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Ariel Markle

POLS-1100-Sp18

Morgan Wilson

19/04/18

The Second Amendment: The Right to Bear Arms

The right to bear arms has always been a controversial issue throughout American

history, but with the recent rise in mass shootings it has sparked a much more vibrant debate

among the population to see change in the amendment. This is one of those issues that many

people know creates a huge divide in the political parties and plays a massive role in classifying

yourself as a democrat or a republican. In 1791, they wrote the second amendment saying, “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.” The way this is worded points more towards the

security of the freedom of a small nation from larger overpowering governments rather than

bearing military grade weapons in 2018 to protect yourself from other members of the

community with the same powerful weapons. The second amendment is rooted in a much more

civil, safe time and isn’t very well put together when it comes to the power, availability, and

danger of the weaponry available to the general United States population. Gun control today

should be put in place based on learning from what Australia did, United States gun violence rate

compared to other countries, and the statistics behind owning a gun related to safety.

In Australia on April 28, 1996 a man calmly ate lunch in a café and after returning his

lunch tray he pulled a semi-automatic rifle out of his bag and opened fire. After escaping the

crime scene, he managed to dodge the authorities for a full day. By the time he was apprehended

there were 35 people dead and 23 wounded in what would become known as the worst mass
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shooting in Australian history. After the mass shooting, the center-right Liberal Party joined in

backing the legislation to restrict availability of guns and ultimately banned automatic and

semiautomatic firearms. The number of mass shootings, which is defined as when a gunman kills

more than five people not including himself, declined from 13 mass shootings over an 18-year

period to having not one after the mass shooting that happened in the café. Between 1995 and

2006, Australian gun-related homicides dropped by 59 percent and suicides by 65 percent. This

means that the “gun buy back” program has saved an average of 200 lives per day since it was

instated. This is often compared to the United States with the recent rise in mass shootings.

Multiple United States shootings over the course of the last 5 years have had a higher death rate

than the Australian café shooting, and the café shooting sparked a nationwide change for gun

control and statistically has drastically changed the countries overall death rate due to gun-

related violence.

A small arms survey was conducted by Switzerland and out of the 195 countries

considered in the survey, the United States had the 59th highest firearm homicide rate. At 2.70

murders per 100,000 people, we are quickly climbing up this list every day. Compare this to

Honduras, which has the highest firearm homicide rate in the world at 67.19 per 100,000 people.

Statistically speaking it makes it seem like our homicide rate isn’t all that bad, but when you take

into consideration that Honduras is a third-world country it starts to be a little bit more

concerning. The population of Honduras is 9.11 million and the population of the United States

is 323.13 million. Although our homicide rate per 100,000 people may seem low compared to

Honduras, the immensity of our population offsets that drastically. Although Honduras homicide

rate per 100,000 people is significantly higher than ours, our population is over 36 times the size

of theirs, meaning our actual number of homicide is still much larger. Not to mention, we
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absolutely do have the highest homicide rates out of the modern, industrialized countries in the

world. The fact that we not only are leading the industrialized world in homicide rates but that

the rates climb every day should be enough to raise some eyebrows and influence a change in

our gun control laws.

It’s no secret that many gun owners believe that having one makes them safer, but

statistics do very little to back up that claim. There is only one point in time an armed civilian

can successfully stop an active shooter without being harmed themselves. This would be when

they paused to reload their gun. However, by this train of thought, you would be statistically

more likely to stop them without the gun. Statistics show that if you own a gun, not only are you

4.5 times more likely to get shot, you are also 4.2 times more likely to get killed due to a firearm

compared to any unarmed civilian. This may be because guns give a sense of empowerment or

confidence, and the adrenaline of a heated moment can tend to cloud your judgement causing

one to just fire. However, the repercussions of this kind of action can be much worse than

intended, you’re more likely to injure yourself or another innocent bystander than to actually

apprehend an active shooter. Guns can kill in three ways, homicide, suicide, and accident.

Having one in your home exponentially increases the chance of any of these happening due to

ease of access. Children ages 5-14 are 11 times more likely to be killed with a gun in the United

States compared to other developed countries, and this is largely credited to the availability of

guns in the home. The risks of owning a gun, especially one stored in your home, greatly

outweigh the potential benefits.

In conclusion, I do not believe that revoking the right to bear arms in its entirety is the

solution to the climbing homicide rates in America. I am well aware of the fact that American

gun owners live by the second amendment and would likely die before they gave up their right to
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bear arms, be it hunting rifles, small pistols, or full on military grade assault weapons. Although

getting rid of guns entirely is not a completely viable option for gun control, that does not mean

gun control itself isn’t an option. There are certain ways to go about reducing the number of

lethal firearms available to the public that do not infringe on the people’s right to bear arms. The

gun buy back program in Australia is an excellent example of a program that, although there are

certainly still criminals in Australia that possess firearms, took care of the majority of the gun

problem in Australia. At the very least, the gun buy-back program made a massive impact on

gun-related homicide rates. I believe that maybe not that exact program, but something along the

lines of the reform that Australia put in place, would be an excellent use of taxpayer money as

well as a huge boost as to the safety of our nation. If our nation could adopt a gun control policy

that takes notes from Australia’s, taking in to account the comparison of our country’s gun

homicide rates versus others and the statistics showing the safety concerns of gun ownership, we

could live in a much safer, much less terrifying world.

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Bibliography

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