Gun Control

Gun Control or firearm regulation is a set of policies and laws restricting the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, or use of a civil. Most countries have more restrictive police about owning a gun, such as Brazil. However, the U.S. is one of the countries with a more permissive law for owning or carrying a gun. Contrary to the U.S. most developed countries, gun control is restrictive, making the U.S. more controversial where guns are a right from their Constitution. For instance, the U.S. Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights introduced into the Constitution to protect the rifts of citizens from bearing or owning weapons.

Gun control is a challenging topic that has been widely discussed. In some cases, gun control is bound to drug control and racism, for example, federal criminalization of marijuana and gun control harming African Americans. In 2021, Jackson Lee submitted a bill proposing a nationwide system to license gun owners, register firearms, and punish violators. However, gun and drug control are unfair because they criminalize conduct that does not violate any rights. Furthermore, African American has a history of firearms called “black traditions of arms” that was a way to fight for their freedom against slavery and murderous racist violence followed by the Civil War. Thus, a gun at that time was a way for them to fight for their lives and prevent kidnapping and returning to slavery.

While this topic is still a trending topic and yet not close to having a standard solution, several states are submitting substantive firearm laws and preemptive firearm laws across fifty U.S. states from 2009 through 2018. While numbers diverge between actions and results from gun control, these preemptive laws will take place in trying to decrease the number of deaths. Thus, the majority of states used preemption as a tool to support policy frameworks favoring gun rights. However, while gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, the murder rate decreased. A study in Applied Economics Letters found that “assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level” and “states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murders.” Concluding that the state that holds a large number of gun owners has the lower number of violent crimes.

Gun control topic is a hot topic; nobody doubts it. However, gun control is definitely not the solution to deaths or violence. Brazil has failed to try to fight against crime using a gun ban. The only result that was achieved after removing guns from their society was increasing violence and corruption. The Brazilian government approved a referendum stating that eighty percent of the population approved of the gun ban, while the referendum showed that sixty-four percent were against the ban. Even though most of society disapproved of the ban, the government passed the bill in 2003 forbidding citizens from buying or owning a gun, resulting in a vulnerable community not preventing crime from rising.

To summarize, we are far from finding a magic solution for this issue. However, fostering discussion on this topic is paramount to help society improve the outcomes to supplement even more people’s arguments. It’s clear that some are against guns, while others are pro-guns. I believe guns are nothing wrong, and I stand up as a pro-gun. But, people also need to understand that they cannot deny someone to have a gun for their protection, sport, hunty, etc. A society without a way to self-defend is a weak society. Thus, they will become easy prey for predators. Likely in Brazil, people could become hostage because they can’t protect themselves.

References

Cavalcante, R. (2017). Armed violence and the politics of gun control in Brazil: An analysis of the 2005 referendum. Bulletin of Latin American Research, volume 36(1), 35–51.

Miller. S. (2019). What Americans think about gun control: Evidence from the general social survey, 1972–2016. Social Science Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell), 100(1), 272–288.

Pomeranz, J., Silver, D., Lieff, S. (2021). State gun-control, gun-rights, and preemptive firearm-related laws across 50 us states for 2009–2018. American Journal of Public Health, 111(7), 1273–9.

Sowell, T. (2012). The great gun control fallacy. Theguardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/18/great-gun-control-fallacy-thomas-sowell

Sullum, J. (2022). Gun control is just as racist as drug control. Reason, 53(9), 18–26.