Good Essay About Gun Control

The series of mass shootings in different states has intensified current debate over gun control. For decades, gun control has been an issue of conflicting influences between supporters (particularly powerful ones, including, most notably, National Rifle Association) and opponents in formal, partisan and informal, public settings. Needless to emphasize, current presidential election has but highlighted gun control, adding more dimensions to what has in earlier decades been a strictly legal debate. There are, however, rising voices among supporters of gun ownership to enable minors to have guns. This is, indeed, a new development which has far broader implications well beyond legal ones. For current purposes, a strictly legal focus is discussed, particularly as to whether minors, over 16 but below 18, should be legally qualified to own guns or not. For supporters, minors (16-18) should, like anyone else, own guns for self-defense instead of having someone else, primarily parents or guardians, to practice such right. This essay argues, however, against gun ownership for minors over 16 and below 18 from a legal perspective.
For supporters, self defense is a guaranteed right. Accordingly, minors should be enabled, legally, to practice a right protected by the U.S. Constitution and state laws. Further, supporters argue that making minor ownership of guns legal is consistent to a growing pattern in different children’s rights areas to practice an established right independently from others. For example, if parental control used to ban / permit specific online content for children is now being assumed to be an arbitrary practice, excluding children from choosing the appropriate content independently, gun control, according to supporters, is no different matter. That is, minors should be enabled, in light of recent legal developments, to own guns to practice an established right not by anyone, including parents, but independently. This argument by supporters is anything but erroneous.
For sure, self defense is an established right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and state laws. Moreover, minors are ones who are most attacked in more recent mass shootings and hence, according to supporters of gun control, should be enabled to own guns for self defense, particularly in situations requiring immediate action. On the other hand, minors remain, from a strictly legal perspective, unqualified to make independent decisions in many life-changing situations, let alone gun control. Indeed, if gun control is a highly debatable issue for adults who, during a fit of anger, could cause real damage to one another, enabling minors to own guns would not only cause damage on whoever happens to be in close range of an aimed gun but also on minors holding guns for different reasons.
First, by holding a gun at an early age – with all what holding a gun implies such as learning how to injure or kill – minors would be exposed to early negative influences on psychological and mental health. Specifically, minors, who are already consuming a substantial amount of violence in games and TV programs, would have in real life situations actual killing weapons which can very likely be used to cause actual harm consumed virtually and applied in reality. Needless to emphasize, a growing body of research is showing how violent content consumed in different media and web platforms causes violent behavior among minors in different settings.
Second, a society in which not only adults, but also minors hold guns for self defense is likely to be changed into a military society. Instead of limiting gun ownership to specific cases and persons in specific self defense situations, gun ownership, when becoming legal for minors, would open doors wide open for more situations and contexts in which defending oneself using a gun becomes first option instead of being an option of last resort. From a legal perspective, making gun ownership legal for children normalizes society's change into a military one in ways which would make the violence even more deadly, non-negotiable and, hopefully not, irreparable.
Third, by making gun ownership legal for minors, a highly debatable legal crack would open to make different options for minors legal. For example, if drug, marijuana and alcohol consumption is currently strictly banned for minors, making gun ownership legal might, in fact, open debate of whether banning minors from consuming marijuana and alcohol is unconstitutional based on grounds of equal rights between all citizens, now of all ages. If made legal, gun ownership would, in my opinion, represent a critical piece of domino which, once falling, would bring down several ones – fast – in very negative, unexpected ways.
Fourth, one would wonder if self defense is a right one can practice only using guns and, for that matter, during one's waking hours. This obsession of expanding gun ownership to minors is anything but an exaggerated argument which is largely motivated by political and business agendas. To make gun ownership legal for minors is, accordingly, an effort which is not particularly free from personal interest.