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A speech about how gun control is now and how its dangerous to be alone.

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The best 7 minutes of gun control speech!

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A plan about to end gun control and abandon these consequences in the past.

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Shows that their having a debate over gun control about being banned.

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Although the debate over gun control flares after each school shooting or spike in crime, it is genuinely difficult to pin down the start of this societal conflict. Some might argue that it began long before living memory, in December of 1791 when the Second Amendment was ratified by the states and added to the nation's Constitution. Maybe the rift began in the Depression era, when public outcry at the crimes of gangsters like Al Capone and John Dillinger empowered President Franklin Roosevelt to launch a "New Deal for Crime" and to pass the National Firearms Act of 1934-the first federal gun control law in American history. Or, if you favor a more modern outlook, then the debate began with Senator Biden and President Clinton who, respectively, were the author and enacter of the 1994 assault weapons ban. While the origins of the gun control debate might be best left to the historians, I am more interested in the premises of the entire debate regardless of when it started.

For my entire life, the gun control debate has primarily been fought on philosophical grounds. One side argues that the Second Amendment is an absurd holdover of a past era. They believe its existence not only makes our country a more dangerous place, but also renders us a backwater laughing stock in the eyes of the world. The other side counters that although the Second Amendment is hundreds of years old, it continues to be both our surest safeguard against tyranny and represents the timeless truth that human beings have a fundamental right to defend their life, liberty and property. Yet, as the debate has swung back and forth over time, the march of technological progress continued in the background. For years, we have relentlessly argued about whether we "should" restrict gun ownership. But in doing so, we never considered whether we "could."

Some day in the future, when the gun control debate is entered into the history books, we may not remember names like Antonin Scalia (known significantly for his pro-Second Amendment judicial philosophy) or Jim and Sarah Brady (founders of the Brady Campaign against gun violence) as much as we remember Cody Wilson.

Although you may never have heard of him-Wilson does not possess the status and power of a Supreme Court Justice or the influence of a prominent social activist-he could end up shaping gun rights more profoundly than anyone else alive. Which is why Wired magazine declared him the 14th most dangerous person in the world. Why? Because for years, Cody Wilson has been arguing that sharing gun blueprints online is an activity fully protected under the U.S. Constitution. More importantly, on July 10th, 2018, the federal government agreed. In a landmark settlement between Wilson and the Department of Justice, the DOJ conceded that "forbidding Wilson from posting his 3-D-printable [gun] data... was not only violating his right to bear arms but [also] his right to freely share information." By arguing that his 3D gun blueprints were protected under both the First and Second Amendment, Wilson may have opened Pandora's box.

From its beginning, the gun control debate relied on the assumption that gun control was possible. Prior to now, that assumption has gone untested because government has always exerted some control over the means of production and distribution of firearms. Whether that was accomplished through regulation of corporate gun manufacturers or by restricting transactions in firearm stores and outlets, the government traditionally had various means to impose political will over the process of acquiring a firearm.

What makes Cody Wilson's legal victory so consequential is that it raises a new, important question for public policy analysts and government regulators to consider: how do you control the means of production of firearms when it will soon exist in each and every household? Although there is some debate on this point, the answer appears to be that at the most extreme it will be impossible or, at the least that it will be incredibly difficult. Without a doubt, a lot more guns will be entering our society.

To supporters of the Second Amendment, this will come as a welcome development. Not only does this mean that the Second Amendment will become nearly unassailable, but it could also mark the start of the "Tamigotchization" of gun culture. Much like SoundCloud enabled everybody to become their own music producer and distributor, the freedom to download, produce, and customize a wide variety of firearms without leaving the home will likely lead to a surge in the cosmetic and practical diversity of many weapons.

Simultaneously and understandably, Wilson's legal victory could stir a panic amongst many gun control advocates and average people. Not only will the old calls to " Make America Australia" (due to the desire of many American gun control advocates to copy Australia's ban on firearms) have to be quickly thrown out the window in the face of a new reality, but also a new fear of mass violence overtaking our country might arise in the coming years. Moreover, the anxiety over the idea of unrestricted gun ownership is not limited to left or right-even some gun rights supporters are worried. While I respect the concerns of those worried about impending " endless gun violence," I believe that in the US's case there is cause for optimism.

