Posted: 3/17/2008 12:41:08 PM EDT
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Well guys I had to do a research essay for college writing. So, my subject was on gun control. I am just curious as to what you guys may think of it. Sorry if it is a tad bit long... “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”. Those words were famously spoken by Benjamin Franklin, one of the most beloved founding fathers. The point he was trying to make is that people should not give into fear and let it control their lives. He always believed that being free was making decisions to hurt your freedom and liberties for the sole thought of it making you safer. I think these words are very important to remember today, with terrorism, crime and especially gun control. It is a very highly contested issue, with school shootings and drive by shootings appearing on tv more and more frequently. One very controversial issue on gun control is that many gun control advocates want to ban "Assault rifles." Also, another issue that has become quite well known is the CCW (Concealed Carry Permit), which allows citizen to go through rigorous training and tests and are then allowed to carry a conceal handgun. Plus, there are those who just think banning guns all together is a great idea, and believe the Constitution says that only militia's are allowed to have firearms and not citizens. I believe these are just some more examples of fear mongering that is going on in order for these parties to push their agendas. Assault rifles are a relatively new phenomenon. They came about in the later days of World War 2. It was a weapon designed to be quickly reloaded, and easily operated. It has a selector switch by the trigger to allow the user to switch the weapon from safe to semi-automatic and to even fully automatic. It is important to know that there is a big difference between a REAL assault rifles and the "assault rifles" the anti-gun lobby wants to ban. A true assault rifle is illegal in the United States, because a true assault rifle has the capability to fire in fully automatic. This means, it can spray bullets by merely just pressing and holding back the trigger. A firearm that can fire in fully automatic is considered a machine gun, and is illegal in the United States. Rifles like the M16, AK47, AR15, and the FN FAL were all designed as assault rifles. However, these rifles in the United States are modified to only shoot in semi automatic, which means it can only fire once, for every time you pull back the trigger. Those who want to ban this style of rifles call them assault rifles, but in reality they are not assault rifles at all. There are numerous hunting rifles out there that do the exact same thing as these rifles do. The only difference between these hunting rifles that fire in semi automatic and these "assault rifles" is purely just a cosmetic difference. These "assault rifles" that gun control advocates call are no more dangerous than those semi-automatic hunting rifles. Many people who support gun control, and in particular, want to ban assault type weapons, say that these "assault rifles" if were taken off the streets would dramatically reduce crime. They say that these weapons are only good for killing people, and that a sports shooter could possibly have no use for them. They also say that these guns are the weapons of choice for criminals. However, in Chicago from 1985 all the way through 1989, it was found that in the entire city, only one homicide was perpetrated with a military caliber rifle. Of the 17,144 rifles that were seized in the time frame, only 175 found were "military style" weapons (Assault Weapons 08). In Florida, the Department of Law Enforcement Uniform Crime Reported that for 1989 that rifles of all types account for 2.6% of the weapons in Florida used in homicides were committed using a military style weapons, far from being a weapon of choice that the gun control advocates try to say. Also the Florida Assault Weapons Commission found that "assault weapons" were used in 17 of the 7,500 gun crimes for the years 1986 through 1989. In New York City, of 12,138 weapons that were seized in 1988, only 80 were military style weapons (Assault Weapons). I believe this proves that the issue of assault style weapons being the most dangerous weapons out there is vastly overblown. Another issue that is big in the gun control debate is the Concealed Carry Weapons permit. This allows normal citizens to legally carry handguns. Many States have passed laws allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns for protection. When it was being considered in States like Michigan and else where, there was a lot of, what I would call fear mongering going on. People were talking about how there would be gun battles on every street corner if this bill was passed, or that there would be people be shot over fender benders. It would be a much more dangerous place to live if these laws were passed, is what they tried to tell us. In fact, quite the opposite has happened. I one study shows that by most conservative estimates that by adopting concealed carry laws, states reduced murders by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3% (Lott, 96). Since the bill passed, there has not been a single murder carried about by someone who legally had a CCW permit. In the entire state, only one case against the CCW holder was when a man in a car was following a woman, she pulled over and he briefly showed that he was armed. After doing so, he went back into his car and drove off. I believe that if a criminal thought there was a 50/50 percent chance that someone he was about to mug had a pistol with them, he or she would seriously reconsidered on if it is such a good idea. Now, that there has been very publicized killings in schools, people have been talking about possibly letting students and school staff to carry concealed weapons in order to deal with this threat. It is apparent, that no matter what, the police can never arrive on time to stop a mad man from shooting up his classmates. I am in favor of allowing CCW permit holders to carry weapons on school campuses. To obtain a CCW is not liking going to a store and buying one. You go through a lot of tests and you must pass them all plus a shooting test to make sure you are proficient enough with the weapon in order that you do not miss your target and hit a innocent person. We're talking about licensed individuals age 21 and above, in most states, who have gone through extensive background checks, training, testing, etc. Basically, these are the same individuals who are licensed to carry in virtually all other unsecured locations in these states. By unsecured I mean anywhere where there are not metal detectors and X-ray machines. So you're saying that individuals who are licensed to carry in office buildings, movie theaters, grocery stores, restaurants, shopping malls, churches, banks, etc.