Gun Ban

Before I begin, I would like to mention that my only job is to show that banning guns would be a bad thing for the public. I don’t have to show that bearing arms is positive, although I may provide some arguments to strengthen my case. However, my entire argument will work together to convince others that a ban . Guns are used in self-defense An argument that anti gun rights opponents use is that only .8 of incidents are used in self-defense situations. They use this percentage to avoid using the actual number, but the truth is that guns have been used in self-defense 235,700 times in a violent crime incident, and 103,000 times in a property crime incident. (1) Before we compare this to the violent crime rate, we need to realize that that self defense statistics are only accounted to law abiding citizens, and not criminals. Why? because there is not way of verifying whether what a criminal did was in self-defense. Also keep in mind that the data is still very incomplete. 51.7% of violent and property crime is not even reported, and 16.7% of case involve the police not even helping! (1) What does this show? Law enforcement cannot protect everybody all the time. I would post the actual figure, but source only provides a % not a number. Those 235,700 defensive gun uses, could have went the criminal’s way, thus increasing crime. To finish off, the data is still very incomplete to come to a decision on both sides, but on the pro gun side, there is still a significant number of cases where the gun prevented crime. In 2008, President Barrack Obama had used executive orders to give federal funds to the CDC to study gun violence. This study is unbiased, and contains data used by both sides in the gun debate. In this study, it was found that, " Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million defensive gun uses" The article also acknowledges the 300,000 figure provided by the Bureau of Justice. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys (7) . It's unclear which study is more accurate. The one provided by Kleck seems to be extraploated, and the BJS study have 51% of crime not even reported. Although the CDC seems pretty confident on the 3 million figure being accurate. Keep in mind this study is not biased, since CDC is a realiable organization which received federal funds ordered by Barrack Obama, a gun control proponent. Banning guns doesn't directly correlate to lower crime It is a huge conception that less guns directly correlates to less crime. In the former Soviet Union, guns were banned, and were strictly enforced in it’s police state. However, the crime rate is was still higher than what it was in the United States at the time. So, the gun-less Soviet Union was still more violent than the gun-ridden U.S. (2) Simply there is no proof that shows that banning guns would reduce crimes. Keep in mind, countries like Norway and Finland have strict gun control, but they do not enforce any sort of ban, like the USSR did. The homicide rate continued stay very low, while Russia was still astronomically high. If a gun ban actually was able to fuliflll it's intended task, the U.K would not have seen an increase in homicide. In the U.K, the government implemented a gun ban on handguns, however stats show that it wasn't very effective. You can see before the gun ban in 1997, the U.K was already a very safe country. It never had a high gun homicide rate, and with it's guns per capita only around 6.6, there weren't alot of guns in the first place. A couple years after the handgun ban, the homicide rate spiked. This not to say that this was because of the ban, since gun ownership was still very low, but rather the ban itself did not reduce the crime rate, and the very opposite had happened. When the homicide rate began to lower, it was around the same time the U.K increased the number of law enforcement. Pretty much proving an outside factor has solved the problem. (3)Bans seem to also have failed in Washington D.C You can see in this graph, that Washington D.C implemented a handgun and trigger-lock law. (5) The law goes in effect in 1977, but you see the after a few years, the crime rate soars to nearly 80 homicides per 100,000. This is also the time when the entire United States experienced an increase in crime, but the national average was 10 homicides per 100,000 (6). However in D.C this number is at alarming rates. To conclude this, there really is no proof that a gun ban would reduce crime in the United States. In the U.K, despite there being much less guns, the ban did not suceeed. In the former USSR, the homcide rate still was much higher than the U.S, despite there being a total and strictly enforced gun ban. Even at homesoil, bans in Washington D.C didn't do much to stop the soaring crime rates in the 80's. Illegal Guns are used in the majority of crimes The biggest issue with having a gun ban, is that it would not deal with the issue of illegal guns. In the U.S only 7% of guns used in crime are legal. The rest are illegal guns, and they account for 93% of crimes committed. Even if a banned was passed, it would only effect 7% of the crime committed. And ignore the 93%. With a ban, the black market will fluorish, and criminals will be the only ones armed, and law abiding citizens, who live in dangerous cities and neighborhoods will be defenseless (4). In 2004, the government conducted a survey. It found that among inmates who had a gun when they committed their crime (16 percent of all prisoners), about 11 percent had bought the firearm at a retail store, a pawn shop, a flea market or a gun show. Another 37 percent had gotten it from a friend or family member. About 40 percent said they got it illegally on the black market, from a drug dealer or by stealing it (1). It's also foolish to think that the flow of guns would be effected, because that would only last for a few years. There have been cases of people making and selling firearms illegally and privately, proving you do not need large gun manafuctures to make guns. This is exactly what happened during " The Prohibition" . Demand was rising, and people began to make their own booze, and sell it. There is no reason why this isn't possible with guns. ^ Illegal guns made in Sacramento California ^ Sources: 1: http://www.bjs.gov...2:http://www.law.harvard.edu...3:http://www.qando.net...4:http://www.gunfacts.info...5:http://www.justfacts.com...6:http://www.infoplease.com...7:http://www.nap.edu...