Although gun control advocates are probably worried about an incoming wave of unregulated firearms drowning our society, they really should not be any more or less worried than they are at present because we are currently living that reality. By nearly any metric, American society is awash with guns. This may be cold comfort, but given that we already live in a society with more guns than people, I doubt that an extra deluge of firearms will make much of a difference to our gun-related problems. Ironically, given that the Internet will make this surge in firearm ownership a global phenomenon, I would far prefer to be living in the gun-saturated US than in gun-free Australia while this huge change occurs. Although American gun culture certainly has many significant downsides, one huge benefit to its existence is that our society has plenty of infrastructure built up to handle mass firearm ownership. In the U.S., organizations like the National Rifle Association and the Boy Scouts of America, among others, annually teach millions of people of all ages how to handle and use a gun safely and responsibly. On a more granular level, millions of families in the United States own firearms and make an effort to teach their children how be a responsible gun owner. Unfortunately for countries like Australia, the United Kingdom or Japan-countries that have had tight restrictions on gun ownership for years-they do not have anything approaching the level of societal experience with t gun ownership that the US has. One shudders to imagine the degree of societal upheaval that might occur if an entire nation had to rapidly adapt to a new reality of mass, unregulated, civilian firearm ownership with no prior experience. They may never love guns, but even liberals might be thankful that the U.S. will never have to go through such a white knuckle transition.

To those who continue to believe, despite this huge, impending change in how guns are produced and distributed, that gun control remains possible, I envy your sense of control over the world. Going forward, gun control advocates should take pause and assess what is feasible. While the current products of 3D printing technology are rudimentary, the potential remains. With time and research, 3D printers themselves will only become cheaper and more accessible. Their products will be more intricate, more deadly and nearly untraceable. If gun control advocates fail to realize that 3D printing technology has the potential to seriously cripple their movement, then they will be caught in a sad place: standing athwart the inevitable tide of technological progress, yelling "Stop!"

Reiss Becker is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays.

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Although the debate over gun control flares after each school shooting or spike in crime, it is genuinely difficult to pin down the start of this societal conflict. Some might argue that it began long before living memory, in December of 1791 when the Second Amendment was ratified by the states and added to the nation's Constitution.

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Mass shooting times to show why guns should not be sold to the public.

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After the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February, Congress did not act. But state legislatures did, passing 69 gun control measures this year - more than any other year since the Newtown, Conn., massacre in 2012, and more than three times the number passed in 2017.

According to an end-of-year report by the national advocacy group Giffords, provided to The New York Times before its publication this week, more than half of the states passed at least one gun control measure in 2018.

The report also found a decrease in measures enacted to expand access to firearms - a major change from the year after the Newtown shooting, when a surge in gun control laws was matched by a surge in gun rights expansions.

This year, legislators rejected about 90 percent of state-level bills backed by the National Rifle Association, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group created by Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire and former New York City mayor.

Data provided by the N.R.A. shows a similar overall trend this year, with gun control measures passed overtaking pro-gun measures for the first time in at least six years, though to a lesser extent than the Giffords data shows. The N.R.A. also said that nearly 200 gun control measures were rejected this year, but did not provide a list of specific legislation backing up their claims.

"Michael Bloomberg-funded gun control groups have invested unprecedented resources in their state lobbying and public relations efforts shifting the gun control battleground to the state level," the N.R.A. said in a statement. (Mr. Bloomberg provides about a third of the budget of Everytown for Gun Safety, and does not fund the Giffords group.)

The N.R.A. added that it "continues to win legislative battles in state legislatures across America like the important self-defense legislation that was passed out of the Ohio legislature last week."

Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

Seventeen students and staff members were killed in the Parkland attack, but it was certainly not the nation's first mass shooting. It is, however, the first one that appears to have been a legislative turning point - a "tectonic shift," in the words of Allison Anderman, who compiled the report as managing attorney at the Giffords Law Center.

"A lot of policies that we had been working on as a movement for years were pushed across the finish line because of Parkland," Ms. Anderman said.

In large part, the shift this year is a product of a less visible turning point after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, in which 20 children and six adults were killed. In response to that massacre, activists founded the organizations that would become Giffords and Everytown for Gun Safety, which gradually built the infrastructure that the current movement has taken advantage of.

The laws were passed in both Republican- and Democrat-controlled state legislatures.

In the past, state laws were broken down roughly as you would expect, with stricter gun regulations in states controlled by Democrats and more permissive laws in states controlled by Republicans. That divide is still apparent, but the exceptions are increasing.

Democratic state legislatures passed more than twice as many gun restrictions as Republican legislatures this year, and Republican legislatures were the only ones to pass laws loosening restrictions.

Still, Republican chambers passed 18 gun control laws, and Nebraska - whose Legislature is conservative even though it is formally nonpartisan - passed another two. Republican governors also signed restrictions passed by Democratic legislatures in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont.

Florida, New Jersey and Vermont have passed the most laws.

More than half of the gun restrictions passed this year came in a post-Parkland flood in March and April, including omnibus bills in Florida and Vermont.

