Why gun bans just won’t work

By Phillip C. Sunkel IV | gargoyle@flagler.edu

Picture yourself lying awake in bed one night. You hear a strange noise inside your home, so you go to inspect. What you find is a pill crazed maniac who broke in to steal your parents Meds. This situation is exactly what my two friends Paris and Austin Hornsby found themselves in.

The crazed man tried to attack the family with a large butcher knife. Thankfully there was a gun in the house to hopefully ward off the intruder. Unfortunately the intruder was out of his mind. Paris Hornsby shot the deranged man at point blank range with his 12 gauge, not only to protect himself but also to protect his family.

If there wasn’t a gun in this home one of the family members could easily be dead or severely injured, instead of the intruder. If Gun Bans are imposed in states of this nation, it could mean you being less safe in your own home. In a 2005 nationwide Gallup poll 67% of gun owners stated they own their firearms for protection against crime.

According to Survey Data from The U.S. Department of Justice roughly 5,340,000 violent crimes were committed during in 2008, only 8% of these violent crimes involved offenders visibly armed with a gun. Statistics also show that a gun is a huge factor in warding off potential assailants. According to a 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that homeowners use theirs guns to ward off intruders at least 498,000 times per year within their home. Another Nationwide survey conducted in 1993, found that Americans use their gun to ward off assailants 1, 029,615 times per year outside of their homes.

Gun Bans have almost become a laughing matter in the world of politics. Many of our politicians have to understand that many people need their gun or guns to protect their family. As the economy worsens and our government begins to topple towards a revolution, more and more crime is breaking out. For example the recent home invasion in Connecticut where a mother and her two daughters were brutally raped and beaten in front of their father and husband. Only the husband survived the vicious attack. One really has to ask themselves, if there was a gun in that household would this have even taken place?

Fortunately guns are not banned in Connecticut. However politicians are constantly making the argument that gun bans will make people safer. Gun Bans had been put in place by the two most likely of places to ban firearms, Washington DC and Chicago. Hopefully in order to prevent more crime. Unfortunately for the two, both cities crime and Murder rate skyrocketed after the Bans were imposed. The Gun Bans were shortly put to rest in 2008. In 2009 the FBI released a report showing the extreme plummet in violent crimes and murders in the two areas, the murder rate in DC fell 23% in 2009.

Gun Bans do little to protect those they are supposedly meant to protect. By banning guns politicians are literally disarming law-abiding citizens, instead of making victims safer from their assailants, Bans are making Assailants safer from their victims. I feel I always hear these stories told by our nation’s leaders of how gun holders are going to turn the streets red with their neighbor’s blood. This has actually never happened and time has shown that citizens who hold a permit for a concealed fire arm are actually more responsible with their weapon.