—they're currently not allowed to carry on college campuses for some reason … College campuses are unsecured locations. Anybody can walk onto a college campus carrying just about anything they please. So what happens is these state laws and these school policies that prohibit concealed carry on college campuses stack the odds in favor of dangerous criminals who have no concern for following the rules (Smalley 08). Judging from the extremely low crime committed by CCW holders, I do not believe that it would cause anymore shootings than what would normally happen. What it will do is it will make a psychopath like the one at Virginia Tech think twice about trying to go into a school and shoot completely innocent and unarmed people. It would empower those defenseless students to have the ability to defend themselves from people like this. Lets face it, we don't have enough money to put a armed cop in every class room to protect our youth, so why not arm those that have been through tests and have CLEAN criminal backgrounds to help tip the balance in this battle to make schools safer? Teaching staff at schools with kids who are too young to carry would also be allowed to be armed on school grounds. You never hear about mass killings at gun shows, or police stations, because they are armed with weapons. The point of these mass killers is to kill as many people as they can, a school is easy because guns are not allowed, and they know their fellow students and teachers will be easy targets for them. Now my last point about why I do not agree with gun control is because our founding fathers thought it was essential that the citizenry be armed. For two important reasons, the first being that if the United States is ever invaded by a foreign Army, there would be no army big enough to take on such a large population with guns who are willing to fight for their freedom. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto famously said while discussing with the Japanese leadership on whether they should invade the mainland United States, "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." The founding fathers always thought it was an important deterrent for any would be invader to know that we Americans are well armed and that we can defend ourselves from an invading army. Another very important reason they wanted us armed, is that the founding fathers did not want the government to be the only ones to have guns. If the citizens were not armed, they would not be able to stop a dictator from seizing their freedoms and liberties. They believed that if the government had all the guns, there would be nothing to stop them from becoming tyrannical, having guns was important to keep government in check they believed. Guns are and have always been apart of American culture. However, they are no more than tools. A car can be just as lethal as a gun, and you are far more likely to get killed driving on the way to work, than to stop at a convenient. One interesting fact that I have learned is more people die in a single year from getting struck by lighting than people who have been killed in over 10 years of school shootings combined. These are all terrible events that happen and deserve strong condemnation, but we shouldn't ban them just because of a few lunatics. We can make this a safer country without having to ban weapons. |
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Lemme know how this works out for ya... When I did an essay on gun control and its stupidity.. I had a female "prof" try to denigrate me in front of the class for my mistaken belief.. she told me that the mere fact that someone had a gun in their posession, would turn them into a mindless killing machine. I engaged her in debate and used the old stand by.. "if that is the case, then does the posession of a vagina make you a mindless whore?" It did not go so well ... Had to have the paper graded by another "objective" source and had a bit of a back and forth with the dean after that... YMMV |
 You rock!! ETA: To the OP, split up the fourth paragraph. It's too freakin long. Other than that, its pretty good. |
That's good shit! |
*the_naked_prophet stops grading papers, to grade AIV's paper*
Riddled with grammar errors, redundancy, factual errors, and misleading and unclear statements. Has not been proofread. Rambling and does not have a clear structure. Purpose of several paragraphs is unclear. Argues against self, then states position in seeming opposition to supporting statements. No citations or sources for facts or statements of others opinions. This would rate a C as a high school political opinion paper. For a college writing class, this rates an F, especially for a "research" paper. About halfway through, I stopped trying to help you, and just wanted to show you why it's no good. Please don't turn this in as is. Gun rights advocates should work to appear professional and intelligent - we don't show up at the capitol wearing chaw-stained overalls, drooling into our beards and scratching our privates, to try to convince our legislators that we are intelligent and responsible enough to be trusted with guns. If you don't feel like doing work on it, then reword it slightly and make it an anti-gun paper. Your heart is in the right place, but those who were assigned to teach you the use of the english language and the logical faculties with which you were born have failed you. Sorry. |
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In HS for the senior debate, I chose gun control. Some hot headed idiot thought he could outsmart me. Not only did I "win" the debate, but I got him so infuriated that he nearly failed the class with his conduct. Nothing better than making anti's bigger failures in life than they already are. |
Yes, and dare anyone to post a sign on their front door that says: "Gun Free Zone; All Intruders Will Be Negotiated With Until Proper Law Enforcement Authorities Arrive!" I'd say don't bother giving a firearms lesson, concealed carry or having a gun in the home is powerful because the bad guy(s) doesn't know what you have or where it is; the ultimate deterrent. |
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the_naked_prophet already tackled the rest of the paper, but I'll give the section on CCWs a try. I am not an English teacher, nor a teacher of any other subject, but I'll do my best. First impression is "Holy shit, this is a long paragraph," and it needs to be broken into smaller sections. Another issue that is big in the gun control debate is the Concealed Carry Weapons permit. I thought it was "Carry Concealed Weapon" permit, but I could be wrong This allows I believe that if a criminal thought there was a 50/50 percent chance that someone he was about to mug had a pistol with them, he or she would seriously I can't bring myself to go any further  Your sentiment is correct; I agree with what you are saying. Sadly, the paper itself is not very well-written, and needs some serious work. |