In many places, legislators said outright that the Parkland attack had motivated them to act. Nowhere was this clearer than in Florida, where the shooting took place. Legislators there named their omnibus bill the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, after the school where the shooting took place.

By the time the Parkland shooting happened, Moms Demand Action, the grass-roots arm of Everytown, had a chapter in every state and local groups in hundreds of communities. Nationally, the group's volunteer numbers tripled in the months after the shooting, and those volunteers organized en masse in favor of gun restrictions and against permitless carry bills in Alabama, Oklahoma, Virginia and other states. All of the permitless carry bills were defeated.

"There was this structure we had built that could take in all of that anger and heartbreak and make it into action and put it into passing laws," Taylor Maxwell, a spokeswoman for Everytown, said in September.

Jim Mone/Associated Press

Another factor was strategic. Many people who wanted stricter gun laws despaired when Congress didn't pass any after Sandy Hook. But it was precisely that inaction in Congress that prompted advocates to start focusing on state legislatures instead.

And in some states, a third front has opened up: ballot measures. In last month's election, voters in Washington State approved an initiative that, among other things, expanded background checks, raised the minimum age to buy semiautomatic rifles, established a waiting period and mandated safe storage of guns.

Laws addressing domestic abuse, bump stocks and background checks were popular.

Many of the restrictions passed this year are popular across the aisle. Polls show that public support for universal background checks is almost unanimous. Extreme risk protection laws, commonly known as red flag laws, are also very popular; they allow judges to order the confiscation of guns from people who family members or law enforcement believe pose an imminent threat. Such a law might have been able to prevent the Parkland massacre, whose perpetrator had been reported to the F.B.I. multiple times.

Bans on bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire almost as rapidly as machine guns, have enough bipartisan backing that the Trump administration plans to enact one at the national level.

Other measures - like banning certain types of guns, restricting concealed carry and capping magazine sizes - are more divisive, though many of them still have majority support in polls.

Most states have their legislative sessions in the first half of the year, and activists on both sides are gearing up for the next round.

Robin Lloyd, government affairs director at Giffords, said two areas of focus next year would be extreme risk protection laws and laws banning 3D-printed and other untraceable firearms.

Groups like the N.R.A. have been focusing on loosening restrictions on where guns can be carried - for instance, by allowing them in schools - and on letting people carry concealed weapons without a permit.

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After Parkland, a New Surge in State Gun Control Laws (Published 2018)

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After the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February, Congress did not act. But state legislatures did, passing 69 gun control measures this year - more than any other year since the Newtown , Conn., massacre in 2012, and more than three times the number passed in 2017.

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Gun violence is around every corner if your in a populated city or somewhere, So many innocent people died due to these horrors

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Our gun-data spreadsheet now includes spending on state- and federal-level lobbying; state and federal contributions from gun control groups, gun rights groups, and gun manufacturers; contributions to members of Congress; and current NRA data.

Gun violence is a fact of life in the United States, and mass shootings continue to occur with frightening regularity.

Mass shootings are often quickly politicized as lawmakers and members of the public alike grapple with how to address senseless gun violence. But organizations on both sides of the issue have been working in Washington for decades, contributing to decades of political gridlock broken in June 2022 by the bipartisan gun safety bill.

National outcry for solutions after several high-profile mass shootings preceded recent legislative action. Less than two weeks after a May 10 shooting left 10 people in the Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, N.Y., dead and several others injured, 19 children and two adults were in an elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Between the two mass casualty events, another left one dead and multiple injured at a Taiwanese church in California. The and shootings are being investigated as hate crimes.

Congress passed bipartisan legislation that expanded background checks for buyers under 21, funds state intervention programs including so-called "red flag" laws and allocates millions for mental health and school safety resources. The bill also cracks down on gun trafficking and straw purchasers and expands the ban on domestic abusers to include serious or recent partners. Fifteen Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the legislation, although a majority of congressional Republicans, backed by prominent gun rights groups including the National Rifle Association, opposed the bill as too broad.

President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on June 25, 2022.

A week later, a gunman killed seven people at a 4th of July parade in the Highland Park neighborhood in Chicago. The killing highlighted acknowledged limitations of the bipartisan bill to stop such mass shootings, but broader bans on assault rifles or other weapons are unlikely to pass the current Congress.

We've been here before

Deadly shootings across the country shock the conscience and spur debate in both communities and Congress.

In April 2019, a shooting at a synagogue in the town of Poway in Southern California killed one and injured three in what officials deem a hate crime. The Poway synagogue shooting came exactly six months after a man spouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire on worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in an attack that left 11 dead. The Anti-Defamation League described the Tree of Life shooting as on the Jewish community in American history.

