WAT
Habaner0
Regular
It should be common knowledge that violent or mentally ill people are too dangerous to be held responsible to own a firearm, yet the 2nd Amendment has clearly stated that they do have a right to a gun. The 2nd Amendment was adopted in 1791 to the Constitution to protect the rights of the people to bear arms, but the times have changed since then and there are new issues to consider. The fact that dangerous weapons can be obtained so easily, especially for convicted felons and the dangerously mentally ill, should be considered when enforcing the rights of the people through a document that is 220 years old. One example of using a Constitution that is outdated is the somewhat recent Supreme Court case of the District of Columbia v. Heller. The court ruled that the 2nd Amendment secures the right of an individual to own and possess a handgun in a home for self-defense, but does gun ownership really cause or prevent crime? D.C. is home to the country’s most strict gun laws and as a result the murder rate increased by 134% according to the National Center for Policy Analysis. This is caused by the difference in laws between each state. If a criminal has the opportunity to buy a gun in a different state that had different laws on gun control and then go into a place where gun control gun control was strict then that would increase crime dramatically. For a criminal to go into a place where the gun laws are practically restricting people to have guns gives them the advantage and they know this. If gun control was enforced on a federal level then this would not be a problem due to the fact that they would not know if their victim had a gun or not. In a scenario where the victim was armed and resistant reduces the chance that the victim will be hurt or robbed according to criminologist Gary Kleck. In a scenario where the victim is resistant without the use of a firearm increases the chances that the victim will be harmed or robbed. From Gary’s research we can see that a firearm reduces the chance the crime will be committed if everyone is packing heat.
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