The second amendment of the constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. As the specter of gun violence continues in our workplaces, roads and schools, the question keeps arising: do guns keep you safe, or just increase the level of violence?
Gun ownership does not make you or your children safer; rather, owning a gun in many instances places our children in grave danger. The gun lobby's arguments completely disregard the fact that every day, innocent children accidentally kill themselves or are killed by another child with a handgun. The other week, in Pennsylvania, a three year old boy accompanied his mother and her friends on a target shooting weekend. While the adults were preparing breakfast in the next room, the little boy picked up a loaded handgun that had been placed on a living room chair and shot himself in the head. Tragic accidents like this one are preventable and should not happen.
The abundance of accidental shooting deaths and injuries demonstrate that despite the gun lobby's rhetoric, there are many irresponsible gun owners who negligently place their children in harm's way by leaving loaded guns where a child may freely access them. Guns do kill people. The gun lobby perpetuates the myth that the misuse of guns is a criminal problem only; yet this is simply not true. It is a public health and public safety epidemic that our policymakers must begin to address.
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