The deadliest mass shooting in modern American history occurred one year earlier, in Oct. 2017, at a Las Vegas music festival, resulting in the deaths of 58 concertgoers and injuring hundreds more.

Only 16 months before that, a gunman armed with a handgun and a semi-automatic rifle murdered 49 people and injured 58 at an Orlando nightclub in what was then the country's worst mass shooting. The horrific attack in Orlando came less than six months after a man and a woman opened fire at a San Bernardino, Calif., social services center, killing 14 and injuring 22.

The issue of how to strike a balance between gun rights and public safety has been a political hot potato for years. Prominent gun rights organizations consistently spent millions more on lobbying in Washington than their gun control counterparts, according to OpenSecrets data, contributing to decades-long stalemate.

But former President Donald Trump repeatedly pledged to protect Second Amendment rights and often warned gun owners that their Second Amendment rights are "under assault." In an April 2019 speech to NRA members, he will not ratify America's participation in the international Arms Trade Treaty, which would provide some international oversight on arms sales.

In opposition to the Republicans, the Democratic-controlled House prioritized passing gun control legislation. The House previously with some bipartisan support that strengthen and expand the background check process and reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, because of the bill's measure that seeks to prevent domestic abusers from obtaining guns.

In June 2016, Democrats mounted a successful filibuster that forced Senate Republicans to vote on four gun control proposals - none of which passed.

A .44 caliber political issue

The last major piece of gun control legislation to make it into law prior to the bipartisan gun bill passed in June was the assault weapons ban, passed in 1994 as part of a larger crime-related bill approved by Congress and signed by then-President Bill Clinton. But the ban, which applied to the manufacture of 19 specific models of semi-automatic firearms and other guns with similar features, expired in 2004, and repeated attempts to renew it failed.

81% of Americans

told Pew Research Center in 2021 that they support expanding background checks to include private firearm sales and purchases at gun shows, including a majority of Republican respondents. Preventing individuals with mental illnesses from purchasing guns is also supported by the vast majority of people on both sides of the political spectrum.

Some Democrats thought their support for the assault weapons ban cost them control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections. Whether or not that's true, there's little question that the politics of gun ownership have swung to the right. Republicans largely oppose gun control, and Democrats are split, with some lawmakers cautious about going against the views of more conservative constituencies, especially in rural districts.

Gun control versus gun rights was a major issue of the 2020 presidential election. One Democratic candidate, Rep. (D-Calif.) made the central issue he ran on. The necessity of more gun control legislation was among all Democratic candidates, several of whom own guns.

Despite highly publicized mass shootings, no earlier gun control measures, with the exception of the bump stock ban, made it into law prior to the recent bipartisan gun safety legislation.

OpenSecrets of the 46 senators who voted against the amendment had accepted significant campaign contributions from the political action committees of gun rights groups. There were exceptions to the rule, notably the measure's sponsors, Sens. (D-W.Va.) and (R-Pa.). But in general, the correlation was a close one.

Guns and money

There's no denying that much of the strength of the leading gun rights organization - the NRA - comes from its broad and passionate membership base and its mastery of grassroots politics.

But if lawmakers seem to tiptoe around gun issues, that could be in part because the NRA and other gun rights groups are loaded for bear with a seemingly limitless stash of cash ammunition.

During the 2018 midterm elections, gun control groups outspent the NRA for the first time by a $2.6 million margin. But gun control groups' total $23.5 million in 2020 election spending was dwarfed by the NRA's spending that cycle, and gun control organizations are outpacing gun rights groups in outside spending ahead of the 2022 midterms.

The NRA spent $29.1 million in 2020 federal elections, most of that to support in the final months of the cycle, with around $19.5 million of that spending bankrolled by its newly created super PAC and $9 million by its traditional .

Just four years earlier, the group spent during the 2016 election cycle, breaking the group's prior spending records. Of that, $31.2 million went to supporting Trump's first presidential campaign. Most of the NRA's 2016 spending was routed through its main " " group, which does not disclose its donors.

During the 2018 election cycle, the NRA made around $9.4 million in outside expenditures, a significant decrease from the $27 million spent during the 2014 midterm election cycle and a massive drop from its 2016 presidential election spending.

Those interests gave $52 million to candidates and party committees from 1989 through the second quarter of 2022, with nearly all of that going to Democrats.

Despite being by gun rights lobbying and campaign contributions, gun control groups have increased outside spending since the 2018 election cycle. Gun control advocates $16.6 million into outside spending in 2020 compared to just $14,000 in 2016.

