Jeff Reynolds

1st period

5/6/97

#12 persuasive

love thy neighbor

As Tommy gets up in the morning, he steps outside to start his walk through the hood in order to get to school, and get the education he is entitled to. Little does he know though, that he will never get to receive his diploma, or get that educational experience that he has been able to take advantage of. As he turns the corner of his street onto the next, just a few hundred feet from both his house and his school, a speeding car rounds the corner at the same time. As he turns to look, the windows on the car roll down, to reveal a handful of rough and tough kids with guns waving. Because of the color that Tommy is, and because of where he lives, these kids open fire on him. After shooting 72 bullets into his immediately dead body, they roll up their windows, and continue on their way to school, as Tommy’s body is finally allowed to fall to the ground where his chalk outline will forever be at rest. His mother will be forever ridden with guilt for his death because she could not afford to take him to a better neighbor hood, and the kids who killed him will forever know that they are responsible for taking the jewel that she has raised. They will not however, feel the guilt one should for killing him, because they have been raised on guns, and the have been taught that using guns to kill is ok.

It is not the person that is a killer, it is the weapon they use. Without guns, there would be no drive by killings. There might be drive by insults, but I would rather be a victim of that then a few bullets shot into me by a speeding car of thugs. Without guns, there would be no accidental shootings in the home. There would be no gun for kids to find and pull the trigger in their face, or a friends face. Without guns, there would be a safer world. Without guns there would be a happier world. Without guns, there would be a safer world. Without the gun, there would be a better planet all together.

In the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and ninety-seven, there is a murder every few minutes. A large portion of those murders are by the use of a firing weapon. Does this rate of death make up for the good of a gun? We should look at the use of the gun to examine what good it actually is to mankind. It is true that hunters use guns, and they take care of them, and they have permits for them, but who is to say that one won’t be to quick tempered and pull the trigger on someone who infuriates them? Who is to say that one of their children is not going to find that gun one day and start to look down the barrel, and look at the trigger, and accidently pull one while looking down the other? It is this type of situation that makes me wonder what the goodness of the gun can be. I know that the police use guns, and that is good for their protection, but to make it so that people have to sign papers and whatnot to buy a gun is actually no good. The largest number of murderers get their guns not from a sporting goods store, or a gun shop, but they are stolen. Their guns are stolen from the last house they robbed, or the last person the killed. So, what good is a gun for your own safety if someone stole it, or what good is a buying contract if the murder weapons aren’t registered to the buyer? Look at the solutions so far proposed and think about what should be done! It is not a reasonable idea unless it is to totally end the making, selling, and usage of firearms all together.

What has the gun done throughout history for us? It can be dated back to early west days. What was it used for then? It was used to kill each other. It was used to settle arguments in a duel. They were used to shoot outlaws. What has the gun been used for since? It has been used to kill. It is used to kill animals. It is used to kill other humans. It is used to do nothing but harm, and threat. What is an animal supposed to do to defend itself? God made animals with natural survival skills. Animals are supposed to survive in nature. Nature, at last understanding, did not involve dodging bullets, or running through fields in fear of getting killed by a hunter with a semi-automatic machine gun. It is not within an animals power to survive a shot in the leg, it is however prepared to deal with nature. Weather, heat, rain, cold, are all things that an animal is prepared for. To defend itself in battle is within its power. Put any hunter in a hand to hand encounter with a hunted animal, and almost every time, the animal will triumph over the weaker species.

The gun is a killing machine. The gun has no point but to kill, hurt, and destroy. There is no point to the gun. It is stupid, and unconventional. The maker of the gun should never have brought that device into our world. It would be a better and safer world if the gun was removed from existence. It would be a better safer world if kids didn’t have to worry about on the way to school getting shot because of his skin color, or because of where he is forced to live. The right thing to do is to eliminate guns forever.