Gun Control Persuasive Essay

I. It’s late at night and you’re in bed. You hear a loud crashing noise coming from another room and it jolts you awake. You hear things being rustled and quiet whispers. You begin to panic and look around for something to protect yourself with. Nothing. Because you live in Ferguson and tried to purchase a gun to protect you from the coming storm of the Grand Jury decision that was to be released but found that the government banned the sale of guns a couple days before. II. [Ferguson Gun Shop video] III. OpinionGun Control is stripping away your right to protect yourself via the 2nd Amendment which states â€Å"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.† I believe todays gun control laws are preventing us from doing so in a fashion that adequately protects us from today’s threats. There is a huge need for the public voice in this issue instead of it being left to our ineffective, corporation bought politicians. Read more: How does federalism protect against tyranny essay Body I. To better understand why the language of the 2nd amendment was used in such a way at to regarding arming individuals and maintaining militias, it’s necessary to understand the history of the people who wrote it. A foundation of political thought during the Revolutionary period was the well justified concern about political corruption and governmental tyranny. The right to bear arms was a potential check against tyranny. According to Sandra Alters in her book Gun Control: Restricting Rights or Protecting People, â€Å"without guns in the hands of the early patriots, the fledgling republic might have quickly turned tyrannical, disarmed the people at will.† II. [Ron Paul video] III. The argument made that gun control prevents violence is not a strong one. Guns don’t kill people: people kill people. Regulations controlling the sale of guns to a person do little to stop a criminal whose intent is to commit a crime. A gun doesn’t make a person kill someone committing a  robbery, their intent does. They could easily substitute the gun for a knife and have the same outcome. Mark Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School, is quoted in Sanford Levinson’s article noting, â€Å"that event like the recent mass murder at Virginia Tech would have immediately generated responses that 1. Effective gun control laws would have prevented the tragedy and 2. That if students or administrators been armed, instead of afflicted with a ‘gun free’ campus (save, of course, criminals), they could have effectively limited the carnage.† (Truth is whether gun control laws were effective here or not, a violent criminal act here was committed. Seems like gun control laws did not prevent it but rather impeded the possibility of the violence being stopped sooner. IV. We are given the right to bear arms so we should be able to adequately arm ourselves in a fashion that best protects us from today’s modern-day threats. There has already been an attack on U.S. soil lest we forget 9/11. The Boston Marathon bombing, the terrorists running through neighborhoods hiding in perhaps your backyard. The government officials who do not listen to the public voice, militarizing the police force, decides what we can or cannot own. We have seen a lot lately of police brutality, Ferguson MO, and here at home in Cleveland OH, L.A. riots over Rodney King. These examples of civil unrest and governmental backlash are unnerving to me and should be to you. With Uncle Sam flexing its political muscle in Ferguson to disarm the people, is that not a sign of governmental tyranny? De Facto Martial law? How do you protect yourself if in fact one day, and perhaps sooner than you think, there is a new Revolution we face. The government is failing to listen to the people, America is not popular in the world, and there is an underground movement already started against the government. Gun Control is the government’s way to hide the dissarment of the American people and cloak it in the name of violence prevention. Don’t believe that your government would ever turn on you? Neither did Japanese Americans the night after Pearl Harbor when they were rounded up and forced into governmental camps. Conclusion. I. I implore you to exercise your 2nd Amendment right and to support organizations like the NRA. Research the politicians you elect and see where they stand on this very important issue. Don’t be blinded by the rhetoric propaganda the government and media spews to the public sheep. One day your  life, liberties and freedom may very well rely on it, just like it did 300+ years ago. II. [Gun Control shortvid] Works Cited Alters, Sandra M. Gun Control: Restricting Rights or Protecting People? Detroit: Gale, 2007. Kentlink. Web. 15.Oct.2014. Wright, Stephen E. â€Å"Gun Control Laws Will Not Save Lives† Guns and Crime. Ed. Chrisitine Watkins. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2012. At Issue .Rpt. â€Å"Anti-Gun Group Common Sense Gun Laws and Real Common Sense.† StephenEWright.com. 2010. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 31.Oct.2014. Levinson, Sanford.†Guns and the Constitution: A Complex Relationship.†Reviews in American History. Volume 36.1(2008) Electronic Journal Center.Web.15.Oct.2014 Doeden, Matt. Gun Control: Preventing Violence or Crushing Constitutional Rights? Minneapolis, MN.: Twenty-First Century Books, 2012. OhioLinks. 15.Oct.2014