We live in a country today, where we watch the news. We see the weather, political stats, and some abnormal events taking place. But what is the news heavy on? What does the news make a huge deal about? Homicides, homicides are obviously terrible and there is no positive thing about them. What is the main cause of homicide? Handguns. Handguns are the leading causes of homicide. The Bureau of justice averages to roughly 8,500 homicides occur in the U.S. every year. So can you say that this is a good thing? I don’t, that’s why I believe that the private ownership of handguns should be banned in the united states.
      There is a lot of violence happening today. Lots of people are killing each other off with handguns. Even though there are people responsible enough to own a handgun, there is a substantial amount of people that use them for bad doings, I.E. Gangs, psychos, and robbers. If we ban them all together yes the responsible people won’t be able to own them, but the criminals won’t be able to either. It’s not the good people that kill, it’s the bad people that kill.
      If handguns are banned, there will be fewer deaths by homicide.  Some, may argue “well if hand guns are banned, how will people be able to protect them selves?” Well, you have a number of options.  If handguns are to be banned some people will buy rifles and other guns, however the reason why most people don’t use these is because they are expensive, inconvenient, and are harder to conceal, and I’m pretty sure that someone is going to walk casually out into the public street with a huge rifle or shot gun in hand without being questioned. So what’s left? Close quarters. It’s a lot easier to run away from a knife than it is a speeding bullet. You can run make a lot of noise for people to notice you and try to help you out. And if that fails, you can try to find a blunt object to protect yourself with.











"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."


Four points in connection to the 2nd Amendment:

Point 1.  In the present day, private gun ownership is not necessary in order to keep “a well regulated Militia”.  However, while the original rationale for the 2nd Amendment may no longer be relevant, the content of the amendment is perfectly clear*.  It states unambiguously that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms.

*Is the rationale part of the content?  We won’t explore this issue, because it won’t be relevant (see below).

Point 2.  Which arms do citizens have the right to keep and bear?  Restrictions on the types of arms that citizens may possess have long been established.  Few would argue that citizens have a constitutional right to own machine guns, anti-tank weapons or chemical munitions.  Is it obvious that handguns should be included among those arms that citizens have a right to?

Point 3. Theoretically, any part of the constitution, including amendments included in the “Bill of Rights”, can be amended or abolished.  The fact that something is in the U.S. constitution doesn’t automatically make it right.  However, one could argue that there should be a strong presumption in favor of leaving the constitution as it is, since it has worked so well for so long.  But this argument has weaknesses…

Point 4.  Some people argue that citizens have the right to own handguns because the 2nd Amendment says so.  First, it doesn’t exactly say so (see Point 2).  Second, this type of argument is an “appeal to authority”, and has the form “X is right because Y says so.”  In the context of discussing whether handguns should be banned, such an appeal is not legitimate.  The fact that an authority says so is not enough--we want to know whether the authority in question has good reasons for saying so.