Last year on an evening, a guy came in my father’s store, threatened him with a

gun and robbed a few hundred dollars. This type of incidents isn’t few in the United
States. Rather people are getting killed with guns every day and it is a common news.
Even after being from a country like Bangladesh, which is not even a developed
country, it really surprises me that how unsafe the people are in a country which is
known to be the best country in the world, and it surprises me more when I see that
many people still believe that it should be legal for the civilians to own guns. When I am
seeing how guns in the hands have put the lives of other civilians in danger, and how
unrealistic the claim of some people that guns can protect people’s lives I couldn’t but
believe that it should be illegal for the civilians to own guns. Therefore, I think that guns
should be banned for all the civilians in the United States.

Making it legal for the civilians to own guns is harmful in many ways, and one of
these is gun homicide If we look at the rate of homicide in the United States and
compare it with other countries, it looks very scary and disappointing. As stated by
Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz(2016), 31 out of 1 million people get killed by
guns in the United States, and it’s equivalent 27 people shot dead every day of the year.
If we look at other developed countries, we will better understand how bad the situation
in the United States is. As mentioned by the same people, means Kevin Quealy and
Margot Sanger-Katz, about two people out of every million are killed in a gun homicide
in Germany, and in England, Poland, and Japan about one person out of every million
are killed in a gun homicide. According to an article written by Kara Fox(2018), gun
homicide rates in the United States is 25.2 percent higher than other developed
countries, and the United States make up less than world’s 5 percent population but
holds 31 percent of the world’s mass shooters. These statistics make it explicit that
allowing the civilians to own guns creates disaster by jeopardizing people’s lives and
making a bad name of the nation in front of the world.

After we see that how guns in the hands of the civilians are causing deaths of
innocent people in the United States, it should be noted that the rate of gun death isn’t
the same in every state, and when we look at the rate of gun deaths in different states
of the United States, a very interesting fact stands out as it is pointed out by Richard
Florida(2001) in one of his articles, and that is, firearm deaths are significantly lower in
states with stricter gun control legislation. Florida’s research found a substantial
negative correlation between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45).
In an article, Christopher Ingraham(2018) cites data from Louis Klarevas book
“Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings” that, “compared with the
10-year period before banning guns in 1994, the number of gun massacres during the
ban period fell by 37 percent, and the number of people dying from gun massacres fell
by 43 percent. But after the ban lapsed in 2004, the numbers shot up again, an
astonishing 183 percent increase in massacres and a 239 percent increase in massacre
deaths.” So from these statistics, it’s very clear that banning gun works and saves lives.

While guns in the hands of the civilians doing a lot in taking people’s lives, it’s not
doing anything significant in saving their lives. After analyzing more than 14000 crimes
David Hemenway(2015) states, ”More than 42% of the time, the victim took some action
— maced the offender, yelled at the offender, struggled, ran away, or called the police.
Victims used a gun in less than 1% of the incidents (127/14,145). In other words, actual
self-defense gun use, even in our gun-rich country, is rare.” There are some people who
claim that guns are needed for the safety of weaker people, however, guns aren’t very
useful in women’s self-defense as well. As mentioned by Hemenway in the same article,
out of 300 sexual assaults that were reported in Hemenway’s survey, victims weren’t
able to use a gun even once. However, guns can be a little bit useful in protecting
against loss of property. After looking at the crimes where the only intention was to
steal, Hemenway says that only 38 percent of the incidents the victim lost property
when using a gun, but using some other weapons, for example, mace, appeared as
effective as a gun. After looking at all of these statistics, it can be said that guns aren’t
necessary for the self-defense at all because they are not significantly useful.

Although allowing the civilians to own guns have all the negativity mentioned in
the previous paragraphs, there are still some people who want right for the civilians to
own guns. They say that the second amendment has given them the right to own guns,
and nobody has the right to take away this right from them. However, what the second
amendment says about the right of owning guns, is a matter of dispute. As it’s quoted
by Marshall Cavendish(2009), the second amendment says,”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." Cavendish says, in 1939 the supreme court said about this
statement of the second amendment that, it only gives the right to own guns to a well-
regulated militia, and not civilians. However, Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2001 that
the right of owning guns given by the second amendment also applies for the
civilians(ibid.). So, it can be understood that the intention of the second amendment’s
statement regarding gun right is debatable. However, nobody will debate on the matter
that, whatever was intended by that statement, its goal was to protect the Americans,
not to cause their death. Now, when we are seeing that allowing the civilians to own
guns causing deaths of people and making the country an unsafe place to live, then no
reason remains to use the second amendment to speak against banning guns.

In conclusion, every law of the country should best on the interest of its citizens.
If the law is beneficial for the citizens, it should stay, if the law isn’t beneficial for the
citizens, it should be ruled out. After all the discussions above, it is very clear that there
is nothing beneficial in making it legal for the civilians to own guns, but the harms that
are caused by it are huge and unrecoverable. Those who think that it should be legal for
civilians to own guns, they don’t have any valid points, because guns don’t protect
people and even if we assume that the second amendment makes it legal for the
civilians to own guns, still nobody has the right to jeopardize people’s life by following
the second amendment, because nobody will disagree that the right to live is much
greater than the right to own guns, and the greater right should be protected before the
right which is less important. When it’s proven that allowing the civilians to own guns
violates people’s right to live, and banning guns decreases this violation significantly,
then banning guns is a must do.
 References

Fox, K. (2018, March 9). How US gun culture compares with the world in five charts.
CNN. Retrieved December 1, 2018, from https://www.cnn.com/

Hemenway, D. (2015, August 15). Does owning a gun make you safer? Los Angeles
Times. Retrieved November 27, 2018, from https://www.latimes.com

Ingraham, C. (2018, February 15). It’s time to bring back the assault weapons
ban, gun violence experts say. The Washington Post. Retrieved December 1,
2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/
 Quealy, K., & Sanger-Katz, M. (2016, June 14). Comparing gun deaths by
country: the U.S. is in a different world. The New York Times. Retrieved
December 1, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/

Florida, R. (2011, January 13). The geography of gun deaths. The Atlantic. Retrieved
November 27, 2018, from https://www.theatlantic.com/

The right to bear arms. (2009). In Open for Debate (Vol. 8). Tarrytown, NY: Marshall
Cavendish. Retrieved from
http://link.galegroup.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/apps/doc/CX4097000229/G
VRL?u=psucic&sid=GVRL&xid=b7a121ac