The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights, passed in 1791, consists of the most important rights to citizens of the United States of America. The second amendment guarantees that every citizen has the right to carry a weapon. That amendment is the key element that helps understanding the tolerance American people have towards guns. The possession rate of firearms in the United States is much higher than in most other countries of the world. The right to carry a gun is subject of much debate and constitutes an important pillar of the American politics. Members of the Republican Party are usually defenders of the second amendment whereas their political opponents, the democrats, are more critical about the trade and the possession of weapons without restriction. In the United States, restrictions laws over weapons wouldn’t lead to any solution in a country where arms are embedded in the culture. In order to control guns and the violence they cause, our nation needs to, primarily, come up with solutions to control its population, the main one being altering the American culture.

Our society is a very violent society. The rates of murders and robberies are very high; therefore, we need to control the people behind this violence. In the United States, a gun is a cultural object. “Gun shows”, arm fairs, where is presented the arsenal available on the market are very common. People go there with their families, they try guns, then they train with their kids on shooting ranges; it’s a social place like others. Today, even the most ordinary retail catalogs, sent to American’s mailboxes, offer weapons for sale. Plus, they benefit from an increase in sales after each killing, such as Newtown (Adam Lanza). The production of guns in the United States of America is too high for a country with such a culture. Indeed, weapons are historical components of the American culture. Society’s problem is not only guns but whoever triggers them. In the American culture, the thirst of possessing firearms could be very dangerous. For example, the person behind the shooting of the Sandy Hook Elementary School, Adam Lanza, grew up in an environment where guns were easily accessible to him. At the age of eight, his mom was already teaching him how to shoot. Considering that Adam was anti-social, instead of finding companionship through friends, he found it through weapons. Some argue that if Sandy Hook School’s personnel had been armed, the killing of young children could have been avoided (National Rifle Association viewpoint). However, we also know that the mother of Adam Lanza, the killer of Newtown, was fond of weapons and took her son to these gun fairs; which is really what we need to look at. The second amendment could be a source of the violence in America.

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