Letter to the Editor: Gun laws
Issue date: 4/27/09 Section: Opinion
There are many people out there who support strict gun control from licensing and fingerprinting, to even banning guns altogether. But an answer solving the problems of gun violence in this country is not banning guns from law-abiding citizens.
The Second Amendment was written for a few reasons: to overthrow an oppressive government, to fight back foreign invasions and to protect people and their property from crime.
What many people take for granted is the thought that guns kill 30,000 people a year and banning guns would solve that problem.
First of all, more than half of these 30,000 deaths are suicides, while only about 11,000 are homicides.
Sure, a gun in the house is more likely to be used in the death of an innocent person rather than an intruder, but that does not mean guns are more likely to kill an innocent person than save one. For every gun death in this country, there are hundreds of times in which a gun is used in lawful self defense with the incident of a single shot being fired coming as extremely rare.
Criminals get more than 90 percent of their guns off the black market, which is what is created when something is made illegal, like drugs or alcohol. If you remember prohibition, that did not stop the flow of alcohol. It created an underground black market for it, and ended up causing more problems than solved, and lead to its repeal.
The same thing would happen if guns were to be banned. As an avid supporter of gun rights, I am for law-abiding citizens being able to protect themselves against the sick madmen and criminals who will always exist no matter what laws are put into place.
I also support certain restrictions, such as banning the sale of machine guns (a law which has been effective since the 1930s) and having background checks done in gun sales and in the process of obtaining a license to carry (which are also done by law), because it eliminates a source for criminals and dangerously mentally ill people who are deemed by law prohibited from owning weapons, from getting them.
No matter what we as society do, we will never be able to rid the world of criminals and psychopaths who do harm to others, because once it is a problem, it will always be a problem, like a disease. We can only reduce their effects on society.
The solution to reducing the amount of criminals that have guns is to focus on their source: the illegal black market of guns.
Zack Markowitz
San Marcos, Calif.
The Second Amendment was written for a few reasons: to overthrow an oppressive government, to fight back foreign invasions and to protect people and their property from crime.
What many people take for granted is the thought that guns kill 30,000 people a year and banning guns would solve that problem.
First of all, more than half of these 30,000 deaths are suicides, while only about 11,000 are homicides.
Sure, a gun in the house is more likely to be used in the death of an innocent person rather than an intruder, but that does not mean guns are more likely to kill an innocent person than save one. For every gun death in this country, there are hundreds of times in which a gun is used in lawful self defense with the incident of a single shot being fired coming as extremely rare.
Criminals get more than 90 percent of their guns off the black market, which is what is created when something is made illegal, like drugs or alcohol. If you remember prohibition, that did not stop the flow of alcohol. It created an underground black market for it, and ended up causing more problems than solved, and lead to its repeal.
The same thing would happen if guns were to be banned. As an avid supporter of gun rights, I am for law-abiding citizens being able to protect themselves against the sick madmen and criminals who will always exist no matter what laws are put into place.
I also support certain restrictions, such as banning the sale of machine guns (a law which has been effective since the 1930s) and having background checks done in gun sales and in the process of obtaining a license to carry (which are also done by law), because it eliminates a source for criminals and dangerously mentally ill people who are deemed by law prohibited from owning weapons, from getting them.
No matter what we as society do, we will never be able to rid the world of criminals and psychopaths who do harm to others, because once it is a problem, it will always be a problem, like a disease. We can only reduce their effects on society.
The solution to reducing the amount of criminals that have guns is to focus on their source: the illegal black market of guns.
Zack Markowitz
San Marcos, Calif.
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