Holden Sumner English 1102 Ms.

Sippy 4/1/2013 Academic Essay Gun Control There are many different current political issues that Americans are dealing with right now but only a few deals with the safety of the average American. Gun control has been an issue of the past few years because political figures such as Obama are talking about putting restrictions on certain guns which is making a lot of people unhappy. Today I saw a video on Facebook that had the best explanation of why there should not be gun control. The video does not name the man speaking but the name of the video is Virtual President. He has been green screened in talking to a group of politicians and is not any form of authority but does bring up some interesting points. His first point of the speech was the most meaningful to me the man said The American people today dont want to ban guns they want to ban violence, criminals and insanity. This cannot be banned ( Virtual President ). He makes a very good point in this speech and is worth watching to anyone who has strong feelings about gun control. Guns have always been an issue and people have always talked about controlling them. David Lester wrote Gun Control: Issues and answers in 1985 and a lot of the arguments that he made still apply today. For example, David researched Berkowitz and LePage who were two authors that in 1967 wrote an article about violence and gun effects. The conclusion of their article basically stated that after all of their findings there was not enough evidence to show that guns effect on people is the cause of violence (Lester, 13). The same problem still stands today. The reason that it is such a blow up issue is technology and the media. Its not because guns cause violence it is the way Americans interpret what they see. Denise Bissler wrote The Harms of Crime

Media she found that the media can make the crime worse because of people who are interpreting the issue differently. Crime attracts the viewers, entertains them, and gives them something to voice an opinion about (Bissler 4). This is a very big factor in why so many people think that guns are the work of the devil or this big evil thing when they are not. I have a friend who is a lifetime hunter and has the greatest respect for guns. This past semester he had went raccoon hunting with his father and had too pistols with him for protection just in case he came across something bigger than a raccoon. He accidentally left the guns in the backseat of his truck and drove to school. In the middle of the day the policeman arrested him and escorted him out of the school. By the end of the day it was all over Facebook and the local news even had a few words to say. The crime that he had committed was honest and harmless. The crime that everyone was saying he was going to commit because he has those pistols was anything but harmless. This is what media can do to the gun control argument and people who are not educated on this subject will listen to the media. Mohammad Shafii talks about how to prevent these kinds of accusations by educating the children of America and the parents. He states Youth violence is an impact of social and cultural forces on the children these can be stopped by the correct education (Shafii 48). Imagine the following conversation between two different people with very similar ways to solve gun control. Mohammad: I have already stated that the parents need to play a role in keeping the kids from bringing the guns in schools, and there should be policemen on duty on every campus. Other than that I am not sure how to keep outsiders from bringing guns in like they did in Connecticut. What can the general population do? Me: People are going to be violent. There has been crime and wars for thousands of years. Ever since the invention of the weapon there has been gun related deaths. So the best way

to solve this current issue in my opinion is to go to the source of the violence. People are the problem not guns.

There is my answer to a question many people may have about gun control. How can I make it better? Of course there is no way to stop it but if the people are targeted in different ways the problem can be lessened. It is a fact that a gun is not harmful to anything without the person pulling the trigger. With education, therapy for mental people, harder background checks, and many other areas the threat of gun violence would not be as lethal it is currently.