Wednesday, March 18, 2015

It's Easier Than You Think to get a Gun in America

With all these recent shootings in Ferguson, New York, and Chicago. I've wondered, how easy is it to get a gun in America?

Most people assume that you must go to a gun dealer, get a background check before you buy a gun. However, in some states that is not true. In certain states, Wyoming, Alaska, Arkansas, to name a few, it's perfectly legal to buy a gun from a private seller and it's that seller's discretion whether or not to do a background check.

ABC reports that it's possible to get a military weapon (an AK-47) in under an hour. They called up a private seller, met at a parking lot and bought an AK. They were also able to purchase a military sniper rifle, which is used to penetrate concrete and steel.

If it's that easy for a law abiding citizen to purchase guns, then it's just as easy for a criminal to purchase guns. This is an interesting issue that the nation is split on. Most liberals believe that guns should be strictly controlled, but most conservatives (think NRA) think that guns should be easy to obtain because it's our second amendment right.

This brings about an issue that involves the second amendment. Personally, I believe that the second amendment should either be repealed or altered. It was created when the nation was young and undeveloped, when the infant United States could be open to attack at anytime, from natives or European countries. Due to these threats, it was important for US residents to own guns in order to defend themselves and their country. However, this is not the case now, the US is what some might call a "super power"; we have a large military with a standing army ready to defend against invasion. There is no situation now where individuals would need to own guns in order to defend themselves. Now, some may argue that individuals would have to defend themselves against someone, who has a gun, robbing or attacking them. But if nobody were allowed to have a gun, you wouldn't have to defend yourself from someone who has one. I believe that this is a very strong argument for why gun trade and use should be strictly controlled, but I'm also aware that there is a very strong counter argument to mine as well.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Joesh,

    An important topic for sure, but WHY are we studying it right now? Need something more than "recent shootings in Ferguson", etc. Were you referring to police shootings or criminal gunfire?

    Also think about how you might analyze quoted text. Here is an example from Doc OC from the archives, even though it appears I wrote it...

    ReplyDelete