Written By: Jake Studebaker
Gun control is a hot-button issue. Practically every person and their grandmother have an opinion, and it is so close to people’s heart, one misplaced statement could ruin a friendship. The issue is a fundamental question that Americans face, do we need guns in the United States? Many people argue no, and their reasoning can be traced to different schools of thought. However, not only is the idea of removing guns from law-abiding American citizens outright ridiculous, it will have immediate, regrettable ramifications.
For the sake of argument, let us imagine the United States immediately after the second amendment is repealed. The American Legislation has now banned private ownership of firearms, and if caught with a weapon you swiftly squashed by the hammer of justice with life in prison. What happens next? Hopefully, crime rates drop, murders go down, and we all live safer happier lives. However, in reality, this scenario is preposterous.
To understand why this would never work, we simply need to look at places that have already implemented gun restrictions. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, since Britain’s gun ban in 1997, there has only been one year (2010) where the gun homicide rate was lower than it was in 1997. In fact, immediately after the implementation of the gun ban, there was a near 50% spike in gun homicides. Interestingly enough the only thing that created a lower number of homicides was an increase in police and constables, however even with an overhaul in the number of law enforcement officials the homicide rate to date has not dipped below the 1997 benchmark.
The same trend can be found not just in Britain but also in Jamaica, Ireland, Venezuela, and the Solomon Islands. Closer to home, you can witness this same pattern across the USA in cities like Chicago and Washington D.C. ⸺ cities that at one point had some of the most intense gun regulations nationally. Interestingly, Chicago doesn’t have some of the highest gun violence today, contrary to what many top Republicans might claim. These Republicans are hurting themselves, because Chicago doesn’t have the highest gun crime with the most restrictions, these cities have crime rates that are much more comparable to the rest of the USA, and that is only because they have struck down many of the laws making gun ownership difficult, like banning handguns and creating gun registry.
This phenomenon is telling and shows the ineffectiveness of more stringent gun regulations. On top of this let us not forget how idiotic so-called ‘Gun Free Zones’ are. According to another study covered by the Crime Prevention Research Center, of the mass shootings (shootings with four or more fatalities) that have occurred from 1950 until 2016, over 98% were perpetrated in Gun-Free zones, meaning less than 2% of mass shootings occurred in a place where guns are allowed.
Why do these trends exist? Put yourself in the shoes of a murderer. If you have the desire to kill people it would make sense to kill people who have a less likely chance of being able to return gunfire. You would want to go somewhere where you would be the only person with a gun. You know that law-abiding citizens won’t be armed in gun free zones or in any city where guns aren’t allowed, and since you are breaking the law anyway what is one more gun charge when you're sentenced to life for homicide?
On top of that if you would like to argue that taking guns off the street would lower crime it bears reminding that marijuana is still illegal for recreational use in almost all of the states in the USA, but if you ask pretty much any high school or college student they could tell you about a personal story they have regarding the drug.
Another policy prescription to the gun issue often times discussed is something similar to the Australian gun buy-back program. It seems cool enough; everybody who owns a gun can just get paid to give up their guns. Even people who desire to kill people have a price they’d give that up for right? Well, not quite. Despite evidence that the mandatory buy-back program lowered homicide rates, the numbers of crime were dropping long before the buy-back program began and the immediate effect was non-existent.
What the program did do was cost a hell of a lot of money. According to Vox, the Australian government confiscated well over 650,000 guns during the buy-back program, which cost the country well over half a billion dollars. This is incomparable to what would have to happen here, as the government in the U.S. would have to purchase and destroy well over 350 million guns. This means the United States has almost 500 times more guns than Australia.
Keeping the math constant across the countries (meaning the US government pays out proportionally similar to the Australian government) the American taxpayer would see a quarter of a trillion dollars spent on disarming the American populous, and that is not counting the cost of actually carrying out the program, that number is just the money used to buy back the guns from private owners. This massive budget overhaul is something every NRA member and gun owner would be excited to see.
If anybody today has complaints that government is too big, but also advocates for a national American buy-back, he or she is either patently incapable of comprehending math, or they are being intentionally dishonest, as the numbers show a program similar to this would take well over a quarter of the United States discretionary spending budget, more than we spend on unemployment benefits and education combined.
This program, while enticing in theory, is a nightmare in application. The government would end up using a quarter of all taxes on something that half of the United States is not interested in. This would almost certainly lead to civil war.
Civil war interestingly enough was something that Nazi Germany did not experience. The Nazi regime was only destroyed because the entire world decided to end Hitler. This raises a question; were all the people in Germany proponents of Hitler? The answer to this is of course, no. Many Germans hated Hitler and viewed him as the tyrant he was. However, they were incapable of stopping him as one of Hitler’s first decisions as Chancellor was to disarm the citizens of Germany. He had a massive gun confiscation, where weapons were collected by the terrifying SS Soldiers, meaning citizens were entirely subject to what Hitler declared.
Interestingly the gun ban is something pushed for by today’s left, but they also make another claim that is wholly incompatible with their policy prescriptions on guns. The left consistently protests about the unbelievable number of innocent children killed by police in horrific acts of police brutality [in 2017 alone of the 987 deadly police shootings only 7 percent were at unarmed perpetrators]. Why then, does it make sense to disarm the public and hand over all the guns to the same police force who is killing kids left and right? Also, they claim that Trump is the second Hitler. If that is true, why is he one of the men fighting for gun ownership?
The objective of the second amendment is to allow citizens to exercise their God-given right to self-preservation, to give the everyday person the freedom to protect themselves. Gun rights are more than just gun rights. They are women’s rights, giving a woman the ability to fight off a rapist, they are equal rights giving the oppressed a defense from the oppressor, and they are pro-life rights giving the parents the ability to protect their child.
I think many second amendment proponents miss the point when they argue for the second amendment with the supporting evidence of either hunting or shooting for sport. The issue is much deeper than simply shooting at something non-human. The question that needs to be asked is fundamental. Should you and I have the ability to protect our lives when the time so demands? If the answer is yes then there is no question. Guns are not only a good idea, they are a necessity.
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