Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Public opinion on guns
History of gun control in america essay
Positive effects of gun control
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Public opinion on guns
The right to bear arms has been a part of this country’s constitution since its conception in 1776. Guns we originally a commodity that almost every household had. Firearms were used for hunting and protection. As the modern era came upon us, there became a lesser need to own a firearm because of a controlled police force and a surplus in food. The surplus in food and modern law enforcement, along with rising firearm crimes prompted the government to start reviewing gun laws. Furthermore, over the past century the right to bear a firearm has been restricted by many laws. These laws are instated to help prevent accidental and planned deaths attributed by firearms. The question still stands: can gun-safety laws help prevent accidental and non-accidental deaths caused by firearms? Is the second amendment out dated in today’s world, and is there a need for some a revised version of this amendment? Gun control continues to inflame public opinion nearly a century after the first firearm law was proposed. Gun control supporters blame the high rate of violent crime and the large number of gun accidents and suicides on the easy availability of firearms and lax licensing and safety rules. Opponents have argued that access to firearms deters crime. Gun homicides are decreasing and fatal gun accidents are at a record low rate. Many people view the gun control issue very differently. On one hand we have at home parents who are concerned with the safety of their children, from gun violence at school. They are also concerned with how easy it is for a minor to obtain a firearm. On the other hand, there is the NRA. The NRA believes that the problem is not with firearms. The problem lies with the people that misuse them. The controversy with gun control that has developed over the past century has had many causes. Over the past century, since the first act of gun control policy was past in 1911 there has been an auterauge of gun control acts that have followed in its place. These acts have helped to insure the safety of the public from gun violence. Prior to the 20th century, no gun laws were instated for public protection and people were able to obtain a firearm without a license or permit. Today there are over 20,000 laws (Crimes and Criminal procedure, index) that are instated which limit the use of firearms to certain individuals that do not meet the proper criteria.... ... middle of paper ... ... easy target. America may indeed be obsessed with guns, but much of what passes as fact simply are not true. The news media’s focus on only tragic outcomes, while ignoring tragic events that were avoided, may be responsible for some misimpressions. Horrific events like the 1998 shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas receive massive news coverage, as they should, but the 2.5 million (Guns and gun Violence) times a year there are people that use guns defensively that are never discussed. These include shooting which are stopped before they happen and mothers saving their kids from being kidnapped. Maybe not only is there a need for new gun control acts to be admitted but also there is a need to look deep down to the route of the violence. Society needs to look deep down to what causes the problem. Gun control is becoming more of a social issue reflecting on society today. Instead of restricting guns to people, we should work in accordance to help prevent tragic events from happening instead of waiting for them to happen. Without looking into this deep well of anger so recluse inside of people, we may never stop a vast problem there is with guns today.
The court case of Marbury v. Madison (1803) is credited and widely believed to be the creator of the “unprecedented” concept of Judicial Review. John Marshall, the Supreme Court Justice at the time, is lionized as a pioneer of Constitutional justice, but, in the past, was never really recognized as so. What needs to be clarified is that nothing in history is truly unprecedented, and Marbury v. Madison’s modern glorification is merely a product of years of disagreements on the validity of judicial review, fueled by court cases like Eakin v. Raub; John Marshall was also never really recognized in the past as the creator of judicial review, as shown in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford.
"The Controversy of Gun Control." Open Discussion about Various Controversies. N.p.. Web. 3 Dec 2013. .
Jim had run away from his abusive father and enabling small town to find himself traveling down the Mississippi on a raft. His traveling partner was a black slave, Jim. Wondering why Jim was there, Huck discovers that Jim had run away from his slave owner, Ms. Watson. Jim had spoken about his harsh life as a slave, and resented talk of being sold down to Orleans for a “big stack o’ money.” Huck felt that Jim’s escape was wrong, but kept his promise of secrecy, like any good friend would.
In "The Effectiveness of Gun Control Laws:." the authors perform a surgical operation on the various views and issues as presented by the industry concerning gun regulation. The publication outlines the laws that have been enacted by congress concerning the regulation of firearms and shows their pros and cons. The authors suggest that there needs to be a more concerted effort by the executive as well as the judiciary so be able to enforce laws concerning firearm issuing and licensing.
”(Gopinak, 2007, p. 458 ). This demonstrates that United States is just not inclined to take any action on gun control which is leading to deaths of children and adults. Some individuals believe handguns are not needed in American 's society. Then those who oppose gun control argue guns are a necessity to: hunting in the wild, self-defense, and it is part of the American culture. Furthermore, gun violence is having a vast impact on loved ones; losing a family member can have enormous affect socially, physical and mentally.
These early Supreme Court decisions have made a lasting impression on the United States. Marbury v. Madison established the concept of judicial review that strengthened the ability of the judcicary to act as a check against the legislative and executive branches by providing for the review of Congressional acts by the judiciary to determine the constitutionality of such acts. McCulloch v. Maryland allowed for the expansion of Congress’ implied powers needed to execute its delegated powers as well as defined the supremacy of constitutionally enacted federal entities over state statutes.
Cultural criminology is a relatively new perspective and approach to understanding crime and deviance. Cultural criminology first began to develop in the 1990s and rapidly progressed in to a new field of criminology that is both influential and informative. The core concept of cultural criminology is built upon by using traditional approaches from different disciplines such as sociological studies, cultural studies, symbolic interactionism and many other disciplines, theories and methods. (Oxford bibliography Keith Hayward) Although it would seem that cultural criminology is nothing more than an interdisciplinary field, using only the studies and theories of some of the disciplines mentioned above - it actually does offer a new line of thought and individuality that other fields of criminology in the past did not. This is because instead of viewing crime objectively, it instead looks at crime subjectively by analysing the idiosyncrasies of the modern sociocultural environment. It offers an explanation of crime and deviance as a constructed result from either political, social or cultural actors and groups who commit crime, because of a shared sense of meaning, emotions, symbols, styles and even fashion within different subcultures. (Oxford bibliography Keith Hayward) Cultural Criminologists hope to explain and examine how the meaning of certain aspects of a subculture can play an active role in society and the construction of crime, not only by explaining why crime is committed, but also how crime is controlled. This essay will explain what cultural criminology is by using The 1989 Hillsborough disaster as an example in illustrating some of the research findings by cultural criminologists. There have been many different topic area...
