Americans are faced with an ever-growing problem of violence. Our streets have become a battleground where the elderly are beaten for their social security checks, terrified women are viciously attacked and raped, teen-age gangsters shoot it out for a patch of turf to sell their illegal drugs, and innocent children are caught daily in the crossfire of drive-by shootings. America can’t ignore the damage that these criminals are doing to our society, and must take actions to stop these horrors. However, the effort by some misguided individuals to eliminate the legal ownership of firearms does not address the real problem at hand, and simply disarms the innocent law-abiding citizens who are most in need of a form of self-defense.

Today's gun control activists are a slightly different breed. They claim that gun violence in this country has gotten to a point where something must be done to stop it. They would like to see criminals disarmed, and they want the random violence to stop. Although they have a point, they are going about it in the wrong way. While claiming that they want to take guns out of the hands of criminals, they work to pass laws that would take the guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens instead. For this reason the efforts at gun control do not address the real problem of crime.

A criminal is someone who does not obey the law. A law-abiding citizen is someone who does obey the law. Therefore, if laws are passed restricting ownership of firearms, which category of people does it affect? The answer is that gun control laws affect law-abiding citizens only. By their very nature, the criminals will continue to violate these new laws, they will continue to carry their firearms, and they will find their efforts at crime much easier when they know that their victims will be unarmed. Innocent people are turned into victims when new laws make it impossible for them to fight back. An unarmed man stands little chance against an armed one. An interesting recent development has been the backlash against the gun-control advocates. In many states, including Florida and Texas, citizens have stated that they want to preserve their right to carry firearms for self-defense. Since the late 1980s, Florida has been issuing concealed weapons permits to law-abiding citizens, and these citizens have been carrying their firearms to defend themselves from malicious crime (Firearms Litigation Clearinghouse 1998). The result is that the incidence of violent crime has actually dropped in contrast to the national average. Previously, Florida had been leading the nation in this category, and the citizens of that state have welcomed the change. Gun control advocates tried to claim that there would be bloodshed in the streets when these citizens were given the right to carry arms. They tried to claim that the cities of Florida would become like Dodge City with shoot outs on every street corner. These gun control advocates were wrong. Over 200,000 concealed carry permits have been issued so far, with only 36 of these permits revoked for improper use of a firearm (Firearms Litigation Clearinghouse 1998). This statistic is easy to understand. It is the law-abiding citizens who are going through the process of getting concealed carry permits so that they may legally carry a firearm. The people who go through this legal process do not want to break the law, and they do not intend to break the law. The people who do intend to break the law carry their guns whether or not the law allows them to do so. The second Amendment States; all men are free to bear arms. Thus is true, but should only be awarded to law abiding citizens.

Criminals always find ways to get guns. In this country we have criminalized the use, possession, sale, and transportation of many kinds of narcotics, but it's still easy for someone to take a ride and purchase the drugs of their choice at street corner vendors. Firearms and ammunition are just as easy for these black-market entrepreneurs to deliver to their customers. Today, criminals often carry illegal weapons, including sawed-off shotguns, automatic guns, and homemade zip-guns, clearly showing their disregard for the current laws which make these items illegal.

Gun control advocates have argued their case by demonizing the gun itself, rather than addressing the people who commit violent crimes, which is the main fallacy in their argument. They cleverly attempt to claim that possession of a gun turns average citizens into bloodthirsty lunatics. This theory falls apart under close scrutiny. If legal possession of a firearm caused this sort of attitude, then why are crime rates highest in areas such as Washington, D.C. and New York City which have strict gun control laws? And why are crime rates dropping in states such as Florida where private ownership of firearms is encouraged? Legal ownership of a gun does not cause crime.

The most recent efforts of the gun control lobby has been to claim that certain types of guns and ammunition are inherently evil. They assign catch phrases such as "assault weapons" and "cop killer bullets" to broad categories of firearms and ammunition in the hopes that people will believe that some guns have an evil nature. Most people who are unfamiliar with firearms do not fully understand what these phrases mean, and they accept the terms being used without question. What people do not often understand is that the term "assault weapon" has been defined to include all semi- automatic weapons, and "cop killer" bullets are, any bullet that can penetrate a police officer’s body armor. It comes as a surprise to most people that a large number of simple hunting rifles can do both. Does ownership of one of these weapons cause people to become mass murderers? It does not, and we must not fall into the trap of blaming the sword for the hand that wields it.

The act of making it illegal to own firearms does little to prevent criminals from getting guns. These laws only restrict people who respect the law itself, the people who would only use firearms for legal purposes anyway. When we give people the right to defend themselves, we find that criminals start looking for other victims out of fear that they will become the victims themselves. We must work to reduce crime in America, but should look at the problem realistically, and develop plans that would be effective. It is obvious that gun control laws are neither realistic, nor effective in reducing crime. Therefore, one must direct our efforts toward controlling crime, not controlling legal ownership of firearms.