Guns Don't Kill, People Kill

A. Attention Getter: Have any of you ever had an incident which involved a gun threatening your life? I have! Do you blame the gun or the person?

In 1986, when I was 15 years old; I was dating a guy who was in his twenties. We had what you call an unhealthy relationship so I broke up with him. The very next night he showed up with a gun at my grandparents home where I had been living. I believe his intent was to kill me. I was upstairs with my grandparents and I heard something hitting the side of the house, I looked outside and at first, I didn’t see anything. I went downstairs and I looked out the door and at the end of the lane, he was standing, shooting toward the house. I went outside and screamed and hollered and he shot right beside me, I ran down because I knew that he wanted me and I didn’t want him to hurt my grandparents but he had already fled the scene in his car. The cops were immediately called. My great uncle had heard the shooting and walked up to see what was going on and from a distance pellets from the gun had ricocheted off of the trees and went in his flesh on his back. Later on that night, I had found

In Conclusion: As American citizens continue to struggle with the debates over issues concerning firearms, we shouldn’t lose sight of the beliefs on which this nation was founded. The freedom to purchase and use firearms for sporting purposes or self-defense from criminals is not the only reason to protect this right. Our forefathers, whom had just won independence from tyranny, wanted to insure that America would be able to defend itself, not only from outside invaders, but from its own government as well, realizing that an armed nation is more difficult to sway under an oppressive regime (Oxford). As we continue to impose more gun laws aimed at honest citizens, we are slowly, but surely, chiseling away the Second Amendment and what it stands for. If all of the special interest groups banded together and sought to solve the real problem, they would find themselves not attempting to outlaw guns, but instead working to punish those who abuse their tight to own a gun. Unfortunately law abiding citizens must now fight on two fronts, criminals on one side who have little concern for victims’ rights and special interests groups on the other side, determined to destroy the rights that help protect us.

Specific Point #1: The increase in gun ownership may be authorized, at least partly, to those desiring to defend their home and family from criminals. However, gun control activists would have us believe that if a person owns a gun, and a criminal enters the house, he will certainly take it from you and use it. This is simply not the case. Dr.Gary Kleck, a professor in the school of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University, reports, “Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times a year- or about 6,850 times a day” (qtd in Gun). Of these 2.5 million cases of self defense, less than 1 percent of the time a criminal is able to disarm a victim (Polsby and Brennan). Dr. Kleck also points out that only 12.7% of burglars in the United States ate apt to enter an occupied home, whereas in Great Britain, Canada, and the Netherlands, who have stiff gun control laws, a criminal is 4

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