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Gun Control: A Call for Action

The document argues for gun control by critiquing the slogan "guns don't kill people, criminals kill people." It states that while criminals do kill people, guns facilitate crime by making violence easily accessible. The document cites examples like the Sandy Hook shooting to show how gun culture has led to more crime rather than deterring it. It concludes that restricting the right to bear arms through immediate legislation is needed to curb gun violence and prevent further moral degradation in society.

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Aliakber Kazmi
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41 views1 page

Gun Control: A Call for Action

The document argues for gun control by critiquing the slogan "guns don't kill people, criminals kill people." It states that while criminals do kill people, guns facilitate crime by making violence easily accessible. The document cites examples like the Sandy Hook shooting to show how gun culture has led to more crime rather than deterring it. It concludes that restricting the right to bear arms through immediate legislation is needed to curb gun violence and prevent further moral degradation in society.

Uploaded by

Aliakber Kazmi
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Say NO to arms

On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, age 20, fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members and wounded two at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut. More recently and locally, Shahzeb Khan, a Pakistani youth was shot dead in cold blood. Who exactly was to blame? A quick answer would be the criminals. But I beg for a deeper analysis. Such accidents have become too much of a habit to be dismissed as mere crimes of passion: Its about time that we talk about gun control. A common slogan says that guns dont kill people, criminals kill people. This slogan aims to defend a number of pro-arms legislations, most notably the Second Amendment in the US Constitution, by telling us that guns themselves are inanimate objects and that it is their use by criminals that leads to their utility in violence. The pro-arms lobby often draws an analogy between the present and the past, citing that guns are no different than swords, since both have impending violence in their wake. They also argue that guns are useful in self-defense and give citizens a measure of safety. But in my opinion, such a slogan is only a half-truth, and half-truths are sometimes more dangerous than lies. A more realistic revision of this slogan would be that guns dont kill people, people kill people. Crime does not necessarily originate from criminals alone; in fact, it is your first crime that makes you a criminal. Guns facilitate crimes, often for people who would actually not commit them if they didnt have such a ready and efficient means of violence in their hands. Both the Sandy Hook School shooting and Shahzeb killing are paradigm examples of how gun culture has actually led to crime rather than deter it. Let us also not undermine the fact that accidental deaths are offshoots of the gun culture weve bred: a daughter find her fathers gun in the drawer, shoots her brother and mother (Michigan 1993).Furthermore, all those people who believe in the defensive value of bearing arms are victims of wishful thinking since only a fraction of them know how to use them, or even if they do, are often unable to utilize them. The status quo will shape a world where violence is an accepted thing. Already, we see some tolerance for random violence in various parts of the world. To prevent such a moral degradation, we need immediate legislation to restrict the right to bear arms. Guns cause crimes; limit the cause to prevent the effect.

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