Gun Control: A Case Study

The often quoted second amendment, as supported by the US Supreme Court, upholds the right for a civilian to own firearms, however, this was not always the case. It was not until 2008 that the Supreme Court recognized the individual's right to bear arms as opposed to restricting the right to the government and military (US SC 2008). The 1994 "assault weapon" ban is also often cited as a reason why guns should not have regulation. The logical flaw in this is that the "ban" only stopped the manufacture of new semi-automatic guns and did nothing to affect those that already existed (Lysy 2013). An outright ban on all guns and other weaponry for non-military use, both new and already present, needs to enact in America as the current laws are excessively
Out of a total 53,355 total gun-related incidents, also excluding suicide and including all forms of crime, accordingly only 1,303 incidents had guns used in self-defense– a mere 0.02% (GVA 2016). There are more reported accidental shootings than there are cases of using a gun for self-defense by over three hundred. Comparing the gun-related homicide rates in 2006 the US had 12,791 instances (Planty & Truman, 2013) and Singapore had 1 (UNODC 2013). In 2011 The US had 11,101 (Planty & Truman, 2013) and Singapore had none (UNODC 2013). Even a country as close and similar to the US as Canada has a far lower mortality rate. In 2014 Canada's total homicides numbered 516 and of those 156 were firearm related homicides, moreover the 2015 statistics are higher than the 2014 statistics (Canada 2015). There are five differences between America and Canada's gun laws, but there are two that are more striking than the others. Firstly, Canada requires a gun license to own a gun at all. The second is that in the US there is no background check requirement to purchase a gun from private sources - one such place being a gun
According to the CDC statistics of 2013, there was a total of 16,212 deaths and of them, 11,208 were gun homicides. Others will call attention to how banning guns make knife crime more prevalent. Granted that is true, it is also simple logic since there is less overall crime and thus the percentage of knife related crime increases in relation to overall crime whereas the overall number of knife crimes changes nearly negligibly. Many more opponents recite the myth of "a good guy with a gun kills the bad guy with a gun" despite how the FBI itself has statistics showing less than 3% of all “active shooter” situations even involved an armed civilian while 13% of them unarmed civilians resolved the situation before the police arrived (Weisser 2014). The UK, known for its knife crime, saw a record number of knife related incidents, a total of 26,188, from April 1st, 2014 to March 31st, 2015 with only 182 deaths (Flatley 2015) which is 49% less compared to US gun incidents and only 0.01% of America's death