Hamblin). Hamblin believes that the topic of gun control has become so politicized that by talking about it you are forced to take a stand one way or the other. Also by saying something that someone else might not agree upon you can put your career in danger like what has happened to him.

Many of the laws that have been put into play to prevent gun violence have backfired and do not carry out what they were originally intended to do. In an article written for Fox News titled “The Dirty Secret about the Four Senate Gun Control Bills” written by John R. Lott, he goes into detail that the current ways to prevent the purchase of firearms such as the no-fly list, terror watch list, and background checks are extremely unreliable at weeding out the people that should not own a firearm.  Facts state that about 99 percent of the background checks were false and were later overturned, allowing the person to gain back the right to buy firearms (Lott).  In most cases the laws that have been put into place have actually seen an increase in the amount of gun violence.  A study titled “Study: Gun Control Laws do not Reduce Violent Crimes” written by Mark Gius, had findings that stated in an area that increases the amount of gun control laws the gun crime rate in that area will increase (Gius).  This study pulls research from 1980 to 2004 which is a very wide time frame that would give a great view of the implementation of the laws and the aftereffects the policies had whether it be a success or a failure.  

There are two differing points a view of the effects that gun control will have on the gun violence, one of those being that in order to decrease the amount of gun violence you must increase the number of guns that are in the system. The other of the two ideas is that you must decrease the amount of guns and the types of certain guns like fully automatic weapons to decrease the amount of violence in the area.  The valid point from the increasing of guns argument is that with the more weapons that are out on the street the less likely it is for someone to use these weapons to intentionally harm someone because with there being so many weapons out in the community, the possible perpetrator of a crime would think twice about preforming the act out of a fear of running into someone with these firearms thus risking bodily harm to themselves in an attempt of the crime.  A very good example of how increasing the amount of firearms would help to prevent mass shooting in the world today comes from an article written by Jack Hunter title “How Gun Control Kills”.  In this article, Hunter talks about the events of Sandy Hook and how this could have been stopped.  Hunter believes that gun control does not allow people to carry protection for themselves against events such as the Sandy Hook shooting or the attempted shooting two days later at a theater in San Antonio, Texas.  The attempted shooting was thwarted by an off-duty police officer that was seeing the movie.  The shooter’s gun jammed and this allowed the officer to stop “that man with one bullet” (Hunter).  Hunter also goes into detail about the shooting in Tucson, Arizona where six people were harmed including a congresswoman.  The shooter was stopped by a man named Joe Zamudio that only had the courage to stop the man because he was carrying a concealed weapon which gave him the ability to act (Hunter).  

 The second view believes that with a decrease in the firearms and the possession of these firearms being in the correct hands (Those without criminal records or psychological problems) then the criminal and the mental unstable would not be able to obtain the firearms to commit these crimes thus making these crimes more dangerous for the perpetrators and changing their minds about committing the act.  The problem with the second is that with the black markets and other ways to illegally obtain firearms, the criminals would still be able to commit these acts with firearms. Another problem with this viewpoint is that by implementing these laws those who should be allowed to obtain the guns are not, thus leaving them wide open and unprotected against the criminals that obtained firearms illegally.  In an article posted on an internet news site called The Conversation, titled “How dangerous people get their guns” written by Philip cook,  a professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University, the case of the San Bernardino shooting was evaluated to find the source of the firearms used in the attack that killed 14 and injured 22 people. The shooters used “In addition to two pistols, this husband and wife team had two military-style rifles that were purchased by friend and neighbor, Enrique Marquez Jr” (Cook).  Farook used Marquez to purchase his firearms because he believed that he would not be able to pass the background check that is required to be conducted on all buyers(Cook).  If this shooter was able to get around these laws that would have prevented him from purchasing these weapons and killing all those people what is to stop others from doing the same?  The act of Marquez buying these firearms for Farook was illegal but there was nothing done to stop these acts from taking place.  “Marquez has now been charged with several crimes, including making a “straw purchase” – that is, he swore to the dealer that he was buying the guns for his own use, but in fact he was acting on behalf of Farook” (Cook).  Most owners of firearms obtain them by legal means but the criminals more often than not obtain them by nefarious means that are not legal. “A national survey of inmates of state prisons found that just 10% of the youthful (age 18-40 male respondents who admitted to having a gun at the time of their arrest had obtained it from a gun store. The other 90% obtained them through a variety of off-the-book means” (Cook). Typically, the way a gun is sold is that the first sale of the weapon is legal and has documentation then it is sometimes sold off the books several more times.

