Indeed, by making a simple comparison between the costs of civilian handgun ownership versus the benefits these weapons are purported to deliver, the case for banning handguns becomes self-evident. For example, for every time in that a civilian used a handgun to kill in self-defense, 43 people lost their lives in handgun homicides alone. Through the use of dubious methodologies, the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun advocates have created wildly inflated numbers supposedly showing handguns to be an effective means of self defense.
Although handguns are marketed primarily for their self-defense value, bringing one into the home has exactly the opposite effect, placing residents at a much higher rate of risk. A person living in a home with a gun is three times more likely to die by homicide 25 and five times more likely to die by suicide. Of these, 8, Among handgun homicides, only 2. However, of the 8, handgun homicides in , only 1.
Handguns are employed extensively in violent crimes such as assaults and robberies. In there were about 1. Suicide And Unintended Shootings Throughout the long and bitter debate over gun violence, the fact that the largest number of gun deaths is suicides, not homicides, has been consistently overlooked. For example, from to there were , suicides committed with a firearm in contrast to , firearm homicides.
Perhaps because of a lingering sense of suicide as a shameful act, this calamitous by-product of handgun ownership has been largely disregarded by even gun control advocates. Obviously handguns by themselves do not make people suicidal. But their ready availability has increased their use in suicide attempts and the use of a firearm all but guarantees that a suicide attempt will end in a fatality. During the first year after purchase, suicide remained the leading cause of death among handgun purchasers.
In there were victims of unintentional shooting deaths, of whom were aged 14 years old or younger. The Politics Of Gun Control Obsessed with its search for "common sense" gun control and ever fearful of being perceived as radical, most of the American gun control movement has given up on trying to ban handguns.
This has helped create the notion that support for a ban is absent or marginal. However, polling data taken over the past 20 years have consistently shown that more than 30 percent of the public favor a handgun ban with this support ranging at times between 40 percent and 45 percent even hitting 50 percent in one poll.
An objection continually raised to gun control is that the Second Amendment to the Constitution somehow forbids it. This is pure myth. No gun control law has ever been overturned by the U. I believe the court erred in their decision. If it can be shown that handguns do not, in general, provide protection, then banning their private ownership is not a violation of the Second Amendment.
No private citizen should have a constitutional right to own weaponry that is specifically designed for killing people and is used to cause many senseless deaths each year. They are both common sense limitations on certain constitutional rights.
This is unfortunate because well-executed studies of gun violence could provide the kind of data that the Supreme Court would need to properly include safety issues in their deliberations of the legality of any future gun control laws. Until our government decides to get serious about gun violence in the U. In , the U. To me, these homicide statistics clearly show that there is no overall personal protection associated with gun ownership.
Personal growth. By Taieba Tabassum. By EFIA. Follow us. Join the discussion on social media. C Voices of Youth. All Rights Reserved. The rule of law is the only defence against tyranny. The idea that armed militias could overthrow a professional army is laughable; it might have worked in the 18th Century, but the capability gap between civilians with small arms and modern armies with tanks and stealth bombers is now a yawning gulf. Indeed, terrorists in Europe have resorted to using knives and cars precisely because guns are so well-regulated across the European Union.
So, banning guns does not stop violence.
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