Gun Rights in the United States - Research Paper Example

GUN RIGHTS IN AMERICA Few people would deny that in America today gun ownership and gun-owners rights are very controversial issues. The second amendment of the Constitution is a contentious thing. But almost no one would also deny that few constitutional rights have shaped American culture or inspired so much debate as the Second Amendment: the right to bear arms. For opponents of this constitutional right, the Second Amendment is old fashioned and it has been interpreted incorrectly. It has been stretched to mean things it was never intended to mean. It has led to an unpleasant and dangerous national gun fetish with individuals brandishing weapons as a supposed right on every street corner in America. But for proponents, the second amendment is an upper tier constitutional right intended to affirm personal freedom and protect people from the tyranny of a state that monopolizes the use of force. The fact that the second amendment has been so bitterly debated may indicate that the freedom it guarantees is a controversial one. Indeed, where freedom is involved there is always much to discuss and much at stake. The truth is that the second amendment is one of our core freedoms as Americans. No one—not even the government—has the right to take away the peoples right to bear arms. The arguments in favour of gun rights will be explored in this essay. In the course of the discussion a number of arguments against gun ownership will be surveyed and rebutted. It is always wise to examine one's opponents arguments. The essay will conclude with a call to arms: gun owners must fight for their rights against an increasingly powerful liberal bias in American culture and media.6 People who support gun rights and freedom see things in a different way than those obsessed with controlling other peoples lives. The truth is that guns are a way of life in America and opponents of gun control believe that the right to bear them must be protected. The second amendment should not be watered down. Every American has the right to carry a gun. They are often very strident in this belief (Halbrook 1999) The debate about the second amendment has gone back and forth over the years, with the courts offering many different interpretations of exactly what sort of rights this amendment actually provided to the American people. Many critics of America’s gun laws point to the high amount of gun ownership and the high amount of gun crime and suggest that laws need to be stricter or guns need to be confiscated altogether. Sarah Thompson, however, suggests that guns actually lower the crime rate. This is at first a counterintuitive argument but one she provides serious and convincing evidence for. Concealed carry laws make it impossible to know who is carrying a gun and who is not (Thompson, 98). Therefore people are much more cautious about committing crimes as they do not know when or if they could be shot. These sorts of laws actually create a more of a polite society. People respect one another. The truth is that self defence is a constitutionally protected right such proponents argue and that right should permit people to carry guns on them at all times should they wish to do so. They should also be permitted to conceal these weapons should they so desire to do so. In a sense it a matter of victim versus criminal. Statistics also bear this out. One study recently found the following to be true: Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year—or about 6,850 times a day20. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives (National Safety Council). The question that these kinds of opponents of gun control ask is: Should victims be permitted to defend themselves from criminals, or should criminals, carrying illegal weapons be permitted to run riot through the streets of our country? This is an interesting opinion and provides much food for thought. It is also an example of how emotionally-charged this debate can become (Lott, 101). Those who support gun rights argue that the second amendment should be accepted by everyone to mean that gun control is not acceptable, as it is currently proposed by many members of the Democratic Party for example. The debate has changed a bit recently as the definition of the second amendment has become clearer. This is an interesting constitutional right to discuss especially because of the Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) which for the first time in a long time finally clarified how the Second Amendment should be interpreted. Because there are two version of the amendment and because the punctuation is somewhat ambiguous, the amendment has been able to support different interpretations for many years. As well, people tried very hard to import their own political opinions into the brief sentence that makes up the amendment. A liberal interpretation of the clause allowed places like the District of Columbia to make sweeping laws that implemented hand gun bans, for example. In their recent ruling, however, the Supreme Court decided that such a ban would be unconstitutional. [T]he Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home [and] that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. (District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)) An important part of this debate centres around the question of what kinds of infringements to the right to bear arms are constitutional and which are not. This is indeed a difficult subject, but one the Constitution is well-suited to answer. While the Court might believe all guns are legal, the American people are clearly not behind this. Still, the court has come down in favour of gun rights. Many critics of America’s gun laws point to the high amount of gun ownership and the high amount of gun crime and suggest that laws need to be stricter or guns need to be confiscated altogether. They simply do not believe that the right to bear arms has any positive upside. They see only the devastation that guns cause and the serious violence that plagues America. They believe that this can be solved by eliminating guns from America's streets. The truth, however is that America's gun homicide right is not nearly as bad as many other countries. Guns