Essay on Gun Control in America
The United States Constitution establishes the right of citizens to own firearms. The second amendment to the Constitution establishes the right of every American citizen to possess firearms for self-defense. At the current moment, the private individuals in the United States own about 250 million firearms. Thus, there is a pistol or a rifle per capita in America, including infants. 5 million firearms, including pistols, rifles, and shotguns are sold to private individuals each year in the United States. Meanwhile, there are no reliable data on how much safer an American life is.
The USA President Barack Obama called on the government to renew discussions about gun control in the United States. Obama noted that the verification system that prevents illegal firearm sales should be toughened. According to him, about two thousand people were killed in the USA in a short period after that as earlier this year in Arizona were shot and killed six people and seriously wounded to the head a member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords.
In addition, New York Republican Congressman Peter King, a chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, proposed a law banning armed individuals to approach to the high-level representatives of the federal government, congressmen and federal judges closer than a thousand feet. Congressman King, one of the few Republicans in favor of limiting the right to buy and carry weapons, reported about this at a press conference in New York’s City Hall, performing with Michael Bloomberg and the mayors of several other cities in the states of New York, New York Jersey and Pennsylvania. According to John McCormack, King emphasized that “the law’s not written yet, and we are talking about reasonable exceptions,” such as allowing shop owners to keep their weapons in their store that a congressman frequents. “I would say a good faith response to a crime by a person who was not knowingly bringing a gun to an event in the first place, yeah, that would be a reasonable exception” (par. 2).
The Federal law prohibits the possession of firearms to persons who are recognized by a court or other legal bodies, dangerous to the community. The convicted criminals, hiding from the police and people who are addicted to the drugs, are also prohibited from owning weapons.
National Firearms Act (NFA), which prohibited the possession of the individual species and types of weapons by American citizens, adopted by Congress in 1934 (USC, section 26, Chapter 5801). Its version was adopted in 1938, has already introduced a ban on the possession of firearms by the certain categories of citizens, but also imposed a rigid system of taxation and licensing on the most dangerous types of firearms, including the trade and acquisition of the weapons. In 1968, Gun Control Act (GCA) – USC Title 18, Chapter 44, section 921 toughened the rules for arms trafficking.
At the federal level, the law established the basic limitations to the firearms and ammunition, in particular, established to obtain Federal Firearms License (FFL) in order to manufacture, import and trade the firearms. Besides, it established a ban on arms sales by mail, specified the categories of citizens whom weapons cannot be sold, for example, according to age, or in connection with a criminal past, and imposed a ban on imports of the unsportsmanlike weapons.
In addition to the above-mentioned laws, there are a huge number of federal laws that govern the ownership and use of weapons, but most of the gun laws are the laws passed at the state level.
Nowadays, the country has about 2, 5 thousand laws and regulations of different levels, regulating arms trafficking. It is allowed owning both short-and long-barreled weapons, rifle and smoothbore, as well as semi-automatic in the United States.
Currently, 23 states out of 50 allowed the citizens to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense. Carrying concealed weapons without any restrictions allowed in 38 states (it is not compulsory to have some permissions for the carrying of weapons in Alaska and Vermont), but it is prohibited in two states: Wisconsin and Illinois (in the latter it is forbidden to bear and keep arms). The inhabitants of the capital of the USA received the right to bear arms from the United States Supreme Court that abolished June 26, 2008 ban on the weapon-bearing, which existed 32 years.The minimum age defined by the USA federal law for the possession of long-barreled weapons is 18 years, for short-barreled weapons is 21 years.“The American passion for guns both expresses and reinforces the importance of property rights and individual liberty so central to the nation’s political culture” (Singh 290).
In summary, it is possible to draw a conclusion that according to new researches, the vast majority of American gun owners and Americans in general, support tougher measures in order to prevent the weapons against the hands of criminals or people with some mental diseases for whom a gun ownership is prohibited by law. Different kinds of incidents associated with firearms are not uncommon in the USA. Almost every week, TV or media sources reported about shooting at schools, shopping centers, churches and offices. Thus, it is very important to explore the possibility of stricter legislation, regulating the control over the firearms in the USA.
