Pro & Con Quotes: Should More Gun Control Laws Be Enacted in the United States?

“Gun control is an umbrella term that refers to laws and ordinances that restrict how law-abiding citizens can buy, own, or use firearms. These vary at the federal, state, and local levels….

These laws have been in place for decades, and by now, the evidence is crystal clear. Gun control doesn’t work.

Criminals, by definition, do not obey the law. Gun control laws only affect law-abiding people who go through legal avenues to obtain firearms.

Criminals overwhelmingly obtain their firearms through illegal channels and will never be deterred by state and federal laws. That’s why background checks have virtually no impact on criminals.

Even if criminals did submit to background checks, we’ve seen that these checks aren’t effective at stopping those who intend to use guns to commit crimes.

Consider the following scenarios.

A person with no criminal history walks into a store to buy a gun they’ll use to commit a crime. A background check most likely won’t stop them.

A drug addict lies about their addiction on a federal background check form. Although this individual is committing a federal crime, a background check most likely won’t stop them.

A person with serious mental health issues but no history of treatment or institutionalization goes to buy a gun. A background check most likely won’t stop them.

It makes sense then that background checks have no impact on violent crime.”

“On Monday [July 4, 2022], in the city of Highland Park, Ill., a deranged goblin of a man opened fire on a July 4 parade, killing seven innocent people and wounding three dozen others. After an intense search, the culprit was apprehended and taken into custody. Yet again, a mass shooting has sullied America.

And, yet again, it is unclear what lawmakers can do to prevent the next one. Just weeks ago, the Senate passed a gun-control bill that Chris Murphy described as “the most significant piece of anti-gun violence legislation in nearly 30 years.” Today, posturing as if nothing has been done recently, Democrats are asking for more. But what, exactly, does that mean? A red-flag law? Illinois already has one. A permitting system for the purchase and ownership of guns? Illinois has that, too. “Universal” background checks? That’s already Illinois law. What about “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines? Highland Park has banned both since 2013. Concealed carry? That was prohibited at the parade under an Illinois law that renders it illegal to carry firearms at “any public gathering held pursuant to a license issued by any governmental body.” Straw purchasing? That’s already illegal, and, besides, the gun was obtained legally….

Because they are, relatively speaking, so rare and so unpredictable — and because America is so free — mass shootings remain one of the most intractable forms of crime….

Americans would do well to set incidents such as this one in their proper context. Random acts of violence are, indeed, terrifying, but they are terrifying because they are so rare.”

“In short, gun control legislation does not focus on the root causes of human behavior, including violence, crime, and untreated mental illness. At the heart of gun control initiatives is the hope that criminals will obey the law, but, in fact, they rarely do.

Congress, as well as state legislatures, would have us think that just one more gun-control law will magically reduce crime. But they have been saying that for decades, with no evidence of improvement. Then they offer the same legislation again.

Instead of reducing crime, new gun control legislation would:

• Not change criminal behavior. It only creates a false sense of security.
• Make law-abiding citizens less safe, especially victims of domestic violence.
• Turn law-abiding citizens into instant felons for ordinary, safe behavior.
• Be cost prohibitive for the poorest families to protect themselves.“

“The Supreme Court has twice ruled in the past 11 years that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual pre-political liberty. That is the highest category of liberty recognized in the law. It is akin to the freedoms of thought, speech and personality…

It would be exquisitely unfair, profoundly unconstitutional and historically un-American for the rights of law-abiding folks… to be impaired in the name of public safety.

It would also be irrational. A person willing to kill innocents and be killed by the police while doing so surely would have no qualms about violating a state or federal law that prohibited the general ownership of the weapon he was about to use.”

“Gun control is not the answer to America’s gun violence. In the recent mass shootings, the shooters purchased their weapons legally. Likewise, the policies promoted by gun control activists would not impact mass shootings…

What then to do about mass killings in public or at work places? More guns. We need more legal concealed carry, and we need more places to allow concealed carry, so that the intended victims of a mass shooting can have a decent chance of surviving or stopping these events.”

“Voters know that gun safety does not mean whittling away at their Right to Keep and Bear Arms. It doesn’t mean restricting where or how a law-abiding citizen can exercise a constitutionally protected right. And, it certainly doesn’t mean forcing hunters or target shooters to go to a Federally Licensed Firearm dealer for a background check before they can borrow each other’s guns for an afternoon.

Real gun safety is the fact that over the last 20 years, the annual number of gun-related accidental deaths has decreased by more than half. Or the fact that guns are only involved in 0.4% of accidental deaths among the U.S. population. Real gun safety is also found in the training programs that the NRA offers each year by one of our more than 125,000 NRA Certified Instructors and Range Safety Officers.

The gun control agenda has one goal, and it has nothing to do with keeping people safe. Instead, it has everything to do with decreasing the number of guns in America and making them more difficult to legally purchase. That doesn’t make Americans safer?—it simply makes them unarmed and vulnerable.”

“I am in the camp that if you outlaw guns only the criminals are going to have guns. I supported permitting the concealed carry of handguns in New Mexico. I believe there is a lot less violence in the parking lot, as they say, because the potential perpetrator of a theft or an assault is thinking twice because someone might be carrying a gun. Restrictions on gun ownership will only encourage outlaws to have heavy ammunition and high calibre weapons.”

“In this particular case [the Emanuel AME church shooting in Charleston, SC], the FBI made a mistake. The law itself requires a background check, but that didn’t fulfill their part of the bargain within the time that they were supposed to do.

We don’t need to add new rules, we need to make sure the FBI does its job. Because that person [Dylann Roof], should not have gotten a gun, should not — would not have passed a background check. The first impulse of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is to take rights away from law- abiding citizens…

I think we need to focus on what the bigger issue is. It isn’t law-abiding gun owners.

Look, I have an A plus rating in the NRA and we also have a reduction in gun violence because in Florida, if you commit a crime with a gun, you’re going away. You’re going away for a long, long while.”