America as a whole is a divided country when it comes to the topic of whether or not we should have imposed gun control. There have been school shootings, murders, assassinations, and many other gun related deaths that sway the public to reconsider their firearms and our 2nd amendment. Although traumatizing, what we should really be doing is stepping away from an emotional standpoint on the issue and focus on the realities of what would truly come from a gun free America.
We can see that in our country right now, there are yes, “high” murder rates in some cities such as Washington D.C. and Chicago. Some would say it is because of not enough safety enforcement, but they are wrong. Washington D.C. is a prime example that even though there are some strict regulations on firearms, the murder rate has still not fluctuated.
Others may say that the reason we need imposed gun control is due to the fact that there are many murders in areas with a lot of guns. Interestingly, studies show that in our country today, there are more guns in rural areas than there are in urban areas, but what we see is the murder rate is higher in the urban areas than in rural areas. This shows that even though there is an abundance of guns in rural areas, murder rates are kept low, disproving that the cause of homicide is because of the availability of firearms.
It is hard to predict anything with this evidence, although good, since our country as of today does not have outlawed firearms. We can on the other hand view another country, particularly the U.K. In the U.K. it is true that there are lower homicide rates than in the U.S. Interesting, but actually the U.K. has had lower homicide rates than the U.S. for the past 2 centuries, as Thomas Sowell points out in his article “The Great Gun Fallacy”. This could be for various reasons: Environment, culture, lifestyle. None of these points the lower homicide rate directly as the result of removal of guns. We can see by looking at history, it was easier to purchase a firearm in London than in New York, yet the murder rates were higher in New York (stricter gun control). The point of this is, sometimes it isn’t the laws that control society, it’s society that determines the heightened crime.
So, would it create more problems than it would solve? The answer is yes. The largest issue in removing guns from the public’s hands is that you are removing them from the hands of law abiding citizens that may have only kept a firearm for the purpose of protection. Good citizens will willingly hand over their guns to the government if forced, because they are and have always been law abiding. The people who aren’t law abiding citizens, are less likely to hand in their weapons, leaving the firearms only in the hands of people they should never be in the hands of in the first place. Not only that, you’re leaving your innocent citizens without protection from these criminals. The saying that was said long ago still stands: “if you outlaw guns, only out laws will have guns”. It speaks volumes in terms of lives that could be put in danger in our country.