Most of the gun control movement's political clout comes from two well-connected organizations. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety super PAC is the leading outside spender supporting gun control. The super PAC $3.6 million of the total $4.4 million spent by gun control groups through May in the 2022 cycle. , a super PAC backed by Bloomberg, supports a variety of causes including stricter gun laws. After spending a whopping $56.5 million on the 2020 election, mostly supporting President , the super PAC has poured over $1 million into 2022 midterms as of May. It spent around $37.5 million on independent expenditures during the 2018 midterms. The money supports federal candidates who favor gun control and attacks those who do not.

Another major gun control lobby spender is , an organization founded by gun violence victim and former Rep. (D-Ariz.) and her husband, current U.S. Sen. (D-Ariz.), who is running for re-election in Arizona in the 2022 midterms. Giffords spent about $500,000 on in 2021. The group's hybrid PAC spent more than $11 million during the 2020 election cycle and spent about $6.6 million during the 2022 election cycle as of June figures from OpenSecrets.

Powerful gun rights groups including the NRA and have poured millions into lobbying, campaign contributions and outside spending to advocate for the right to bear arms. At least Americans owned guns in 2021.

Gun rights groups are still powerful in the realm of lobbying, consistently spending more money to influence policy than gun control organizations. Gun rights groups a record $15.8 million on lobbying in 2021 and have $190 million in lobbying efforts since 1998.

Gun rights advocates spent more than $114 million of that total since 2013. Lobbying by gun rights advocates nearly tripled in 2013 after a gunman murdered 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14, 2012. The following year was the the Senate came to passing meaningful gun control legislation in the decade between the shooting and the bipartisan gun control bill.

Groups advocating for gun control spent a record $2.9 million in 2021. But gun control advocates, spearheaded by and Everytown for Gun Safety , spent just under $30 million on lobbying from 1998 through the second quarter of 2022 - about six times less than gun rights groups spent over the same period.
- Taylor Giorno, Anna Massoglia, Raymond Arke, Geoff West (July 2022)

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Our gun-data spreadsheet now includes spending on state- and federal-level lobbying; state and federal contributions from gun control groups, gun rights groups, and gun manufacturers; contributions to members of Congress; and current NRA data. Gun violence is a fact of life in the United States, and mass shootings continue to occur with frightening regularity.

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How gun control must be stopped before the stats keep increasing.

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Table of Contents

gun control, politics, legislation, and enforcement of measures intended to restrict access to, the possession of, or the use of arms, particularly firearms. Gun control is one of the most controversial and emotional issues in many countries, with the debate often centring on whether regulations on an individual's right to arms are an undue restriction on liberty and whether there is a correlation between guns and crime. Proponents of gun-control legislation assert that the strict enforcement of gun-control laws saves lives and reduces crime. By contrast, opponents of gun control assert that minimal restrictions on guns ensure that individuals have adequate means for self-defense and that a wider distribution of firearms results in safer communities.

International considerations

Gun control is an issue throughout the world, with each country having the sovereign authority to regulate firearms within its borders. The vast majority of industrialized countries have strict gun-control regulations. For example, Japan places restrictions on the possession and use of all firearms except in limited instances (e.g., hunting, athletic events, and research). Canada permits the possession and use of firearms for competitions and target practice, but it forbids the possession of handguns unless an individual can show that a handgun is needed for self-defense. The United Kingdom has banned handguns altogether and limits the possession of firearms to activities such as hunting, target shooting, pest control, and slaughtering. Meanwhile, Germany permits the ownership of certain firearms so long as an individual meets the requirements for a firearms ownership license, which include that the applicant be age 18 or older and have expert knowledge in the handling of firearms and have the necessity to possess such firearms.

Historical origins of gun control

If gun control is defined as placing legal restrictions on arms to protect civil society, its origins can be traced back to ancient Rome. In Rome arms were seen as the means to maintain standing armies. To prevent these armies from undermining and overthrowing civil authority, Roman law forbade military arms from crossing the Rubicon. This law would remain in effect until Julius Caesar violated it when he maintained a standing army to assume power as emperor of Rome, a historical event that was etched as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. In fact, this historical event is of such significance that both the English Bill of Rights (formally An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown; 1689) and the U.S. Constitution (1789) include provisions that prevent the maintenance of standing armies during times of peace without the consent of the legislative branch.