Opposing sides have for years fought over the laws that govern firearms. For the purposes of this paper "Gun Control" is defined as policies enacted by the government that limit the legal rights of gun owners to own, carry, or use firearms, with the intent of reducing gun crimes such as murder, armed robbery, aggravated rape, and the like. So defined, gun control understandably brings favorable responses from some, and angry objections from others. The gun control debate is generally publicized because of the efforts of the Pro-Gun Lobby or the Anti-Gun Lobby.
In The United States of America there are lots of problems that are plaguing our nation. Gun Control is a problem that there is lots of controversy over. This is a problem that had a fire reignited under it when on December 14, 2012 a school in Connecticut was attacked. Many legislative bills have been introduced since then. (Focus of U.S Gun Control Shifts to States Year after Newtown Shooting) There are lots of issues that we have in our community with Gun Control that we have controversy over: background checks, age, classes, military guns, pistols, shotguns, and rifles. All of these things are apart of the plague in our Nation.
At present there are numerous regulations and restrictions on firearms imposed by the government. However there are no national mandated requirements or all encompassing legislation. The laws in place vary from state to state and are in some cases are poorly enforced. Hard evidence as to the effectiveness of these present regulations is ambiguous. The question as to how the government and society deals with gun control is unique to the USA. In a complex issue such as gun control both sides of the equation have valid arguments to be h...
Today in the United States many people argue over the fact of guns being legal or illegal. There are people using guns for personal safety and there are others who use them for crimes, as well as for other situations. Firearm deaths in the United States have slowly been decreasing from year to year with all these bills getting passed to promote a safer country than ever before. Guns are the main weapon for youth suicide, school shootings, and for committing murder. In 2010 there were 2,711 infants, child, and teenage firearm deaths. As in school shootings and in committing murder, studies show shooters often had multiple, non-automatic guns, shootings were planned, most youth tell before shooting, shooters have a history of being bullied or threatened, shooters have mental issues, and shooters have done suicidal gestures before (Gun Control with School Shootings). Although there are people who use guns for murdering, there are also those who oppose guns being used without the proper requirements. 85% of all respondents to the survey supporting requiring states to report people to national background-checks systems who are prohibited from owning gu...
This type of loosely regulated power is abnormal compared to the other branches of government, and one could pose the question “what happens if the court is wrong?”. Under the constitution, and the concept of judicial review, courts have the power to say what the constitution is, but have no power to enforce it(Shapiro). This is the ultimate check on the court that prevents it from overstepping its authority. One common constitutional theory , is the concept of the sword and the purse. It states that Congress has the sole power of the “purse” to lay taxes and control commerce of the country(Ho). This is then paired with the concept of the sword which is shared between the legislative and the executive branches(Ho): Congress has the power to declare war, and the president will be commander in chief of the army and navy(Constitution). Through this all the Supreme Court is not stated to have any of these powers. In fact, in Federalist 78 Alexander Hamilton states that the legislature is “empowered with will, the executive with force, but the judiciary only has judgement”(Fed. 78). One can assume that the framers excluded these powers from the court on purpose, seeing that the concept of Judicial review was a matter of conversation far before Marbury vs. Madison(heritage).
So why is gun control such a hot debate? Perhaps to answer this question it would be important to look at some key statistics concerning handguns in our society. In this nation, where nearly half of all US households own at least one gun, nearly 30,000 people die from a gunshot each year (Dahl). From this alone it is no wonder gun control is such an important issue, however as bad as this may seem, the number of firearm related incidents have decreased over the years. In the early 1990’s the number of people killed or wounded by firearms soared. Since 1993 however the US has seen a steady drop in deaths due to firearm (The Lancet). Fatal firearms accidents have declined as well, nearly 40 percent in the last decade, and are now at the lowest levels ever recorded (Poe). So why the sudden drop? Antigun advocates would like to attribute this to an increase in gun control laws while pro gun advocates point to a decrease in unemployment rates along with other social factors.
No one knows what will happen in his or her life whether it is a trivial family dispute or a civil war. Ishmael Beah and Mariatu Kamara are both child victims of war with extremely different life stories. Both of them are authors who have written about their first-hand experience of the truth of the war in order to voice out to the world to be aware of what is happening. Beah wrote A Long Way Gone while Kamara wrote The Bite of the Mango. However, their autobiographies give different information to their readers because of different points of view. Since the overall story of Ishmael Beah includes many psychological and physical aspects of war, his book is more influential and informative to the world than Kamara’s book.
Gun control is an awfully big issue in the United States today. Many people in America don’t agree with the gun control laws that they have today. Gun control laws only take guns and freedom away from law-abiding citizens. Many citizens have their own reasons for owning a gun. Why would the government want to make it harder for people to own a gun? People that own guns aren’t very likely to be attacked by criminals. Owning a handgun is one of the best ways of protection when used correctly. The second amendment states “the right to bear arms”; does this grant everyone the right to own a gun? Gun control laws have not been proven to do anything for citizens. Gun control laws just make it harder for the good guy average Joe to own a gun. Gun control laws are not a good idea, and are taking part in the loss of our freedom that was given to us.