Gun control.

Essay by MaliceRazorsHigh School, 12th gradeA+, October 2005

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Some people naively believe that, in the absence of guns, criminal violence would be much reduced. They are quite wrong about that prediction: on the contrary, the strong would be able to bully the weak and we would be back in the Dark Ages or the modern Third World. Further, thinking that a mature technology such as firearms manufacture can be legislating out of existence is an opium pipe dream. Guns, in their basic form, are not very complex. Anyone with basic tools can make them and ammunition for them. Moreover, roughly 500 million functional firearms already exist. Guns, properly maintained, last for centuries. Gun control will not prevent violence. It will only make people more vulnerable and more afraid of others.

One of the easiest ways to control other people is by making them defenseless. Communists, fascists and other totalitarians the world over have rendered their subject defenseless as the first step toward total control.

Then they could imprison or murder millions with complete impunity. Who wishes others to be defenseless? Rapists and muggers prefer unarmed victims. Politicians and mafia chiefs who want people to depend on them for protection. Racists who wish to exterminate other peoples: genocide is much easier to perpetrate when the victims are unarmed.

Disarming others is never done for their benefit. Usually, rendering people defenseless is a prelude to abusing them further. Was disarmament of the European Jews started in 1938 done for their benefit? Did it "reduce gun violence in their community" or did it merely make them easier to murder? Did any people armed with rifles end up stuffed into the holds of slave ships? When we look at history, a pattern emerges: free people have guns, slaves don't. Just having guns does not guarantee freedom, just as having air to breathe...