Gun Control

C1: The Second Amendment confers no individual right to have firearms. "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." -Second Amendment of the US Constitution Regulation means "To make regular" and it also means a rule or directive made and/or maintained by authority. Merriam-Webster defines militia as: a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency subject to call or the whole body of able bodied male citizens subject to call to military service. In the time of the American revolution, the militia were everyday people with arms as the organized force. However the Constitution clears sets up the organized militia in terms of the state. In fact the Second Amendment is not the only place the militia is referred to. Article 1; section 8, clauses 15 and 16 of the federal constitution, granted Congress the power to "provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia". This is in clear reference to the armed forces of the state or government organized civilian force like the National Guard. The term in the Second Amendment "...being necessary to the security of a free State..." refers to national defense and security. Prior to the US Constitution being drafted private forces defended the land but after its drafting clearly the advent of the government military and militia means that the rights of holding arms as a collective right shifted from the private sphere to the state. In all this we see that no individual right to have arms exists. There can be debate about whether or not it is reasonable for individuals to have arms for limited purposes such as self defense, sport and so forth and what types of weapons should be allowed for public safety. This is the idea of gun control. C2: Reasonable gun control reduces gun violence In 2014 the United States saw 33,736 firearms deaths. which is a rate of 10.6 per 100,000 citizens(1) Compare to Canada who has legal access to firearms with restrictions and the rate is 1.97 per 100,000.(2) The main difference being the restricted access to handguns. Rifles are easy to buy in Canada just like the United States but handguns are tough to get. Most individual gun deaths occur via handgun in the United States. Some say gun ownership deters crime, however we find that generally only 40% of criminals surveyed in prison had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun."(3). We have also seen that restricting or prohibiting certain types of guns while not prohibiting all firearms works well in other nations. Australia most notably engaged in a buyback of assault weapons and saw a successful decrease in firearms violence. (4) From the above data and much more that is available we can see that a balanced approach where reasonable firearms restrictions can improve public safety while not totally banning the private ownership of firearms. When you combine this with the fact that most Americans support background checks, mental health screening and other reasonable gun control measures(5) the only conclusion we can make for benefit of the American public is that reasonable gun control should be enacted and kept in place. Sources: 1) http://www.cdc.gov... 2) "Canada " Gun Facts, Figures and the Law". Gunpolicy.org. University of Sydney School of Public Health. 3) http://www.justfacts.com... 4) http://www.cfr.org... 5) http://www.pewresearch.org...