In England arms were always controlled by Parliament and the crown according to socioeconomic status. As English reformer and MP John Sadler wrote in 1649 in his pamphlet titled "The Rights of the Kingdom," "Men ought indeed have Arms, and them to keep in Readiness for Defence of the King and Kingdom," but Parliament defined which men were to "provide and bear arms, how, and when, and where." It should be emphasized that arms were primarily seen as tools for the common defense of the realm. Even for this purpose, however, arms were strictly regulated by the government to ensure that they were readily available for the common defense and were out of the hands of dangerous persons. For example, during the reign of Henry VIII (1509-47), restrictions were placed on "weapons" and "defensive armour" being brought to any town, church, market, or other congregation except upon the hue and cry (a practice whereby criminals were pursued with cries and sounds of alarm). Henry VIII had enacted other gun-control laws, including restrictions on the length of guns, on who was qualified to possess guns, and on when and where they may be fired.

Gun restrictions in England were rarely the subject of parliamentary debate. However, from the mid-17th to the late 18th century, members of Parliament periodically proposed laws that would remove gun restrictions and allow English householders to have and maintain guns for the defense of the realm. For instance, during the convention in 1689 that drafted the English Declaration of Rights, Thomas Erle, who had served as a general and was a member of Parliament, proposed that "every substantial householder in any town or city should be provided of a good musket in case of invasion." In 1693 a similar proposal was made to allow every Protestant to keep a musket "for the security of the government." Such proposals failed, however, because they would "arm the mob" and thus were considered "not very safe for any government."

Naturally, the safety of the government was not the only reason restrictions on guns were imposed in England. Gun-control restrictions sometimes supported the hunting of game or the access of hunters to game preserves, as well as to prevent crime and murders. In the 1750s the Scottish philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson opposed such restrictions as preventing the establishment of a national militia because, although a "few domestic inconveniences" would occur, this should not "deter us from the necessary Steps" in arming the people for "our own Defence, against a foreign Enemy." The English writer and MP Soame Jenyns also justified the removal of gun restrictions to further the establishment of a national militia. Although "Accidents [such as murder] may sometimes happen," it did not matter, he argued, because "every man" in the militia will "beget three Children before he kills one Man."

In the end, neither of these arguments affected the well-established gun restrictions in England. In fact, when mid-18th century militia reform was finally adopted, George II (1727-60) ensured that all militia arms were kept by local lord lieutenants and only distributed during times of militia muster and training. This was a practice that dated to the 1550s, during the reign of Mary I, when the law required that all guns and arms in cities, boroughs, towns, parishes, and hamlets were to be kept by local government officials and in places of safekeeping.

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Gun control | Laws, Debate, Pros, Cons, & Facts

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Gun control, politics, legislation, and enforcement of measures intended to restrict access to, the possession of, or the use of arms. Debates over such measures often center on whether regulations are an undue restriction on liberty and whether there is a correlation between guns and crime.

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The percentage of people that own guns make an expansion in America.

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History of Gun Control Laws
Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, enslaved people, indentured servants, and Native Americans; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned.

Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. Several colonies' gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. Read more history...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

The Second Amendment is not an unlimited or individual right to own guns.

Further, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of militias to own guns, not the right of individuals to own guns. Former Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissenting opinion for District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, wrote, "the Framer's single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee 'to keep and bear arms' was on military use of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias," hence the inclusion of the phrase "well regulated militia."

Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, stated there is nothing about an individual right to bear arms in the notes about the Second Amendment when it was being drafted, discussed, or ratified; the US Supreme Court declined to rule in favor of the individual right four times between 1876 and 1939; and all law articles on the Second Amendment from 1888 to 1959 stated that an individual right was not guaranteed.
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Pro 2

More gun control laws would reduce gun deaths.

Approximately 50% of unintentional fatal shootings were self-inflicted; and most unintentional firearm deaths were caused by friends or family members.

Five women are murdered with guns every day in the United States. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 5,364 US soldiers were killed in action between Oct. 7, 2001 and Jan. 28, 2015; between 2001 and 2012 6,410 women were killed with a gun by an intimate partner in the United States.

Researchers found that a "general barrier to firearm access created through state regulation can have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide rates in the United States. Permit requirements and bans on sales to minors were the most effective of the regulations analyzed."

Gun licensing laws were associated with a 14% decrease in firearm homicides, while increases in firearm homicides were seen in places with right-to-carry and stand-your ground-laws.

More gun control leads to fewer suicides. When US gun ownership goes down, overall suicide rates drop; meanwhile, each 10 percentage-point increase in gun ownership is linked to a 26.9% increase in the youth suicide rate. In Indiana and Connecticut, after "red flag" laws to remove guns from people who may pose a threat were enacted, gun suicides decreased by 7.5% and 13.7% respectively, while suicides by other means did not decrease during the same time. A person who wants to kill him/herself is unlikely to commit suicide with poison or a knife when a gun is unavailable.

The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 31% of total accidental shooting deaths could have been prevented by installing safety devices on guns: 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks; and 23% of accidental shooting deaths by adolescents and adults per year could be prevented by loading indicators showing when a bullet was in the chamber ready to be fired.

