“Hide,” yelled David Lonergan’s substitute teacher, right as the gunman burst through the door and shot the teacher square in the chest. David sprinted for the back of the classroom, kicked over a desk, and lay trembling behind it. The gunman went around shooting the other kids casually before arriving at the desk where David was. “Please,” David begged, “I don’t want to die.” The gunman smirked then shot him. The last thing David remembered before drifting off into a permanent sleep, was a laugh, so terrible and cruel that it sounded like steel being grated together, and then all went still. This was the tragic story of one of the many kids that died at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14. Every year, way too many people die from guns. Whether it’s from suicide, domestic abuse, or a school shooting; guns are constantly ending people’s lives. Guns should be banned in the US. The reasons for this are that they cause a lot of deaths, it will help police officers, domestic abuse deaths would be reduced, and they are the leading cause of suicide.
One of the most significant reasons why guns should be banned in the U.S. is that they are the cause of thousands of deaths in the country. In the article “More Americans Killed By Guns Since 1968 Than In All Other Wars,” columnist Nicholas Kristof writes about the fact that more Americans have been killed by guns since 1968 than all American wars combined. Kristof writes, “There have been 1,516,863 gun-related deaths since 1968, compared to 1,396,733 cumulative war deaths since the American Revolution.”(5). This means that more people have died in the last 48 years then in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War l, World War ll, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War combined. This evidence demonstrates that gun violence is such a big problem that ending it would save the number of lives equivalent to avoiding 12 previous wars. When we move from looking at all gun violence to daily gun violence, the article, “Just the Facts: Gun Violence in America” shows us just how many people die daily. NBC News Staff writes, “Every day in the U.S., an average of 289 people are shot. Eighty-six of them die: 30 are murdered, 53 kill themselves, two die accidentally, and one is shot in a police intervention, the Brady Campaign reports.”(1). This statistic is a breakdown of the different ways that guns manage to end people’s lives each day. Although 289 people might not seem like a lot, it doesn’t just affect the person shot, it affects their family, friends, and communities. Also, this is 289 people a day. 365 days a year. Totaling 105,485 approximate deaths a year. Later in the same article, the author moves from talking about daily deaths to child deaths. The article states, “Nearly three times more kids (15,576) were injured by firearms in 2010 than the number of U.S. soldiers (5,247) wounded in action that year in the war in Afghanistan (source: CDF, CDC,Department of Defense)” (NBC news staff 1). This statistic about kids shows that even kids are affected by guns. About 5,000 people were killed protecting their country in 2010, where there is definite risk of being killed. Three times that number of kids were killed in the U.S. that same year. Innocent harmless children. We are suffering thousands upon thousands of deaths just because of the availability of guns. These deaths are completely unnecessary, all we need to do to stop them is to ban guns.
Despite the ample evidence for why guns should be banned in the U.S., others might say that the crime rate is going down so we don’t need gun control. Taya Kyle, the wife of a man killed by a gun, talks about why gun control is ineffective. She says, “The violent crime rate in the United States has gone down substantially in the last 20 years.”(2). This proves that gun violence can decrease even when gun ownership increases. The use of guns isn’t related to the number of guns. It is a faulty assumption that gun control isn’t connected to violent crime. Light gun control standards aren’t the reason for so much crime. Even though violent crime might be going down in the U.S., that doesn’t mean it’s because of guns, and even if guns were the cause of decrease in crime, it still doesn’t make up for all the people dying. In an article about gun violence facts the NBC News Staff states, “Every year in the U.S., an average of more than 100,000 people are shot, according to The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence.” (1). This quote is about all the people who die from guns each year. Even if the crime rate is going down and less people are dying, it is still unacceptable to stand by and do nothing while a hundred thousand people die each year. We cannot wait for this problem to solve itself.
Another reason why guns should be banned in the U.S. is that it would help police officers not to have guns. In an article called “Milwaukee Gun Store Ordered to Pay $6 Million to Wounded Officers” the website, Police Patrol tells of two police officers who got shot in the line of duty, and what came as a result of that. It says, “Officer Bryan Norberg and former Officer Graham Kunisch were both shot in the face after they stopped Julius Burton for riding his bike on the sidewalk in the summer of 2009.”(“Milwaukee Gun Store Ordered to Pay $6 Million to Wounded Officers” 1). This anecdote demonstrates what guns can do to the people protecting us when they fall in the wrong hands. This supports the claim that guns should be banned in U.S. because it shows how it affects police officers. If guns were banned police fatalities would go down and so would police injuries. Also, it is possible that police might not shoot as much if they knew that the person they were arresting didn’t have a gun. All in all, guns being banned in the U.S. would significantly help police officers and make their lives way easier.
