Rhetorical Blog 4: Second Amendment

Katz, Chelsea
English 10803
Ms. Amanda Irvin
3 November 2009
The Second Amendment
Everyone thinks of Texans and Southerners as being redneck hillbillies who carry around shotguns all the time. That’s not necessarily true, but then there’s only one way that people could get that perception – and that is through the second amendment. If we didn’t have the second amendment protecting our right to bear arms, no one would be legally allowed to carry any type of gun around town or keep one in their home.
A gun is the best way for a person to protect his or her personal property, whether it is their home, land, or well-being. It is an innate feeling to protect what is yours and what is important to you. However if a person breaking into your home has a gun, then whatever you have at hand to protect yourself will do nothing. The only way to stay protected against a gun is to have another gun. Without the protection of a gun, a regular person is a goner if he or she is opposed by a person with a gun. This doesn’t necessarily mean that every person with a gun has the intention of being a criminal or committing a murder.
Of course, since a good number of murders are committed within the home, not owning a gun would decrease the chances of this type of murder occurring. The cartoon strip makes a good point though. “If your [spouse] were attacking you with a handgun […] wouldn’t you want to be in a position to return the fire?” (Common Reading 13). This makes the murder issue more personal because you can put yourself into the victim’s shoes and imagine what that would be like. I personally, would be scared out of my mind if someone – especially someone I knew or that I was related to – threatened me with a gun. And in addition to that, I would definitely want a gun myself to at least have in case I couldn’t talk the gun out of my attacker’s hand.
Although a gun is a nice “safety cushion” to have just in case, it doesn’t cure all of society’s problems. Sure gun control, limiting gun usage to the military and police officers would limit the amount of guns in the country, but that would not stop the crime that has been happening. Criminals who are hell-bent to commit a crime of any kind involving a gun – like a robbery or murder – will get a gun somehow. It doesn’t matter if it is illegal to have a gun, a criminal will get one on the black market illegally. An example of what would happen is present with marijuana. It is illegal, but people still manage to get it somehow. Guns would be the same way because a supplier will undoubtedly be present for a buyer. Besides, why should criminals be afraid to illegally get a gun? They’re already committing a crime that they will get the maximum time for, so why not illegally get a gun while they’re at it.
I can understand, though, why Washington, D.C. would be the place to have a strict gun control policy since that is where a lot of crime happens. Not only is it a crime-ridden place, but it is also where some of the country’s most powerful people, such as the President and First Family and other government officials, live. That goes back to my previous point that having gun control would not stop criminals from getting a gun to commit their crime. If a worse case scenario happened where a government official or the President or a member of the First Family was shot and possibly killed, chaos would erupt throughout the nation. This is what happened when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Although there was a lot of grieving afterwards, at the time there was a lot of running around and screaming.
Along with the right to protect oneself, a person must also have a means of eating. And for some people, that means going hunting, which would entail owning a shotgun. Just think about trying to hunt for deer or boar with a bow and arrow or a slingshot – it wouldn’t work at all and would probably only make, at least the boar, angry. So this is another way that gun control would not be helpful.
The main reason for wanting to have a gun, though, is to protect oneself and property. Nothing is more important to people besides their own personal safety and their personal property. Guns and the second amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms is essentially what keeps this country safe and what makes this country what it today, is in contrast to other countries of the world and how the U.S. was in the past.