Argumentative Essay: The Right To Bear Arms

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From 1791, when James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, one of our ten rights as citizens is the right to bear arms. “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”(Bill of Rights). When it comes to this topic (gun rights), Conservatives believe everyone in America has the right to own a gun to protect himself, his family and his property. They believe that infringing on firearm rights is unconstitutional and the law should not be changed by government mediation because of its value to the country and how the early Americans needed firearms to survive. On the other side, Democrats believe there’s a demand for stricter regulations on assault weapons. …show more content…

We need to make sure that the people obtaining guns will not do any harm to anyone that is not harming them (Strictly self-defense). Hillary Clinton says, “Respect the Second Amendment. I respect the rights of lawful gun owners to own guns, to use their guns, but I also believe that most lawful gun owners whom I have spoken with for many years across our country also want to be sure that we keep those guns out of the wrong hands.” This is why there needs to be a mental illness check and make sure these mentally ill people get the help they need so they are no harm to themselves, their family or others. An example of mental illness leading to harm to others is Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland school shooter. Cruz was checked for mental illness, but was not hospitalized. He was able to get his hands on an AR-15 style gun and took the lives of seventeen students who thought that it was going to be like any normal day. If we incorporate more background checks along with mental health checks into the process of obtaining firearms, we would greatly decrease the risk of having more shootings, especially caused by those who suffer from depression, schizophrenia and other mental …show more content…

Equipment that falls under this category includes bump stocks, scopes, sights, grips for recoil, bipods and extended magazines. Bump stocks have more controversy surrounding it than the other pieces because of what it does to a semi-automatic gun. A bump stock is, “an attachment that enables a semi-automatic rifle to fire faster,” (NY Times Larry Buchanan, Evan Grothjan, Jon Huang, Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Adam Pearce and Karen Yourish). Stephen Paddock was the man who caused the Las Vegas shooting, the most deadly shooting in American history, Paddock had twenty-four guns in his room most of which already equipped with bump stocks. From the thirty-second floor of the Mandalay Bay, Paddock reigned down bullets onto a crowd of concertgoers, killing fifty-eight and wounding eight hundred and fifty-one. The worst part about this was that the number of deaths and those wounded could have been decreased by putting much stricter regulations on bump stocks, causing there to be fewer bullets shot at the crowd. “That is just a huge loophole that allows you to convert a weapon into something that is like an automatic gun," Representative, Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat, told CNN. This topic brings the question: When is it overkill? When a gunman is using a firearm that is using attachments like scopes, bump stocks and bipods onto a crowd of innocent people, who most of

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