As the presidential election year draws closer to November, one issue politicians generally like to avoid is likely to loom large in influencing the opinions of voters: Gun Control. Well-publicized shooting sprays in our nation’s schools and workplaces have created a national furor further enflaming a typically hot issue to begin with. On the one hand of the debate there are those who descry the level of killing as the direct result of handgun legislation that is too loose and too influenced by powerful lobbies like the National Rifle Association (NRA). Celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell become emotional and outraged over the killing of children by handguns, failing to blame the perpetrators of the acts and forgetting all about a little piece of American legislation known as the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On the other hand, there are powerful pro-gun lobbies like the NRA, a belief that the Second Amendment guarantees Americans the right to own handguns, and an ideology that encompasses the belief that guns don’t kill people, people do. This analysis will take an anti-gun control position as being the right of every American as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Powerful lobbies like the NRA and various hunting organizations defend their right to own guns and to use them. While most of the rhetoric on this issue describes firearms as “guns”, specifically we are talking about handguns, the type of firearm responsible for the majority of firearm homicides in the country. At the core of the NRA’s anti-gun control stance is the U.S. Constitution, wherein Amendment II, ratified on December 5, 1791, guarantees the right to “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” (Kenna 1).
This right fails to convince opponents on either side of the gun control debate as to the validity of the other side. P...