Marjorie Sanfilippo, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Eckerd College who has researched children's behavior around guns, stated, "We put gates around swimming pools to keep children from drowning. We put safety caps on medications to keep children from poisoning themselves.... [B]ecause children are naturally curious and impulsive, and because we have shown time and again that we cannot 'gun-proof' them with education, we have a responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of children."
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Pro 3

The presence of a gun makes a conflict more likely to become violent.

The FBI found that arguments (such as romantic triangles, brawls fueled by alcohol or drugs, and arguments over money) resulted in 1,962 gun deaths (59.9% of the total).

An editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health noted, "gun-inflicted deaths [often] ensue from impromptu arguments and fights; in the US, two-thirds of the 7,900 deaths in 1981 involving arguments and brawls were caused by guns." A study published in the same journal found that "the weapons used [in altercations]... were those closest at hand." And thus, according to another study, "[r]ather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."

Common sense gun control laws can decrease the likelihood of a violent situation turning deadly. President Ronald Reagan and others did not think the AR-15 military rifle (also called M16s by the Air Force) should be owned by civilians and, when the AR-15 was included in the assault weapons ban of 1994 (which expired on Sep. 13, 2004), the NRA supported the legislation. A Mother Jones investigation found that high-capacity magazines were used in at least 50% of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012.When high-capacity magazines were used in mass shootings, the death rate rose 63% and the injury rate rose 156%.
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Pro 4

A majority of adults, including gun owners, support common sense gun control such as background checks, bans on assault weapons, and bans on high-capacity magazines.

According to a Feb. 20, 2018 Quinnipiac Poll, 97% of American voters and 97% of gun owners support universal background checks. 67% support a nationwide ban on assault weapons, and 83% support mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases.

As much as 40% of all gun sales are undocumented private party gun sales that do not require a background check (aka the "gun show loophole").

53% of all adults surveyed approve of high-capacity magazine bans. 89% of adults with a gun in the home approve of laws to prevent the purchase of guns by the mentally ill, and 82% approve of banning gun sales to people on no-fly lists.

77% of Americans support requiring a license to purchase a gun.

Don Macalady, member of Hunters against Gun Violence, stated, "As a hunter and someone who has owned guns since I was a young boy, I believe that commonsense gun legislation makes us all safer. Background checks prevent criminals and other dangerous people from getting guns."

Many would like to see the U.S. enact more laws like other countries, citing the fact that countries with restrictive gun control laws have lower gun homicide and suicide rates than the United States. Both Switzerland and Finland require gun owners to acquire licenses and pass background checks that include mental and criminal records, among other restrictions and requirements. In 2007 Switzerland ranked number 3 in international gun ownership rates with 45.7 guns per 100 people (about 3,400,000 guns total). In 2009 Switzerland had 24 gun homicides (0.31 deaths per 100,000 people) and 253 gun suicides (3.29 deaths per 100,000 people). Finland ranked fourth in international gun ownership rates with 45.3 guns per 100 people (about 2,400,000 guns total). In 2007 Finland had 23 (0.43 deaths per 100,000 people) gun homicides and 172 gun suicides (4.19 deaths per 100,000 people).
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Con 1

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects individual gun ownership.

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution reads, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Lawrence Hunter, Chairman of Revolution PAC, stated, "The Founders understood that the right to own and bear laws is as fundamental and as essential to maintaining liberty as are the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and the other protections against government encroachments on liberty delineated in the Bill of Rights."
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Con 2

Gun control laws are discriminatory and infringe on citizens' rights

Current gun control laws are frequently aimed at inner city, poor, black communities who are perceived as more dangerous than white gun owners. Charles Gallagher, Chair of Sociology at LaSalle University, stated that some gun control laws are still founded on racial fears: "Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1."

Background checks and micro-stamping are an invasion of privacy. Background checks require government databases that keep personal individual information on gun owners, including name, addresses, mental health history, criminal records, and more. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worried that Senator Harry Reid's 2013 proposed background check legislation (the bill failed 54-46) would have allowed the government to keep databases of gun purchases indefinitely, creating a "worry that you're going to see searches of the databases and an expansion for purposes that were not intended when the information was collected." Micro-stamping similarly requires a database of gun owners and the codes their personal guns would stamp on cartridge cases. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote that they would oppose any legislation that infringes "on the American people's constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance."

Gun control laws infringe upon the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety. The police cannot protect everyone all of the time. 61% of men and 56% of women surveyed by Pew Research said that stricter gun laws would "make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families." Nelson Lund, Professor at George Mason University School of Law, stated, "The right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself is a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life" and "many [gun control laws] interfere with the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals." A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, a gun control advocate, carried a concealed gun when her life was threatened and her home attacked by the New World Liberation Front in the 1970s.

