In ancient Greece when someone committed a murder the weapon was destroyed because the Ancient Greeks believed that fate was decided by the gods so the murder was not as responsible for the crime as the weapon itself. Instrumentality when used in reference to weapons is the hypothesis that the increased availability of weapons in a certain area also increases that areas likelihood of weapon based offences. Essentially the increased availability of guns increases the chances that a criminal will choose a gun as their weapon of choice for committing crimes, not to mention this also increases the range of crimes this criminal can initiate. The result of this is of course the intensification of violence, simply put more guns equals more gun crime (Cook, 1991; Zimring & Hawkins, 1997).
The registering of gun owners makes sense but Executive Vice president of the NRA Wayne LaPierre raises a good point in that it infringes not only on Americans right to bear arms but also on their right to privacy but that’s what this argument boils down to, are you going to give up your freedom/privacy or your guns? The question you should be asking is; why should there have to choose between them (Fram 2013)? Vice President Joe Biden talks about more thorough Back ground checks, mental health checks, stricter checks at gun shows, penalties for straw purchasers, people who buy guns to give them to other people but why does it take a tragedy to have these issues addressed? Biden comments on the ban on assault rifles active from 1994 to 2004 emphasising that it may have made policing easier but he goes on to say that assault rifles and the rate of fire aren’t the problem aren’t the problem (Steinhauer 2013). The actual problem lies in magazine capacity, Bide talks briefly on the Connecticut shooting perpetrated by Adam Lanza, stating the high body count was due to the fact he used a gun with a thirty round capacity. “Maybe if he took longer, maybe one more kid would be alive” (Biden 2013)
Peter Squires claims that since the Dunblane massacre there has been a small but significant decline in the use of firearms. The figures aren’t everything but "the murder rate has fallen and all the indicators are moving in the right direction." Without gun control the use of guns as opposed to knives will increase, which is more likely to cause an injury or a death. If a criminal substitutes a knife for a gun a robbery the likelihood that the victim may be hurt or killed increases because guns cause more serious wounds that knives, they are more effective at long range and they can be used to assault multiple people, not to mention gun accidents are a very real threat. The instrumentality hypothesis does not in any way suggest that crime will increase because of increased gun availability just that the likelihood that criminals will substitute knives and other weapons for guns will increase thus resulting in more homicides.
There are also theories that suggest that increased gun availability decreases crime because it empowers the general public and discourages criminals from targeting innocent people that could be carrying a gun thus shifting the balance of power if the aggressor is unarmed or using a knife but further complicates things if they too have a gun. This obviously does nothing to address the fact that this will no doubt increase gun related violence as a whole because two guns don’t necessarily make a violent situation better, you’re just increasing the likelihood of someone being shot and killed (Myers 2012).
Gun control is without a doubt a tentative issue which should be dealt with in a way that preserves people’s right to defend themselves but also preserves human life.
"Any weapon can be misused in a crime. Gun control will never be a complete solution to events like the mass shooting we saw in Connecticut. The swamp of gun use has not been fully drained and while tighter gun control removes risk on an incremental basis, significant numbers of weapons remain in Britain."
The conclusion is although decreasing the amount of guns or banning certain types of guns may slightly decrease the amount of gun violence, this will not stop gun violence on a whole as any weapon can be used to commit violence (Melton 2013). The root cause of violence is more important than taking away the tools used to commit violence.
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