Should the US have Stricter Gun Control - Free Essay Example

Someone once said If guns kill people then pencils must misspell words, spoons must make people fat, and cars must make people drive drunk. After recent acts of violence that involved guns, such as school shootings, America has almost been torn apart over the subject of gun control. This topic is highly controversial in the United States because of the two side of Pro-gun and Gun-control activist. The US should not have stricter gun laws, because of the fact that even if the government were to try and tighten the leash on guns it will not stop the violence. To begin, Mental Health is not only a big part of todays issues but it also can play a part in acts of violence. One of the topics that frequently arise in the aftermath of mass shootings in the United States: that mental illness causes gun violence. This statement is certainly true in most instances of violence. These issues become obscured when mass shootings happen and mentally ill people that had caused the acts of violence ceases to be a medical designation and becomes a sign of violent threat. In a contentious press conference, National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre blamed delusional killers for violence in the United States, while calling for a national registry of persons with mental illness. This is important because what he was saying was that there should be some form of a list of people that have a type of mental illness. A number of states passed bills that required mental health professionals to report dangerous patients to local officials, who would then be authorized to confiscate any firearms that these people might own. People who have mental health issues should not have guns, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters after one such bill passed the New York Senate. They could hurt themselves, they could hurt other people. This is certainly true. Additionally, one of the laws that Congress is discussing about this issue is that some would like to see teachers be armed in the schools, but there are security implications that are involved in this. One of the implications is that with further security in the schools it makes the students in the building feel like school is a scary and dangerous place to be whereas it should feel safe and welcoming to the students. According to Bryan Wornick, a professor and associate dean at the University of Ohio State, Society can think of students in different ways at different times. But the more teachers think of students as threats to be assessed, the less educators will think of students as individuals to nourish and cultivate This goes to show that teachers will be forced into looking at students not as people who are there to learn but as potential people to carry out acts of violence thus objectifying them. However there are some people that believe that American citizens should cherish the Second Amendment but should ban assault style weapons. For his 2016 book Rampage Nation, Louis Klarevas of the University of Massachusetts collected data on every gun massacre, during his research he found that six or more people shot and killed for the 50 years before 2016 were due to assault style weapons. Though this may be true, there are other facts that are lost in the arguments about banning assault weapons is the fact that the vast majority of mass shooters use handguns, not assault rifles, in their attacks. That includes Seung-Hui Cho, who used two handguns, including a Glock 19, in 2007 to kill 32 people at Virginia Tech University, the third worst mass shooting in American history. This goes to show that banning assault style weapons may have an effect on mass shooting but not as big as an effect that certain people would want. In conclusion, the US should not have stricter gun control laws for some good reasons. The mental health of the citizens of the United States is a huge factor in all of this. The fact that even if the government were to try and tighten the leash on guns it will not stop the violence.