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Jordan Dai Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1103 October 31st, 2012 Gun Control; Are you ever safe?

On April 20th, 1999, two disgruntled students made a fictitious plan reality when they brought guns, knives, and homemade bombs to Columbine High School. The two boys, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, entered their school in the middle of the day, set on killing tens if not hundreds of their fellow students. They moved down the hallways, going classroom to classroom shooting students and faculty alike. By the time their bloody rampage had come to an end, twelve students, one teacher, and both the boys were dead, along with twenty-one others being left injured. April 16th, 2007, a student named Seung-Hui Cho, who had been recently diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder, took to violence when he purchased a weapon from a local gun shop in Blacksburg Virginia. He then proceeded to enter Virginia Tech campus where, over the next two hours, he shot and killed 32 people and injured 15 others before committing suicide himself. This was the worst act of mass murder by a single gunman in United States history. These are just two examples of people that went out and purchased weapons and used them to harm others in school settings. Could these attacks have been stopped with stricter gun control laws? Could the criminals have been stopped if another person was carrying a weapon legally under a concealed carry law? These are the types of questions that have been raised around the United States for years and have come to the forefront of discussion in academic and

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political settings. Who is right? We may never know but being educated in both sides of the argument can only get us going in the right step. As many know, the first evidence of gun control in the United States was documented in the Constitution as the Second Amendment, which stated that it is the American peoples right to keep and bear arms. There was little change as to gun control until the Gun Control Act of 1968, which stated that anyone that was selling firearms or ammunition had to be federally licensed and it also stated that the sale of weapons was no longer legal to minors or convicted felons and that non-sporting firearms were no longer legal for sale. It also explained the first recorded penalties for breaking these new laws. It also forbad the possession of destructive devices such as submachine guns, bombs, and grenades (Hock 60). The laws changed again a mere 20 years with the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1989. This law was passed in response to the 1968 Act and really only redefined the 1968 laws, now stating that rifles and shotguns could be sold across state lines and also you could transport weapons across state lines. In 1994, The Brady Act was proposed and passed by Congress which really only stated that there was to be a 5 day waiting period between when someone wished to purchase a handgun and when they could actually become the owner of said weapon (Hock 60) Now that we have the background on the different laws enacted by the United States government pertaining to gun control, it is time to dive into the argument that has become a major talking point of Congress and the President of the United States. It really became an issue after the Columbine shootings in Colorada is when gun control hit the main stage in United States politics. There are two different types of concealed carry permits that are issued by each state. Thirty-three of the fifty states are currently under the shall issue law that say that law

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enforcement officials will issue a permit to those that qualify. To qualify, all you need to do is be an adult and have no documented record of significant criminal background or mental illness (Donohue, 287). The other 17 states use the may issue laws which means that law enforcement is not required to issue a permit just because they pass the requirements. They reserve the right to deny the permit for any reason they see fit. There are over 1.5 million people that currently have concealed carry permits. One of the major arguments of the Concealed Carry law is that people that have these permits lack the training necessary to carry a loaded weapon, let alone use that weapon in selfdefense. Britt Minshall, a former police officer, says that people without deep handgun training have no business having a gun on their person. They say it for their protection but the bad guy will usually take their gun, shoot them, and then sell their gun for a lot of money on the black market (Hock 61). This raises a good point. Without being properly educated on the use and without extensive training with a handgun, how can you expect someone to use it correctly in a time of crisis without getting themselves hurt or those around them? On the other hand, Gary Kleck, who is a criminologist at Florida State University, says that there is little to no evidence in Minshalls claim. Kleck says that in the United States, citizens use guns to defend themselves from criminal attacks almost two million times a year and that 98 percent of the time no shots are fired and that the criminal flees at the sight of the gun (Hock 61). Another good point that gets raised in the argument is the fact that now a days cops have too much on their plates to actually deter crime. Now cops are more looked upon as responders that more or less cannot stop crime but rather they show up after the fact to investigate and help catch those responsible. Poe talks about how police dont have a constitutional obligation to

