Welcome to week eight of our class on ethics! Our topic is gun control and we’ll discuss two sides of the question: Do citizens have the right to bear arms?
I believe citizens have a right to bear arms. I believe the owners should have to attend a class on firearm safety and pass a background check before they can own a weapon, though. I also believe that owners should have to register their firearms. Lastly, I believe assault weapons should be highly regulated and not available without the justification of need and capability of care that is approved by law enforcement. The infrastructure to oversee the registration and control of the vast number of firearms will be expensive and require technology and human capital to develop and maintain. The amount of distrust between the citizens and the government will make completing such a task nearly impossible. I submit the issues the government faces in taking a census as an example of the difficulties that would ensue.
I know that is a controversial stance. I also know all sides of the gun control argument are controversial in the United States. Boylan, et al, (2013) debated the topic of gun control and provided arguments both for and against. Regarding the right to bear arms, it was noted that Russia banned owning handguns in the 1920s and yet has a murder rate four times that of the United States (2013, p. 3935). It was also noted that England started restricting ownership of handguns in the 1920s and made them completely illegal in 1997, and now they have the highest murder rate in Europe and are second to Russia in violent crime rate (2013, p. 3935). The connection between less legal handguns and the crime rate was not explained, merely noted. The economies of the countries, education rates, immigration rates, etc., were not discussed and all would have had impacts.
On the pro-ownership side, Boylan, et al, noted that firearms are used half a million times a year to in response to home invasion robberies and that ‘usually’ the burglar fled upon finding the homeowner was armed (2013, p. 3935). On a more somber note, the fact that criminals face the difficult choice if they get shot, of having to choose to bleed out or go to a doctor and risk being turned in. So, they tend to fare less well. Meanwhile, if the robber inflicts harm in the commission of a crime, “Their victims are hospitalized with an 85% recovery rate” (Boylan, et al, 2013, p. 3935). Last, but not least, information was cited that, “found that for those attacked by criminals ‘’resistance with a gun appears to be the most effective [response] in preventing serious injury [to victims, and] for preventing property (loss)’” (Boylan, et al, 2013, p. 3935).
For those that are for the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the right to bear arms an expectation. A valid question raised by Boylan, et al, is exactly what arms are guaranteed? Sticks? Stones? Bows and arrows? Howitzers? They point to the amount of damage a weapon can inflict and the minimum force required to produce a result as ways to measure what is appropriate for self-defense (2013). Where in the “how much and how hard” graph the weapon falls could be tracked and a determination made as to its appropriateness. Some legal body would need to draw the line, but the question of who and where is a question for further debate. This point coincides with my contention that assault weapons are too much firepower for ordinary citizens to own without a valid reason.
This is not an easy ethical dilemma to tackle and will remain an open question for years to come. However, the discussion must continue due to the seriousness of the issue. Only through open discourse will any viable solution be found.
Boylan, M., PhD., Kates, D. B., J.D., Lindsey, R. W., M.D., & Gugala, Zbigniew,M.D., PhD. (2013). Debate: Gun control in the united states. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, 471(12), 3934-6. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/10.1007/s11999-013-3300-4
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