Gun control laws, especially those that try to ban "assault weapons," infringe upon the right to own guns for hunting and sport. In 2011, there were 13.7 million hunters 16 years old or older in the United States, High-powered semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are used to hunt and in target shooting tournaments each year. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, "So-called 'Assault weapons' are more often than not less powerful than other hunting rifles. The term 'assault weapon' was conjured up by anti-gun legislators to scare voters into thinking these firearms are something out of a horror movie... [T]he Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, both labeled 'assault weapons,' are the rifles most used for marksmanship competitions in the United States. And their cartridges are standard hunting calibers, useful for game up to and including deer." According to a Feb. 2013 Pew Research report, 32% of gun owners owned guns for hunting and 7% owned guns for target or sport shooting.
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Con 3

Gun control laws simply do not work.

Gun control efforts have proved ineffective. According to David Lampo, Publications Director of the Cato Institute, "there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates." Banning high-capacity magazines will not necessarily deter crime because even small gun magazines can be changed in seconds.The "gun show loophole" is virtually nonexistent because commercial dealers, who sell the majority of guns at shows and elsewhere, are bound by strict federal laws. According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, most state-level gun control laws do not reduce firearm death rates, and, of 25 state laws, nine were associated with higher gun death rates.

Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people). The country has only one legal gun store (the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales), compared to at least 63,709 legal gun stores and pawn shops in the United States as of Feb. 10, 2014. Mexico's gun store is on a secure military base and customers must present a valid ID, go through a metal detector, and turn over cellphones and cameras to guards. To actually buy a gun, customers have to show proof of honest income, provide references, pass a criminal background check, prove any military duties were completed with honor, and be fingerprinted and photographed. If allowed to purchase a gun, the customer may buy only one gun (choosing from only .38 caliber pistols or lower) and one box of bullets. Between 2006 and 2010, Mexico's one gun shop sold 6,490 guns, yet as of 2012, Mexicans own about 15,000,000 guns, or about 13.5 guns per 100 people.

The main reason gun control doesn't work is because laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws. Of 62 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012, 49 of the shooters used legally obtained guns. Collectively, 143 guns were possessed by the killers with about 75% obtained legally. A Secret Service analysis found that of 24 mass shootings in 2019 at least 10 (42%) involved illegally possessed guns.

The logical conclusion is that gun control laws do not deter crime; gun ownership deters crime. A study in Applied Economics Letters found that "assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level" and "states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murders." While gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, the murder rate decreased. Journalist John Stossel explained, "Criminals don't obey the law... Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these [illegal] weapons now have a much easier job... As the saying goes, 'If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.'"

More gun control is not needed; education about guns and gun safety is needed to prevent accidental gun deaths. 95% of all US gun owners believe that children should learn about gun safety. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute, Inc (SAAMI), stated, "Whether in the field, at the range or in the home, a responsible and knowledgeable gun owner is rarely involved in a firearms accident of any kind." According to Kyle Wintersteen, Managing Editor of Guns and Ammo, studies show that "children taught about firearms and their legitimate uses by family members have much lower rates of delinquency than children in households without guns" and "children introduced to guns associate them with freedom, security, and recreation-not violence." [82] [85] [154]
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Con 4

Gun control laws give too much power to the government and may result in government tyranny and the government taking away all guns from citizens.

57% of people surveyed by Pew Research in Feb. 2013 said that gun control laws would "give too much power to the government over the people."

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre stated, "if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it [the Second Amendment] there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny."

Concurring, Alex Jones, radio host, stated, "The Second Amendment isn't there for duck hunting, it's there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs... 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!"

Marco Rubio (R-FL), US Senator, speaking about gun control laws during his 2016 presidential campaign, stated, "If God forbid, ISIS visits our life, our neighborhood, our school, any part of us, the last thing standing, the last line of defense could very well be our ability to protect ourselves."
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Did You Know?

1. A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer, and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer.

2. The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks.

3. The Centers for Disease Control listed firearms as the #12 cause of all deaths between 1999 and 2015, representing 1.3% of total deaths. They were also the #1 method of death by homicide (67.3% of all homicides) and by suicide (51.9% of all suicides).

4. Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people).

5. Carrying a concealed handgun in public has been permitted in all 50 states since 2013, when Illinois became the last state to enact concealed carry legislation.

6. Five women a day are killed by guns in America. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute.

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Proponents say the Second Amendment is not an unlimited right to own guns. Opponents say the amendment protects individual gun ownership.