The third reason for guns being banned in the U.S. is that they contribute to most of suicide deaths. In an article about suicide facts, the National Center for Health and Statistics writes about suicide deaths. It states that every year there are 41,149 suicide deaths. 21,175 of those are from firearms, 10,062 are from suffocation, and 6,637 are from poisoning (Center for disease control and prevention). This statistic shows that guns make up around half of suicides. This shows why guns should be banned in the U.S. by showing how they aren’t just used in homicides. They find countless other ways to end people’s lives with suicides being one of prominent ways. If there were no guns in the U.S. people would be less inclined to commit suicide, and tons of innocent teenage lives would we saved. In another article, Karin Kiewra talks about the link in between guns and suicide. The article says, “Research shows that whether attempters live or die depends in large part on the ready availability of highly lethal means, especially firearms.”(1). This fact shows that guns and suicides have a fatal link. As long as it is still easy to get guns in the U.S., suicide will continue to be a problem.
While it is clear that guns should be banned in the U.S., some people may argue that they shouldn’t be banned, because “it is the person that does the killing, not the gun”. In an article about why banning guns in the U.S. won’t do anything, Taya Kyle writes, “Just having access to a deadly weapon doesn't turn someone into a killer.”(3). This means that although a gun might fire the bullet that ultimately kills a person, it’s the person’s intentions. The gun doesn’t make them evil, it is their own twisted mind. If guns were banned in the U.S., crime wouldn’t stop because the people who kill would still be evil. Although this seems like a good argument, it is actually a faulty assumption. It is not true that banning guns wouldn’t stop crime. There are studies that prove this argument wrong. In the article “How Many Shootings Will It Take For America To Control Its Guns?”, Will Oremus writes about the after effects of a shooting in Australia. The article says, “After a mass shooting in Australia, lawmakers tightened gun laws. ‘The firearm suicide rate dropped by half in Australia over the next seven years, and the firearm homicide rate was almost halved’”(2). This means that when guns are banned, even though there are still people interested in hurting others, the lack of guns affects their ability to do so. This matters because the public is safer. If some corrupted individual wants to go into school and kill people, he can because right now guns are accessible. But if we ban guns, this type of carnage will either be greatly reduced or ended altogether.
The last reason for guns being banned in the U.S. is that they are the cause of most domestic abuse deaths. While discussing domestic abuse, Melissa Jeltsen writes, “Research shows that if an abuser has access to a gun, victims are five times more likely to be killed. A recent Associated Press analysis found that an average of 760 Americans were killed with guns annually by intimate partners, though that is likely an undercount. More than 80 percent of the victims were women.” (3). This statistic shows that guns are often used in domestic abuse. Unless guns are banned in the U.S., people are going to keep being killed by their partners. Later Jeltsen writes why it matters that domestic abusers have access to guns. She goes on to say, “More women in this country die at the hands of their intimate partners -- their boyfriends, husbands and exes -- than any other type of perpetrator. Most of those homicides are committed with guns”(5). This statistic shows that women die more from their partners than anything else. Guns are the weapon used to murder these innocent women. If guns were banned in the U.S., fatalities of women would go way down. We must ban guns to stop innocent women from being brutally killed.
Guns should be banned in the U.S. because they are the leading cause of suicide deaths, it will help police officers, they contribute to lots of domestic abuse deaths, and they kill tons of people every day. Gun violence is also critical to Latin America, where gangs fueled by guns kill hundreds of thousands of people. 33% of all global deaths take place there, although Latin America only comprises 8% of the world’s population. If there weren’t guns there, much of the gangs would lose much of their power and tons of lives would be saved. This is similar to our problem in the U.S. now, where guns are extremely unrestricted. In order to ban guns in the U.S. we must have a law passed making it illegal to own a guns unless you have a profession that requires a gun. To pass this law we have to rally support and raise awareness of this major problem destroying our country from the inside out. Without guns, the U.S. will become a much better, safer place.
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