Control over the smoking barrel

When celebrating the recent success of President-elect Barack Obama’s election, my glee was cut short by a few peers that were present at the time and boisterously made their opinions known. These friends began to attack Obama’s opinions on gun control and other miscellaneous factoids about the President-elect. Not knowing much about gun control, I decided to look into the issue and the possible effects of our new President’s beliefs.

According to Wikipedia, gun control is defined as “a set of a set of legal issues surrounding the ownership, use and regulation of firearms.” In my opinion, this definition of gun control yields a positive outcome. Guns can be used to do many things: they can be used for protection, hunting, recreation and sadly, killing. To allow guns to go into the hands of anyone, for any purpose, is an unreliable means of ensuring the safety of citizens in the United States. And isn’t protection of everyday citizens the main function of our government? I strongly believe that having some form of gun control is necessary to protecting citizens.

Many people are of the mind that gun control infringes upon the rights outlined for us in the Constitution, namely the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment simply states: “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.” (http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html) Though this Amendment seemingly does reserve the right for individuals to bear arms, it is confusing in the way it is written. The beginning of the sentence causes one to infer that an individual can bear arms if part of a militia, which should be used to ensure “the security of a free state.” However, the second part of the statement could be interpreted differently, as: individuals’ rights to bear arms will not be taken away. According to a Web site sponsored by the United States Senate, http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/html/amdt2.html, “there is no definitive resolution by the courts of just what right the Second Amendment protects.”

I think it is vitally important to remember when the United States Constitution was written, whom it was written by and what it was meant to protect. The document was written when our nation was first born, when only a handful of states made up the country, with a sparse and spread-out population while the “mother country” breathed down our necks. The Constitution, a representation of our Democracy that still today goes untested, cannot possibly be a representation of the lives we lead today in our country. Though this document outlines our ways of life, protection and function of government, we can hardly say that it is truly representative of our culture, politics and the needs in our nation at present. Therefore, its guidelines should be followed, but interpretation of this document should be carefully studied, and its background should be kept in mind.

Currently, we have a President-elect who is in favor of some gun control; however, we do not have a President who is interested in completely eradicating guns from our possessions. According to On The Issues Web site, http://www.ontheissues.org/domestic/Barack_Obama_Gun_Control.htm, Barack Obama supports the D.C. handgun ban, common-sense enforcement and the Federal Assault Weapons Bill. The D.C. handgun ban, passed in 1976, “bans the private possession of handguns, and requires that rifles and shotguns in the home be kept unloaded and disassembled or outfitted with a trigger lock.” This law is considered one of the nation’s strictest gun control laws. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/03/15/AR2008031...)
The Federal Assault Weapons Bill, passed in 1994 (and expired in September of 2004), prohibited the sale of certain semi-automatic weapons manufactured after the date of the ban’s enactment. The assault weapons aforementioned are classified as semi-automatics (when fired they will automatically dispel the spent case, reload the chamber, allowing the gun ready to shoot again almost immediately) that were based upon models of guns that are fully automatic, meaning the ability to fire multiple rounds with one pull of the trigger.

In my opinion, these two bans are good. Who really needs a semi-auto gun fashioned after a machine gun in their home? I understand needing or wanting guns to protect oneself against wrong-doers, but how much is too much? Do we really need heavy duty weapons to ward off criminals? Probably not. I understand the use of bigger guns used when hunting large or dangerous game and for other specific purposes, but just to have in one’s possession for the sake of owning a big gun seems outrageous. Why not enforce bans and registrations for guns capable of causing death and mayhem? These bans do not aim to take away guns; they strive to protect against the ill use of guns.

According to Obama, common-sense enforcement is: “The efforts by law enforcement to obtain the information required to trace back guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers.” He goes on to detail what he thinks of guns in this country, “We essentially have two realities, when it comes to guns, in this country. You’ve got the tradition of lawful gun ownership. It is very important for many Americans to be able to hunt, fish, take their kids out, teach them how to shoot. Then you’ve got the reality of 34 Chicago public school students who get shot down on the streets of Chicago. We can reconcile those two realities by making sure the Second Amendment is respected and that people are able to lawfully own guns, but that we also start cracking down on the kinds of abuses of firearms that we see on the streets.” (http://www.ontheissues.org/domestic/Barack_Obama_Gun_Control.htm)

As one can see, Obama is not for taking guns away from America’s citizens, but instead to protect the citizens of our nation from the abuse and illegal use of weapons. The bottom line is this: the Constitution ensures that United States citizens have the right to bear arms, yet it does not define for what purpose. Therefore, it is left for those of us following today’s laws to decide how to interpret the words written over 200 years ago. Though no two people will have the same opinion on the control of guns, all our voices can be heard if we choose them to be. It should be remembered that we, the everyday citizens of America, are the voice of the nation and inevitably make up the government. Therefore, if an issue should be addressed, it is up to us to write our opinions to our Congressmen and the Senate so they may carry our choices to the White House. Inevitably, the choice on gun control is yours.