Johnson 1

Tej Johnson
Mrs. Shutt
Pre-AP English 9
18 March 2016
Gun Control:
A topic that has been under tremendous evaluation for years and is becoming even
more relevant at the time of elections. In 1791, the second amendment was ratified by
congress allowing all American citizens to have the right to bear arms. This was a good
law to add to the bill of rights at the time, but now times have changed. There should be
no ban on gun control because bans are ineffective and crime gun crime rates are
down.
Most of the country is in a divide over the issue of guns and more specifically, assault
rifles. While it seems like a good idea to outlaw the sale of rifles to the public, it has
been found that bans are ineffective in lowering gun crime rates. Some may argue that
there needs to be a gun ban on rifles because they are too dangerous and kill too many
people. Yet this, is false. A report done by Louis Beckett in the New York Times, says
that there are 11,000 deaths every year do to firearms but, In 2012, only 322 people
were murdered with any kind of rifle, F.B.I. data shows. This means that out of the
11,000 people that died from guns that year, only about 3% were killed by rifles. Any
ban on rifles, given it be 100% effective, would only drop 3% of the annual gun deaths.
Combining this low rate with the expenses of arresting all the people that buy and sell
assault rifles makes it further ineffective. Next, bans on guns will fail because people

Johnson 2
think of handguns as self protection when in reality, they are the most common weapon.
Beckett wrote, Handguns were used in more than 80 percent of gun murders each
year, but gun control advocates had failed to interest enough of the public in a handgun
ban. This means that the public and gun control advocates dont realize that the guns
they want to keep for self protection are actually the ones doing most of the harm. Until
the nation realizes that, there are only two options. The first being a full ban on all guns
against the second amendment or, no ban at all.
While there are still gun violence crimes occurring in the nation, the rates of them are
dropping. Based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, ...since 1993 the rate
of violent crime has declined from 79.8 to 23.2 victimizations per 1,000 people. This
shows the decrease in violent crime rates over the years. Max Ehrenfreund has an
article in the washington post that states, The number of victims of crimes involving
guns that did not result in death (such as robberies) declined even more precipitously,
from 725 per 100,000 people in 1993 to 175 in 2013. This is just another example of
how the gun crimes are decreasing. Some sources link the decrease to older age in the
population or less alcohol consumption. Whatever the case may be, it's not the guns
causing the few disputes, it's the people.
Its all up to the people. The guns arent the problem, people are. There always has
been and always will be bad people and that means crime. Whether guns are banned or
not, people will find a way to get a gun or use some other weapon to do bad for what
they want. Statistics dont lie and by reading them it is easy to see that gun bans do not
work and are becoming less needed because violent crimes are becoming less
consistent throughout the country as a whole.

Johnson 3

Works cited:

Owen, Sue. "Texas Firearm Homicide Rate down at Least One-third since 1996." @politifact. Tampa
Bay Times, 27 Nov. 2013. Web. 18 Mar. 2016.

Johnson 4
Ehrenfreund, Max. "Weve Had a Massive Decline in Gun Violence in the United States. Heres
Why." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 3 Dec. 2015. Web. 18 Mar. 2016.

Beckett, Lois. "The Assault Weapon Myth." The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 Sept.
2014. Web. 18 Mar. 2016.

Eisen, Lauren-Brooke. "America's Faulty Perception of Crime Rates." The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 16 Mar. 2015. Web. 18 Mar. 2016.

CNN Staff. "Study: Gun Homicides, Violence down Sharply in past 20 Years."CNN. Cable News
Network, 9 May 2013. Web. 18 Mar. 2016.

"Gun Control Debate Explodes on 'The Five'" Fox News. Fox News Network, 28 Aug. 2015. Web. 18
Mar. 2016.