Some implementation of gun control laws have been put into action already. Certain states have been notorious for implementing laws that will be at the forefront of the march to new regulation. California has been noted as one of the most active of these states. They have enacted laws first that would then be spread across the nation later. One of the most recent of these laws is the legalization of recreational use of marijuana in California against the federal laws that contradict this. The owning of it is still illegal but only to the federal government in that state. Also after the tragedy at San Bernardino the law makers started to make move to make California one of the strictest states on gun control. The lawmakers passed a law to “outlaw the sale of assault weapons with a detachable magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds” (California Senate Approves).  

Gunning for Gun Control: A State by State Analysis of the Effects of Gun Control Policies on Firearm Mortality Rates by Jade Robinson. The central claim of this paper is that gun control is a state problem and should thus be viewed and dealt with on the state level. The author goes into the states and pulls out nine test samples. In these states the mortality rate and the gun control laws are taken into consideration to determine the effectiveness of gun legislation. Those who would read this article and agree with most of the points would be thought of as educated and acknowledge the statistics that have gone into this paper. The more liberal yet still relatively neutral person would read this and agree with the points and the figures that have been shown in the paper. There would also be those that disagree and continue to believe that the mass shootings or shootings of significant figures would have been the same regardless of whether stricter gun laws had been placed in effect. The author of this paper is extremely credible in that this paper was written as a honor thesis at Eastern Kentucky University. Also, this paper was presented last year which would mean that is has more up to date knowledge of the current debate. The author does seem to be a little biased toward the side of gun control as can be seen in the language used to describe the United States as compared to other industrialized countries. 

The article titled “When the People Choose Gun Control” written for the New York Times talks about the fact that people are for reasonable gun control laws but congress is against this and go against the people and pass pro-gun laws. The article also states the fact that Maine has loosened the gun control laws in the state and have changed a law allowing people to buy handguns without a permit that requires them to pass a background check. It has suffered from this and according to the article the “gun homicide rate rose by 18 percent and was almost 50 percent higher than the national average”(When the People Choose).  In many states laws are underway to implement universal background checks that would require you to be screened before you can purchase the firearm.

After all the talk of gun control over the years some have begun to think of a more balanced way that would in theory take parts from both views of the gun control argument and piece them together in a way that could make an attempted at making both side happy.  This idea is well explained in the article titled “Firearm Localism” by Joseph Blocker.  The central claim of this article is that gun control should be tailored to the specific area like it has been for over two hundred years. He brings into reference the town of Tombstone, Arizona and the shooting at the O.K. Corral as an early example of gun control laws. “This Article argues that future Second Amendment cases can and should incorporate the longstanding and sensible differences regarding guns and gun control in rural and urban areas” (Blocker).  Blocker does an excellent job of trying to bridge the gap between the two battling ideas.  Blocker believes that gun crime and gun control are very common in well populated urban areas while opposition to gun control is usually more pronounced in rural areas (Blocker).  The gun control laws should be stricter in the urban areas but should be looser in the rural areas due to the fact that in the rural areas it is more likely that one would own a firearm due to the common activities such as hunting and recreational shooting.  Whereas in urban areas you do not have the space to be preforming these activities.  Blocker also brings up the point that this pattern of stricter laws in urban area is not a new thing and has been around for hundreds of years; “In the founding era, many cities-Philadelphia, New York, and Boston prominent among them-regulated or prohibited the firing of weapons and storage of gunpowder were permitted in rural areas” (Blocker).  

In conclusion, the idea of gun control is an extremely hard topic to get you head around to find the right side. After all the analysis that went into the topic and after reviewing each source I have found that the gun control laws that are in effect are not very effective in combatting wave of violent gun crimes and mass shootings.  There are too many ways that these laws are not working such as the false identifying of people that should not be able to buy these weapons.  It has also been seen that when gun laws are enacted it can limit the ability some people to defend themselves and others like the police officer that stopped the shooting that could have had a dire outcome for those at the movie theater and the man that tackled the shooter that went after the congresswoman in Tucson.  I believe that in spite of this with the recent trends in the increase of gun control laws the amount of these laws will increase as time goes on in an effort to counter act these events. 
