Did you know that america has over 20,000 gun laws in the books that are being ignored by crimanals? In the Columbine High School tragedy of 99, at least 18 exhisting gun laws were broken. Do you think that the shooters actually cared that they were breaking those anti-gun laws? Does any crimal care that he or she is breaking the law? What possible good can more gun control or more anti-gun laws do, other then to penalize honest Citizens of America, who just want to simply enjoy their constitutional rights?

A debate that has been going on for centuries is over gun control. Many government officials and members of the law have been trying to have as much gun control and as many anti-gun laws as possible. There are many pros and cons on gun control. I am against gun control. What I mean is that I believe in certain laws and regulations about owning firearms but I do not believe in having so many laws making it almost impossible for an innocent citizen to own a gun in America. I believe some laws should be canceled because they get ignored by criminals anyways and effect the law abiding citizens. I have been around guns my whole life, the first time I shot a gun was probably right after I began walking. I am also a hunter and I shoot guns for fun. So I understand why most americans have or want guns.

As of 2010 there are roughly 300 million firearms owned by civilians in the U.S. About 43% of households in America have guns. One of the main reasons that it would be bad to get rid of guns is, self defense. From a survey taken in 2000, U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times a year. Of the male felons in 11 state prisons, 34% have been scared off, shot at or captured by an armed victim, 40% of them have decided not to commit a crime because they believed or knew that the victim was armed, and 69% personally knew other criminals who had been scared off, chased off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim.

Many Americans use guns for more then self defense though. Many americans use guns for target shooting, trap shooting and there are even shooting competitions at gun clubs and shooting ranges. The other major reason Americans own guns is for hunting. Yeah that’s right, I said hunting, I didn’t say for committing crime or hurting people.
Did you know that all Americans combined spend about 228 million days per year hunting and that more then 38 million americans hunt and fish?

One of the pros of having more gun control laws is there will be less crime committed, less murders, less robberies but in fact I believe this is false, I believe that crime will actually increase due to my 2 above stated facts and that about 5,340,000 violent crimes were committed in the U.S. during 2008. These include simple or aggravated assaults, robberies, sexual assaults, rapes, and murders. Of these crimes, only about 8% were committed by offenders visibly armed with a gun, this shows that guns do not have a major roll in people committing crimes. Another Pro is there might be less fatal accidents with guns, but firearms are actually involved in less then 1% of all fatal accidents. More americans are killed in accidents involving vending machines than guns. Does that mean we are going to get vending machine control laws, I doubt it. Even if there were so many laws and restrictions against criminals having guns, people would still own and use them. For example marijuana is illegal in the United States but still 50% of 12th graders have tried it at least once and 24% use it regularly showing that even if something is illegal it still gets used and is still owned by people




















Bibliography
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www.nhfday.org/Page/Hunting-Facts.aspx
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http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp