Now we must look at the other side of this debate as there are always two valid sides to ever argument. If we are able to successfully remove the usage of handguns from the ecosystem we live in today what will the effects be. How will we be able to cope with the change and what will the reaction be of the general population? These are all valid questions that must be answered before any preventive measures to handguns are taken into place.
Gary Kleck, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University argues that selective bans on less lethal varieties of guns encourage the substitution of more lethal types of guns. Since handguns are very cheap and inexpensive they are ideal for lethal crimes (as stated in entry #1 - Homocide) but if they were to be removed the general population would adapt a new form of gun. This may work in a similar way of natural selection where if one item is taken away from a population, another item will replace it to fill the "niche" that was lost. In this case the "niche" that will be lost is a small, cheap, and easy to use firearm that is perfect for committing a lethal crime. The real scare here is that criminals will NOT switch to a firearm that is similar in lethality to a handgun, but instead purchase a much more fatal gun like a sawed-off shotgun or other long guns. This means they are likely to produce an increase in the fraction of gun assaults resulting in greater number of deaths. On top of all this a sawed-off would be perfectly concealable and almost takes the place of a handgun. Thus, we can conclude that a institution of a law to permanently ban the usage of handguns would have little or even increased damaging effects on the general population if implemented. Looking at the article this way is very confounding to me. On one side I want handguns to be banished after the discussion had in entry #1 - Homicides, but after looking at the causation it would have on the population I can not see what a reasonable solution to the issue is. Further entries will need to be made to test this issue and maybe try to find a creative way to find a way to destroy the usage of handguns while keeping criminals from purchasing other types of weaponry. Sources: http://www15.uta.fi/arkisto/aktk/projects/sta/Kleck_2009_Mass_Shootings_in_Schools.pdf Entry #1 - Homicides
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2017
Categories |