Gun control

When one gets down to details, the issue of gun control includes a wide variety of approaches to the regulation of firearm ownership and use. Some of the details of gun control proposals can be arcane and subject to interpretation, such as what exactly constitutes an assault weapon or a Saturday night special. But in general, the debate over gun control involves questions such as the following ... 

Gun control advocates generally want to exert a maximum effort to keep guns away from persons who are likely to use them irresponsibly. Gun rights advocates want to use a combination of education and law enforcement to deter gun abuse. However, people who don t have strong feelings one way or the other might well ask Why not compromise and do a bit more of both ... 

Neither the assertion of a right to bear arms nor the legislation of controls on their ownership or use is a recent development. Gun rights and gun control are simply the latest developments in the struggle of societies to determine how weapons should be used. Thus a review of gun issues begins with a look at their historical roots and development. 

In most modern European nations, gun ownership is heavily regulated, and guns play little part in daily life. Gun control is accepted as a matter of course hy the overwhelming majority of citizens. Europeans often express astonishment at widespread gun ownership in the United States and the contentiousness of the gun issue in U.S. politics. 

Native Americans quickly learned about the usefulness of firearms for hunting and war. They soon became subject to a gun control law ... 

In the late 19th century successive waves of immigrants flooded into U.S. cities from Italy, Ireland, Germany, and other countries. The neighborhoods in which they settled were often perceived to be crime ridden, and an increasing number of gun control measures were passed in response. Finally, in 1911, New York State enacted the Sullivan Law, which was the first state law that created a strict permit system for handgun ownership. 

Thus by the early 20th century, guns remained in widespread use (particularly rifles and shotguns in rural areas). Gun control in some form existed on a state and local level in many areas. But as with many other laws, gun laws were often enforced against the poor and persons perceived to be criminally inclined, while established citizens could carry a concealed handgun with the blessing of the local sheriff or police chief. 

Ever since then, gun control advocates have argued that the Second Amendment thus applies only to bearing arms as part of an organized militia, which today is the National Guard ... 

Reaction to the worst social turmoil since the 1930s led to a second great wave of federal gun legislation. Gun control advocates pointed out that Lee Harvey Oswald had obtained through the mail the rifle he had used to kill John E Kennedy. (Such sales were already illegal under the 1927 act, but there was little practical enforcement.)... 

Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968. It restricted nearly all interstate sales of firearms and tightened penalties for selling guns to minors or persons with criminal records. Every sale of a gun or ammunition had to be recorded in detail. 

Gun rights advocates questioned whether these tight new laws would actually have any effect on crime. Gun control advocates endorsed a 1969 report by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, which had undertaken a massive study of the conditions that had led to urban riots and other violence during the preceding decade. The commission s report recommended national regulation of handguns and. 

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