Argumentative Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Argumentative - Research Paper Example Sugarmann (2001) found that between 1962 and 2001, an astonishing 670,000 Americans were killed by handguns, and that ‘Our nation leads the industrialized world in firearms violence of all types’ (p. 177). Spitzer (2008) agrees that in recent years, ‘more than 30,000 Americans have been killed annually as the result of the homicidal, accidental, and suicidal use of guns’ (p. 7). This problem takes on even more worrying proportions when the American statistics are compared with those of other democratic and industrialized countries. In 1995, for example, the United States firearms death rate was 13.7 per 100,000, in Canada it was 3.9 per 100,000 and in England and Wales it was just 0.4 per 100,000 (Sugarmann, 2001, p. 178). The perhaps surprising gulf between the statistics for the United States and for other countries prompted DeConde (2001) to ask, ‘Why†¦with all its wealth and power, has the United States failed time and again to establish a leg al structure that†¦would confine gun violence within bounds at least comparable to those of other advanced democratic countries?’ (p. 6). Guns in America are relatively cheap, readily available, and not regulated to any effective extent. In the other countries mentioned above, tighter gun laws which mainly keep weapons out of the hands of private citizens are an effective safeguard against firearms violence, but in America no effective regulations exist. The gun control debate is regularly intensified by appalling examples of unrestrained gun violence, as has recently occurred with the shootings at Tucson, Arizona. By taking another of these events as an example, we will see how existing gun control regulations are failing. In 1998, Russell Weston, Jr. managed to smuggle a gun into the Capitol building in Washington D.C., and killed two police officers and wounded a bystander before he could be stopped. Weston had previously spent time in a mental hospital in Montana, a fact which should have excluded him from purchasing handguns, but he was still able to obtain an Illinois gun license. In this case, it was the lack of an effective national system for sharing records which was to blame, but in other cases it has been the scarce legislation in some states, and the lack of comprehensive and effective background checks. Furthermore, there appears to be strong popular support for great controls on guns in the United States. Canter (2006) examined the findings of polls by Gallup and Harris, among other national surveyors, and found that they ‘consistently reveal strong support (85-90 per cent)for the Brady Law, even among gun owners (75-80 per cent’ (p.36). The Brady law was passed in 1993, and introduced a 5-day waiting period for handgun purchases, during which background checks were to be conducted to ascertain if the purchaser was suitable. Brady, incidentally, was wounded when defending President Reagan from gunfire, and has since been a prominent campaigner on gun controls. Anti-thesis Several anti-gun control groups, and notably the National Rifle Association (NRA) have long claimed that tighter gun control laws would not be the best approach to tackling gun violence in the United States. As the prominent NRA slogan states, ‘Guns don’t kill; people do’ (Canter, 2006, p.3). It should be noted that organizations such as the NRA use their considerable financial influence to lobby politicians in