are well-regulated in the United States as compared to countries such as Colombia and Honduras, as seen in the chart below: Still, these critics of gun rights persist. For example, in her article about handguns Nan Desuka suggests that a ban on handguns would dramatically reduce the amount of violent crime in American cities. She says that just the presence of weapons on the streets of American increases the chances someone will be injured. Even law-abiding citizens who keep such guns in their homes risk the chance that they will accidentally go off (Desuka 2006). Not all gun crime is intentional, she argues. To those who argue guns should be allowed for self-defence, Desuka writes, “one should remember that at beast 90 percent of America’s burglaries are committed when no one is at home. The householder’s gun, if he or she has one, is in a drawer of the bedside table, and the gun gets lifted along with the jewellery, adding one more gun to the estimated hundred thousand handguns annually stolen from law-abiding citizens.” She fails to mention how this gun can be used for self-defence and to save the lives of gunowners who are being robbed. She stakes out the hard left position in this debate, that of strict prohibition. That is one of the common positions that can be seen on the political left. Gun control is obviously a political issue and it breaks down on the political spectrum in a very simple way (DeConde, 25). People on the left believe guns should be limited or banned. They think the government should step in and ban guns. People on the right usually support freedom so they would be opposed to a ban. Almost all people who support a ban on guns or more gun control come from the political left. They clearly have never read the constitution. What they are suggesting is unconstitutional. In his article “Just Take Away Their Guns” James Wilson makes a more nuanced gun control argument. He says, “It would take a Draconian, and politically impossible, confiscation of legally purchased guns to make much of a difference in the number used by criminals. Moreover, only about one-sixth of the handguns used by serious criminals are purchased from a gun shop or pawnshop.” He suggests too that the NRA and gun proponents by promoting a gun culture are ignoring the fact that guns can make ordinary crimes much worse. He effectively says that both sides of this argument have struck highly polarized and untenable positions (Wilson). America needs a careful and considerate policy towards guns which does everything possible to keep them out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. Gun control policy should focus on the criminals and on illegal guns and leave people who only want to protect themselves alone.         Wilson's position on gun control makes some sense. Instead of seeking a total ban, he believes a partial ban would be better and make life easier politically. There will always be entrenched positions on this issue and no chance of bridging them unless we take a practical, objective view of the situation. But only time will tell if Wilson’s position becomes more popular and prevalent in America. However, it is a good place to situate the gun control debate. This is more thoughtful that some of the knee jerk positions that can be found on the left. Gun owners and those who believe in the American constitution need to stand up against opponents. These opponents are people who believe in the nanny state. A Nanny State is on that uses excessive state controls, be they regulations or laws, to restrict its citizens’ freedom of choice. This is a criminological theory which suggests that crimes are defined as those that an elite believes to be wrong but which may not have much popular support. It is not based on natural law or on democracy; it is a kind technocratic theory of what is criminal or not. It believes that it knows best and that citizens should follow its centralized morality. This morality is often based on warped sociological or academic data and is enlisted in the name of utilitarianism. Of course, there is a general societal consensus that certain things are wrong and should be discouraged or criminalized, but for proponents of the Nanny State, the government should seize control of actions and issues where there is no consensus and unilaterally impose its view of morality on these issues. Why is this happening more and more these days? Many experts believe that in an increasingly complex world people are more willing to turn over power to the government in order to make their own lives easier. There is a sense the world can be and should be completely ordered and that government is the right body to do this. This is an unfortunate state of affairs as it tips the important balance between liberty and order far to the side of order. We do not need this way of thinking in America. We don't need these people mis-interpreting our constitution and trying to take away our property. The truth is that America needs a careful and considerate policy towards guns which does everything possible to keep them out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. But gun control policy should focus on the criminals and on illegal guns and leave people who only want to protect themselves alone. This country was built on the second amendment. The people have a right to bear arms and that should be respected. Works consulted DeConde, Alexander. (2001). Gun Violence in America: The Struggle for Control. (Boston: Northeastern University Press.  Desuka, Nan. “Why Handguns must be banned.” University Website. http://faculty.mdc.edu/dmcguirk/ENC2106/desuka.htm Haerens, Margaret. (2006). Gun Violence. Cengage Learning.  Halbrook, Stephen. (1989). A Right to Bear Arms: State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees. New York: Greenwood Press. Lott, John R. (2000). More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws. Regnery Publishing  National Safety Council study. http://gunowners.org/fs0404.htm Thompson, Sarah. (2007). “Concealed carry weapons prevent crime.” In Current Issues and Enduring Questions. American Books: Seoul. http://faculty.mdc.edu/dmcguirk/ENC2106/thompson.htm Wilson, James Q. (March 20, 1994). “Just Take Away Their Guns.” New York Times. Read More