Gun Control
Uploaded by dougd on Nov 05, 2002
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...