The U.S. Congress is still debating the effectiveness of federal regulation of guns and ammunition. All sorts of federal laws have been made since 1934 to promote the regulation of firearms. Many people have different views on the topic of gun control. I, for one, am pro “gun-rights” and believe that there are many disadvantages to the controlling of guns.
     When people think of guns, all they think about is the school shootings that have occurred over the past decade or two. Those events are just unfortunate, but in reality those kids who killed all those people did not purchase the gun, they stole it. Debates against gun control is stronger then the debate for it. The reasonable solution would be to eliminate guns all together, but we all know that that will never happen.
     Opposition to federal controls is very strong. People opposing gun control say that federal policies don’t keep firearms out of the hands of high-risk persons; rather, it often creates barriers for law-abiding citizens and violates a citizen’s constitutional right provided by the Second Amendment. Many say, and I agree that widespread gun ownership is one of the best deterrents to crime.
     Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year or about 6,850 times a day. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.(1) This gives you a good perspective on how guns are not just bad. You never hear the good facts, only the



isolated incidents that involve shootings by bad people getting there hands on a firearm.
     Of the 2.4 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, in 92% of these defensive uses, the mere sight of a gun or a warning shot scares off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.(2) Law abiding citizens should be able to have firearm in there home which can defend off attackers. Federal gun control laws make it extremely difficult to purchase a gun.
      Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606). And readers of Newsweek learned that, "Only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The error rate for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high." This proves that just having a police force is not enough for keeping yourself safe in your own home.
     The fact is that guns are needed to protect people from intruders, burglars, sexual predators and all sorts of criminal. People, who are law-abiding, with no record of violence, have the right to bear arms according to the 2nd Amendment in the Constitution. Current laws restrict good law-abiding people from getting guns, while criminals are acquiring the same weapons on the streets.