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protect people but rather they are obligated to enforce the laws and arrest the criminals after they have committed the crime (Poe). I would have to agree with his statement. In this day and age, it is becoming increasingly tough for police to actually deter any crime, rather they have become first responders and they are far too understaffed and underfunded to actually be walking beats around the streets making sure that everyone is safe and even then it is unrealistic to believe that cops could actually stop all the crime from happening all the time. The question here though, is would arming more citizens deter crime from happening to help the police out? John Lott targets several types of deterrents that would persuade would be criminals from actually going through with their crimes since cops are not always going to be able to protect the citizens. He says that there need to be more severe penalties for crimes, such as the death penalty, and he also says that the second thing we need to do is increase the likelihood that the crime would be a failure to would be criminals (Lott). I found this next taped conversation between a criminal and a police detective on why he robbed and murdered a man.Mr. Lowery said on the tape that he and Walter Fatman Raglin, who is also charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated murder and is on trial in another courtroom, had planned to rob a cab driver or a dope boy.He said he gave his gun and bullets to Mr. Raglin. They decided against robbing a cab driver or drug dealer because both sometimes carried guns, he said. Instead, they saw a man walking across the parking lot with some kind of musical instrument. He said he looked out for police, Mr. Raglin approached the man and asked for money. After getting the money, Mr. Raglin asked if the mans car was a stick or an automatic shift. Then Mr. Raglin shot the man (Lott). This just proves the point that criminals will attack and single out certain people because of a belief that they will or will not have a weapon on them.

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Closer to home for us college students there is the argument of if college students should be allowed to have weapons on campus if they have the correct paperwork and permits to do such. Reginald Fennell talks about a study of 119 four year colleges and states that 4 percent of students, or 700,000 of the current population at those colleges combined, reported having a firearm at college (Fennell, 99). As of right now, you cannot carry a weapon onto campus or into a dormitory, except in Utah. There is a fear that if you were to allow students and faculty the right to carry a weapon on campus that anything might set off a crisis that would end up getting people injured or killed. This is a good point. College is one of the most stressful times for many people and do we really want unstable, stressed out, overworked students carrying a weapon onto campus that may be set off at the drop of a hat? But you can also argue the point that if another situation was to emerge such as the Virginia Tech shootings, or the Columbine shooting, would having more weapons in the building have deterred the shooter and saved lives? These are the questions that have been raised in academic halls all over the nation. After researching this topic for weeks and compiling all the information I could about concealed carry, I still have a hard time deciding where I fall as far as which side of the argument I support. On one side I do believe that every man and woman has the right to protect themselves at all times and should have the right to go out and purchase a weapon and carry it on their person for the sake of protection. Maybe more people with weapons would deter criminals from trying to attack people and crime would go down. On the other hand, I would say that there is such a lacking process for the acquisition of the permit that people are far to uneducated to be carrying a weapon that could easily kill someone with the lack of training in situations that would require a weapon. Look at it this way; you have to take drivers education for upwards of a year before you are legal to drive a car. In three days you can have your permit for a weapon and

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can walk around the streets of any city or town with a loaded weapon. Should these things not be set in the same standards as the other? You can kill someone with a car as easy, possibly easier, than with a gun. It just doesnt seem right and I believe that we need to look into the process of the permits to help keep tragedies out of our communities and from affecting people we know and love. October 22nd, 2012 a man walked into a spa where his wife worked and preceded to shoot and kill her and three others, wounding four others before taking his own life. It took the police six hours to search and find the dead body of the shooter due to the layout of the building, with lots of small rooms that had to be painstakingly cleared one by one. It was later confirmed that he shot himself after most of the staff exited the spa after he started shooting. Just a mere two and a half months earlier, a man walked into a Sikh temple in southeastern Wisconsin, only 15 minutes from where the shooting on October 22nd happen, and opened fire, killing six people before being shot and killed in a gun fight with local SWAT officers. Is this what our country has come to? Tragedies such as the Virginia Tech shooting, the Columbine shooting, or the shooting just talked about. Is the answer concealed carry? Or will it only lead to more shooting and innocent people being injured or killed. Some may argue that guns will cause more violence, while others will argue that more guns means more safety for those in danger. This is the question we need an answer too, before more innocent people are slain.

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Works Cited

Donohue, John, J. "The Impact of Concealed-Carry Laws." SelectedWorks of John Donohue. N.p., n.d. 287-322. Print. Fennel, Reginald. "Concealed Carry Weapon Permits: A Second Amendment Right or a Recipe for Disaster on Our Nations Campuses?" JOURNAL OF AMERICAN COLLEGE HEALTH 58.2 (2010): 99-100. Web. Oct. 2012.

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Hock, Michael. "Guns as a Crime Deterrent: Does the Issuance of Concealed Carry Permits Reduce Crime?"Hinckley Journal of Politics (2009): 59-68. Print. Kleck, G., & Gertz, M. (1995). Armed resistance to crime. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 86, no.1, 150-187. Lott Jr., J. R. (1998). More Guns, Less Crime. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Poe, R. (2001). The Seven Myths of Gun Control. Roseville: Prima. ProCon.org. "Should adults have the right to carry a concealed handgun?" concealedguns.ProCon.org. ProCon.org, 10 Oct. 2012. Web. 11 Nov. 2011.