The second amendment to the constitution clearly states that every citizen of the country has a right to bear fire arms.

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. – The Bill of Rights

Yet, there have been gun control advocates and gun rights advocates at loggerheads ready to rip each others throat. The fight has been going on ever since we can remember. But as a law-abiding citizens of America, how does gun control affect us in our everyday lives? Does it play as important a part as it is made out to be?

Gun Control and the Common Man

Yes, everybody wishes that his family were safe. Would you want your family to be safe? But it is tough times that we are living in and you can never really be sure about your safety. Why else would you lock your doors and windows every night? So a gun would be a great thing to possess if you wish to protect your family. You can have it by the pillow, it is easy to carry and its effectiveness is well known. So we can say that it should be easy to possess.

However, it makes sense that we should also keep guns out of the hands of some people who are likely to abuse them (criminals, terrorists, crazy people).  We thus need to have some kind of restrictions on the sale of these weapons. Waiting periods and background checks seem reasonable provided they are used fairly with no loop holes.

There is a hell of a lot of money involved
There is more money in this debate that you can ever imagine. The gun rights group which includes the National Rifles Association or the NRA and other major groups have a lot of influence in Washington. The political clout that these guys have is vast. More than $17 million have been contributed via various ways by the gun rights advocates to federal candidates. The NRA alone has contributed more than $14 million in the last 15 years. On the contrary Gun control advocates have only contributed a paltry sum of $1.7 million of which a whopping 94% went to the democrats.

If you compare the money spent in lobbying, the figures are even more shocking. The gun rights groups are clear winners in this regard. The topic of gun control is once again hot in this year’s election.

Clinton vs Trump

Hillary Clinton said, as President, I’ll take on the gun lobby and fight for commonsense reforms to keep guns away from terrorists, domestic abusers, and other violent criminals—including comprehensive background checks and closing loopholes that allow guns to fall into the wrong hands. Sounds okay, right?  Well if you consider what she really means by “commonsense reforms,” you’ll quickly see that she really intends to remove guns from most people, leaving them defenseless.  She said after the Pulse nightclub shooting that, “If you are too dangerous to get on a plane, you are too dangerous to buy a gun in America.”  Again, it seems to make sense… the problem is that people can be put on a “no-fly” list without due process and no way to get themselves removed when wrongfully placed on it.  It would provide an indirect “end-run” way to restrict gun ownership without directly attacking the 2nd Amendment.

Clinton ally, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, said, “Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe.”  She clearly wants to take everyone’s guns away from them.  She said, “If I could’ve gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them — Mr. and Mrs. America turn ’em all in — I would have done it.”

Donald Trump has said, Unwavering support of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Get serious about prosecuting violent criminals. Get gang members and drug dealers off the street to make our cities and communities safer. Empower law-abiding gun owners to defend themselves. Expand mental health programs keep the violent mentally ill off of our streets. This approach seem to me to make more sense as it addresses the problems of who is using guns for nefarious reasons while protecting the 2nd Amendment. Trump has made it pretty clear he is not about using politically correctness to address this or any other problem, while Clinton is clearly a supporter of political correctness.