Research Paper

Saving At Least One Life

Whether or not civilians should be allowed to own guns, is more of a complex question than a simple yes or no answer. However, if you think of positives for both sides of the issue, it is clear that keeping guns out of the hands of civilians is the right choice. It may be a hard law to enforce but if this law saves the life of one person the work going along with enforcing the law is worth it. If people had to work and put thought into harming someone instead of just going out and buying a gun, would violence go down? If guns weren’t present in a house during a family argument, would the person have more time to think about what they were doing instead of harming their family? Would making guns less available to kids make school shootings a thing of the past? Guns need to be taken out of the hands of civilians to save lives and to stop violence.

“Roughly two-thirds of all gun-related deaths were self-inflicted accidents, suicides, or murders within the circle of family and friends. Guns purchased as protection against criminals or intruders all too often killed the people they were expected to protect.” (Nye 67) If this is true what’s the point of owning a gun? If it’s for self defense, is it worth it to have a gun to protect your family from a danger that may or may not happen? It seems to me if someone is trying to protect their family they way to do it is by not having a gun in the house. If having a gun in the house makes you feel safe in case of a burglary, wouldn’t you feel even safer knowing that guns cannot be purchased and this person wouldn’t have a gun on them? “Americans found guns ready to hand when they were careless, angry or depressed.” (Nye 167) David Nye the author of “Technology Matters” brings up a good point by saying how it is dangerous to have guns around while in arguments or feeling upset. When an argument gets heated its hard to think twice about what you are doing while you are angry. I feel like the phrase—sleep on it—can actually change someone’s mind and make them think about the situation going on, however, if the person has a gun readily available to them and has such strong emotions going on they aren’t as likely to think twice about their actions.

“In 1993, about 39,595 persons were killed with guns, the highest number in the nation’s peacetime history. Nearly half of these deaths, 48% were suicides, 47% were homicides, 4% were fatal gun accidents, and 1% were due to legal intervention.” (Kleck 1) Suicide is a serious issue, some may have suicidal thoughts for a long time before they decide to act on them or some may decide to act on a brief intense emotional experience. For both cases, it’s the time that they make up their mind to harm themselves that is relevant to the gun control issue. If a gun wasn’t around would they have the chance to change their mind or simply find a different way to kill their self? “A suicide attempter is only temporarily intent on dying, denied a gun, he substitutes a slow acting method. This allows others to intervene to prevent death, without the attempt being followed by later attempts.” (Kleck 273) I feel if someone attempts suicide by using a gun it is like a 100% chance that it will be fatal, however, if a gun is not the weapon choice maybe it will give the person more time. For example, if someone tries to overdose on pills while the affects of the pills are kicking it, it gives them time to think about their actions and find help or it gives them time for someone to find them before the worst happens. Basically without guns it gives a person with suicidal thoughts a second chance in most cases. Gary Kleck the author of “Targeting Guns” thinks that there is an association with gun use and victim death, since guns are so lethal. (Kleck 216) Since the choice of weapon really does play an impact in suicidal cases, maybe it is important to look into making guns illegal for this fact alone.

However some argue that it isn’t the guns fault it is the person using the guns fault. Constance Emerson Crooker the author of “Gun Control and Gun Rights” agrees with this. He says, “the majority of gun owners are responsible, and that you cannot blame crime on the tool, but on the criminal using the tool.” (Crooker 8) If this is true than why are so many people making the same mistake with the same tool? For instance in the article “Keeping Guns Out of the Hands of Abusers: Handgun Purchases and Restraining Orders” it states that over half of guns purchased are bought after the persons restraining order expires. (Vittes 1) “Households in which intimate partner violence has occurred may be more likely to contain a handgun than households without incidents of violence, intimate partner assaults involving firearms are 12 times more likely to result in death than those involving other weapons or bodily force.” (Vittes 1) After reading this it is obvious that it is true it is the criminals fault for doing the crime. However, with guns around instead of just injuries the chances of death are higher. I think the criminal and the weapon go hand-in-hand, it’s the criminal’s choice to use the gun but if guns were illegal maybe it wouldn’t be around when domestic violence gets out of control.

Along with purposely using a gun to harm someone, accidents can occur when having a gun around. “By definition injuries caused by accident are not prompted by any intent to kill (unlike suicide and to a lesser extent homicide). More than half of all gun accidents occur in and around the home; most of the rest are hunting related.” (Spitzer 55) It is uncommon to be killed by a gun because of an accident but it still happens. It is more likely for someone to get injured. Accidents from firearms normally consist of people being irresponsible while handling guns, or keeping a loaded gun in the house especially when kids are present. (Spitzer 50) “Accidents are directly attributable to three factors: gun availability or density (the number of guns in a locality), the accessibility of guns (the ease or difficulty in operating a gun), and conduct (how guns are actually handled, including frequency and skill).” (Spitzer 54) Even if it is uncommon to have accidents while handling guns they do happen which makes sense if there are no guns there wouldn’t be accidents involving guns. The main reason someone has a gun around is for self defense but this is where the most accidents happen. “The risk of a gun accident to the average gun owner will outweigh any reasonable estimate of the defensive value of guns.” (Kleck 293) How bad the accident is depends on what gun the gun owner is using, some guns do a lot more damage than others, if guns can not be banned from citizens hands should a certain types of guns be banned?

“What remains a constant is the effort to identify and more strictly regulate guns or ammunition that are regarded as especially dangerous and criminally useful, to search for especially ‘bad’ guns that are even more problematic than guns in general.” (Kleck 106) The main type of gun used in crimes are ‘Saturday Night Specials’ these are small, cheap handguns, these are specially used from criminal use and have really no other purpose. (Kleck 130) They could cause injury or even death but one would have to be a skilled guns man to be able to deal either to a victim because these guns are hard to aim, unreliable, and have low power, they are useless for someone to own it just for self-defense. Another main type of gun used is hand guns, however if these were banned the user would just go to a long barrel gun which is more lethal. (Kleck 136) “Never place restrictions on a subcategory of weapons without also placing restrictions at least as stringent on more deadly, easily substituted alternative weapons, Thus, controls aimed solely at handguns or small, cheap handguns are a mistake, because they encourage substitution of more lethal types of guns.” (Kleck 139) It seems like even having restrictions wouldn’t help with the problems of violence with guns, the only way to go is banning civilians from owning handguns.

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I feel like all the authors, Nye, Spitzer, Kleck, and Crooker would agree that it may take time but focusing on gun control could help save lives. There is no guarantee that criminals will not change their choice of weapon to something other than guns but there is also no evidence that taking guns away will not lessen the violence. I feel that gun control is important because if it saves one life it is worth it, that person will be out of harms why by the government stepping up and enforcing new laws to help save citizens.