Andrew Willard

Comm 111




The phrase gun control can mean many things. It can be a ban on specific or all types
of weapons. It can be law restricting where guns can be carried. It can be regulations
prohibiting certain or all citizens from owning guns. Regardless of what form it takes,
gun control in the United States of America takes away your constitutional right to own
guns; the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states that "A well-regulated
militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep
and bear arms shall not be infringed." To infringe means "to encroach upon in a way
that violates law or the rights of another," which is exactly what gun control does.

The Second Amendment would not have survived all these years if it was not a
valuable and key amendment to the Constitution.

May I also stress that when gun control is implemented, the only people who lose their
right to keep and bear arms are law-abiding citizens. Criminals are just that: criminals.
They do not obey the law and thus would not obey gun control laws. So logically, if
totally restrictive gun control laws were established, the only people with guns would be
criminals. This certainly does not paint a nice mental image. I would like to quote
Senator John McCain. Is it fair that you, as American citizens, should have to give up
your rights to own guns and use them to defend yourselves, merely because other
people do not have enough morals or integrity to follow the law?


Some of you may be thinking that regardless of laws permitting or prohibiting guns,
crimes involving guns still happen. And they do. Its an awful thing. But realistically,
there is no way we can ever completely rid the world of crime. So we do our best.
While we may not be able to prevent crime, we can fight it. Enlisting responsible gun
owners to help can be part of that fight. Heres an example when such a gun owner
saved many lives. On December 17, 1991, in Anniston, Alabama, a man named
Thomas Glenn Terry was enjoying dinner with his wife at a local restaurant. There were
about twenty customers and employees in the restaurant at the time. Three men burst
in and, after collecting everyones wallets and jewelry, began herding everyone into a
walk-in cooler. Terry was attempting to escape out a back door to get help when one of
the gunmen discovered him. Because he had a gun, Terry was able to shoot that
gunman and a second while the third one fled. If Terry hadnt had a gun, everyone in
the restaurant would have most likely been killed.

Yes, guns are dangerous. But danger is part of life. Rather than taking guns away
from law-abiding citizens and making them victims of crime, guns should be allowed for
self-defense as well as sporting purposes. That way, we will all be safer. Remember, a
gun is an inanimate object. It cannot think or act by itself. Its only when a criminal or
such an immoral person decides to use a gun unlawfully does it become dangerous.

A study released Tuesday by the governments Bureau of Justice Statistics found that
gun-related homicides dropped from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. Thats a 39
percent reduction.

Another report by the private Pew Research Center found a similar decline by looking at
the rate of gun homicides, which compares the number of killings to the size of the
countrys population. It found that the number of gun homicides per 100,000 people fell
from 7 in 1993 to 3.6 in 2010, a drop of 49 percent.

In 2011, the total number of gun homicides in the U.S. was 8,583. Using the 2011 total
gun-related murder rate, it would take more than 116 years for one million people to be
killed by a firearm.

Gun rights advocates have argued that people are safer when they are allowed to own
and carry guns. Those supporting gun control say that with more background checks,
gun violence would drop because more criminals and mentally unstable people would
be prevented from getting weapons.

Additionally, Washington, D.C., another state with strong gun regulations, topped the
201 list for total gun murder rate with 12 homicides per 100,000 people.

States that allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns enjoy a 60 percent
decrease in multiple-victim public shootings and a 78 percent decrease in victims per
attack. John Lott, Jr. and Bill Landes, More Guns, Less Crime. [Image: Concealed
Carry Licenses, Ohio Free Press, 2009. Federal court recently struck down Illinois
state-wide concealed carry ban.] Use for state Map Picture

With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in
Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more
than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to
carry guns. John Lott, Jr. Co-author with Bill Landes of More Guns, Less Crime.

The odds of being in a victim of a mass shooting are far less than that of being struck by
lightning

The CDC's Non-Vital Statistics Report from, 2009 (Tables 10 and 18) reported 31,347
total firearm deaths in 2009, but of those, 18,735 were suicide by firearm deaths. There
were 554 deaths from accidental discharge of firearms. The CDC statistics are very
similar for 2010, showing Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms"
resulting in 19,392 deaths out of a total of 38,364 suicide deaths (table 10, p.23).
Technically, this is an increase of 657 suicide deaths from 2009 to 2010. Homicides are
another story. FBI statics reported in the Uniform Crime Reports show firearm homicide
deaths average about 8-9,000 per year. Homicides have come down a little since 2000,
but have been cut in half since 1992. This includes both the raw number of homicides
(24,526 in 1993 to 12,664 in 2011) and the rate per 100,000 people (9.5 per 100,000 to
4.7 per 100,000).

Suggesting or implying that 30,000 gun deaths might be addressed by such proposed
bills and amendment is tantamount to lying. It is disingenuous to talk about a horrific
crime incident and conflate data by counting deaths that have nothing to do with with
the horrific crime. Relying on suicide stats to make a case against "gun violence" as
characterized by mass shootings like Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Aurora, and street
homicides, is completely bogus.

This research is based upon the most recent available data in 2010. Facts from earlier
years are cited based upon availability and relevance, not to slant results by singling out
specific years that are different from others. Likewise, data associated with the effects of
gun control laws in various geographical areas represent random, demographically
diverse places in which such data is available.

Many aspects of the gun control issue are best measured and sometimes can only be
measured through surveys,[1] but the accuracy of such surveys depends upon
respondents providing truthful answers to questions that are sometimes controversial
and potentially incriminating.[2] Thus, Just Facts uses such data critically, citing the
best-designed surveys we find, detailing their inner workings in our footnotes, and using
the most cautious plausible interpretations of the results.

Particularly, when statistics are involved, the determination of what constitutes a
credible fact (and what does not) can contain elements of personal subjectivity. It is our
mission to minimize subjective information and to provide highly factual content.
Therefore, we are taking the additional step of providing readers with four examples to
illustrate the type of material that was excluded because it did not meet Just Facts'
Standards of Credibility.