Ruby Escalante
02/18/13
CCDE 110- D17
Gun Control; For or Against? In my opinion our Gun Control Act of 1968 has everything we need to enforce gun control laws. On the other hand we have the National Instant Background Check System (NICS) a program which every person interested in buying any type of firearm needs to go through first, background checks identify a person’s past that’s why we have this program. All the government wants to do is violate our Constitutions second amendment which states; “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968 there is a regulation called Federal Regulation of Firearms which purpose is to assist federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to reduce crime and violence. Under this law a person is required to have a license in order to possess, transfer, transport, and receive firearms from other countries or other people. These people are required to go through a background check required by the FBI. (2002) There are 9 classes of persons prohibited by the FBI to possess a firearm; a person convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding 1 year; fugitives from justice, any drug users, or addicts; persons adjudicated mental defectives, or committed to mental institutions; unauthorized immigrants; persons dishonorably discharged from the Armed Forces; U.S. citizenship renunciates; persons under court-order restraints related to harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner; and persons convicted to misdemeanor domestic violence. (p.7). If a person belongs to any of these classes they are automatically not eligible to obtain any type of firearms, which I think it makes sense many of these people can go psycho and start killing people out of nowhere. We have several laws behind the background check regulation. We had The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, which required that background checks be completed on all no licensed person seeking to obtain firearms from federal firearm licensees. (Krouse, 2002, p.12). This Act was latter amend in the National Instant Background Check System (NICS). The NICS was amended and approved on July 23, 2002, and this bill consisted in; amend the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to require federal agencies to provide, and the Attorney General to secure, any government records with information relevant determining the eligibility of a person to receive a firearm for inclusion in NICS; also require states to make available to the Attorney General certain records that would disqualify persons from acquiring a firearm, particularly those records that relate to convictions for misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence and persons adjudicated as mental defective; and authorize appropriations for grant programs to assist states, courts, and local governments in establishing or improving such automated record system. We all have to go through background checks already, I do not see why this is a problem now. It is simple you want to buy a gun; you have to go through a background check. This makes us safe and everybody else safe too. The new gun control that they want to pass has much of the same laws we have right now. Little by little they want to take our Second Amendment away from one of our rights. We all need a gun in our house to be able to protect ourselves and many people think that is true. People believe that owning guns helps prevent violence. For instance if a burglar wants to break into a house, the owner is there and he owns a gun and the thief comes in and he takes his gun out the chances are of either the burglar running away or confronting him. Yes someone can end up hurt, but the next time they are going to think twice before breaking into that house. If the owner would not have had a gun in his house a