THBT gun ownership should be considered a privilege rather than a right

Before I continue with my argument, I would like to talk more to you about Honduras. You made it sound like gun rights were the only reason for Honduras's crime rate and violence, when this is not true. The Honduran government is corrupted and the police have a high rate of abusing civilians. Police killed 149 civilians from January 2011 to November 2012, including 18 civilians under age 19, according to a report by Honduras"s National Autonomous University. The commissioner of the Preventive Police, Alex Villanueva, affirmed the report"s findings and said there were "likely many more killings by police that were never reported". The government would not respond to any of the calls made from the university's rector to gain information on how many of those killings were followed up by investigations. Furthermore, In April 2013, the chief of Directorate for Investigation and Evaluation of the Police Career told Congress that, of 230 police evaluated for corruption, 33 failed. However, only seven of those who failed were suspended, and some were later reinstated. (1) In conclusion, gun rights are not the sole source of Honduras's problems. They have a corrupted government and police force, and the country itself has always been plagued by extreme poverty and homeless children. There has been shown to be a direct correlation between poverty and crime (2) so Honduras's problems are likely to be linked specifically to the government, and not because of gun rights. You said yourself many guns in Honduras are obtained illicitly. By putting down strict gun laws, this will only get worse. The black market for guns would no doubt grow, and civilians would still have guns but these ones would be illegal. The guns that are already in Honduras wouldn't be taken away. They would still be 'floating around". So, you want gun ownership to be a privilege and not a right. In your framework, you mention you want the government to test individuals to see if they have the mental stability needed to own a firearm. How would this be done? You would need somebody with a licence given to them by the government at every store that sells guns to check every person who buys one. One thing you never mentioned is your solution to this problem, which I would like to hear. I will present my main arguments, and in the last paragraphs propose my conclusion and rebuttals. 1) Gun ownership should be a basic right The United States Constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the right belongs to private individuals. This right is protected by the Second Amendment. (3) By making gun ownership a privilege and not a right, you would be taking away rights given to Americans. Therefore, you would be going against the Constitution. This fact in itself, regardless of the situation at hand, is taking away basic freedoms given to us hundreds of year ago. I feel I have nothing to add to this argument, considering gun rights are a freedom, and by making gun ownership a privilege and not a given right, you would be taking away freedom. 2) Guns don't murder, people do You mention psychopaths and people with mental disabilities could produce harm when handling guns, and this is true. Adam Lanza, the man who was the source of the Sandy Hook shooting, had several mental problems that caused his outbreak. But, making gun ownership a privilege and not a right would NOT help them. Instead of taking away gun rights, we should make sure these people don't have access to guns in the first place. By taking away gun rights, we would be hurting the people who use the guns responsibility for no reason. These people use the gun either for sport or simple self defense, as the majority of people with guns don't use them for murder. For example, when you use a pencil, the pencil itself doesn't write: you do. The same is true with a gun. It is the person behind the weapon who is doing the killing, not the gun itself. Adam Lanza's outbreak could've been prevented if his mother got better care for him. She knew he had drawings around his room depicting drawings of brutal murders and guns, but chose to do nothing about it. (4) We should focus on helping these people instead of taking away freedoms given to everyone. 3) Concealed guns lower crime In areas where you can carry a concealed gun, crime is much lower. I believe this is a much better alternative to taking away gun rights. Many states have recently allowed concealed carry gun rights, and it has produced many benefits for us. * The Bureau of Justice Statistics, a federal government agency belonging to the U.S. Department of Justice, says that from 1993 to 2011, gun homicides in the United States have dropped by 39%. The Pew Research Center, an American think tank organization based in Washington, D.C., estimates the drop may be closer to 49%. * Nonfatal gun crimes have dropped 69%. *The average annual number of homicides in schools has dropped from 29 in the 1990s to 20 in the 2000s. (5) This shows that we can lower crime in other ways instead of taking away a basic right given to all Americans. In your first argument, comparing the US to Honduras is vain considering they have very different governments. Both have gun rights, but Honduras has a higher murder rate, a higher crime rate in general (6), and about 60% of the population is in poverty. (7) Yes, they have gun rights, but that is not the one source of the many problems there, as stated in my previous paragraphs. The US is more wealthy, we have significantly less crime, and overall are a more stable country. We have already shown we can handle guns better than Honduras. We have gun rights, but are we struggling as Honduras is? The simple answer is no. The MS13 gang in Honduras is obviously capable of a lot of damage, considering they murdered 28 people. They will obtain weapons whether or not gun ownership is a right or a privilege. The US has banned several serious drugs, but they still are smuggled over the border. My point here is people will still find a way to obtain guns, whether illegal or not. By taking away gun rights, you wouldn't be taking away the guns people already have. In conclusion, gun ownership should be a right and not a privilege. This right was given to the US by the founding fathers, and by taking away these rights, would be going against the consititution. Instead of taking away gun rights from everyone, we should focus on those with mental disabilities and make sure they get the best care they can to ensure they don't have access to guns and especially don't become violent, or "psychopaths". An alternative to this is allowing more free concealed carry laws, for it is proven they help reduce crime without making gun ownership a privilege instead of a right. (1) http://www.hrw.org... (2) http://www.newrepublic.com... (3) http://en.wikipedia.org... (4) http://en.wikipedia.org... (5) http://backwoodshome.com... (6) http://data.worldbank.org... (7) http://www.worldbank.org...