Arroyo 1

Joseph Arroyo
The Right to Bear Arms and Murder

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the
people to keep and bare Arms, shall not be infringed. (Constitution of United States of
America)

We, as a nation have all recognized this passage, known as the second amendment to the
United States Constitution. On the date, December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights, or the first ten
amendments, were adopted and were ratified by three-fourths of all the states. It has now been
almost two hundred and twenty-six years since the Constitution has been adopted. Since then,
there has been numerous accounts of incidents that have shown that the second amendment has
gone wrong in the United States at present.

In the past decade, there have been a plethora of violent deaths in the United States due to
the second amendment. According to Vox, America has six times as many firearms homicides in
Canada and nearly 16 times in Germany. What is depicted from this fact? Since there are little to
no regulations on gun control is different states, there are heavy repercussions present. Moreover,
the number of homicides that this statistic represents is only increasing due to the deprivation of
regulation on gun control.

The numbers of incidents are obviously growing at a high rate every year. At present, we
are reaching the end of the year 2017, as of now, there has been a total of 53,199 incidents
pertained to gun violence in the United States alone (gunviolencearchive.org). Amongst that total
number of incidents, 13,376 are the number of deaths. That is overall 25 percent of victims who
lost their lives to the second amendment in the Constitution. These are the actual number of
deaths counted. Whereas, 310 of those incidents are considered mass shootings that have only
been reported and verified in the United States.

My question is, how many more people have to die to further confirm that guns are used
for one purpose? The purpose of murder. With this, we still decide to remain oblivious or
dubious of the power that guns encompass.

In the current world of Politics, there are not enough people pushing toward gun control
because it will not benefit them in any way. Consequently, the nation would not be presumed to
be cynical, but such ignorance and lack of compassion in this conflict leads us in this direction.
Without the heavy regulation on firearms, many are able to commit these heinous acts. As a
citizen of the United States, and a member of society, I ask, how many more people have to die?
Guns simply impose the authorization to commit murder on one another.
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Solely, I am not the only one who perceives it this way, according to the Pew Research
Center in 2017, asserts, While a majority of those who do not own guns (59%) see gun violence
as a major problem in the country today, a third of adults who own guns say this is a very big
problem. This comes to show how large the issue of gun violence can be regardless of the
ownership of a gun. If anything, the only reason a citizen might consider bearing arms is due to
the fact that their neighbor owns a gun, and imposes as a threat to the neighbors family. The fear
of not being able to protect your family is what leads to the consideration or action to bear arms.
This can also be defined by the domino effect.

The domino effect takes a large role in gun ownership. Let us look at a small community,
if one residence has a gun and it is known or brought up continuously like a reputation, the
probability of their neighbors owning a gun are higher than an average residence.

In conclusion, the ONLY plausible reason for such a massive amount of incidents that
involve gun violence in the United States is caused by the accessibility of weapons. The
minimum requirements to purchase a gun are standard and can be achieved by anyone. However,
if we somehow establish additional requirements to purchase firearms or regulate the easy
accessibility to obtain firearms, we will see a lower rate and fewer deaths of incidents caused by
gun violence. Of course, amongst other things, this will take a lot of knowledge and action but it
will truly be for the well being of the United States and ultimately, humanity.