Let’s talk about guns ladies and gents. Last year Texas
Legislature passed a bill allowing for concealed handgun permit holders to
start carrying guns out in the open. This bill was signed into law on June 13,
2015 and took effect on January 1st, 2016. Now I don’t know about y’all
but I’ve been hearing on the news lately that a lot of people have been getting
shot and about mass shootings happening all over Texas. So here is my
reasoning, which I don’t see why the legislature didn’t think of this first, if
people are allowed to carry guns and we had plenty of incidents with gun
shooting already why in God’s good name did they make it legal for people to
start openly carrying guns! There have been crazies out and about killing
children at school, at movie theaters and in peoples own home let’s not add to
the crazy. I think it is especially dangerous in colleges what with stress out,
sleep deprived, coffee driven people trying to go about their day and let’s say
a student is having an especially hard day what’s to say they won’t shoot out
an entire class room. Why don’t we ask the thousands of professors how they feel
about their student being able to carry guns into the classroom and it being
totally legal? I’m not saying that everyone that carries a gun is a complete
psycho and out to kill everyone but it just takes one. I think this law should
be repealed as quickly as possible.
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ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your article and could totally relate with that. However, I felt the argument was so similar to the climate change argument in the way that it should logically be happening, but do the data and records support this argument? After searching a little bit about this topic, I figured out that actually the states in which open carry is legal, there is a lower crime rate. Actually state representative Matt Gaetz from Florida did a huge research on this issue to find out the truth. He used Uniform Crime Reporting figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice to create his statistics, and the results of his research came out in 2012. At the time, in the eight states of Florida, Texas, California, South Carolina, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, open carry was illegal, opposing to the other 42 states in which open carry was legal. The statistics showed the number of crimes that took place per each 100,000 people each year, in the states that open carry was legal was 352, however, in the eight states that open carry is illegal, we had 434 crimes over 100,000 people per year. In another word, crime rate was 23 percent lower in the states with open carry gun.
ReplyDeleteI also read some other articles which were done using data and statistics, but I did not find them as credible nor as recent as the research that was done by Rep. Matt Gaetz. One of them is an article which was published in the Journal of Criminology in which they used the data from 1998 to 2010, in just four states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas. However, in that research no relationship was found between the allowing concealed weapons and crime rates…
I know you are very concerened about people having gun in the street, and being worried about the possible dangers that it could have, and I hope I could kind of help you feel less stressed about it :)
Resources:
• https://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/24/study-says-concealed-carry-permits-dont-affect-cri/
• http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/oct/09/matt-gaetz/violent-crime-lower-states-open-carry/
Dear Priscila,
ReplyDeleteI could not agree more with your argument on Open Carry! I was stunned at the fact that people could carry their weapons to schools, stores, restaurants or even into Churches! At first I believed that anyone old enough could carry, until I started researching, and in the State of Texas you have to go through certain processes for you to be able to qualify to be licensed. I was relieved that they were at least taking precautions to make sure that just not anyone could be able to carry. Because you are completely right, anyone at any given moment and without a warning can have a breakdown and all hell could break loose if they have a weapon in a place filled with civilians, it could be tragic. Although I like the idea of being armed because one never knows what can happen, I still have some fright inside me, situations can go bad in a matter of seconds, like all the tragic shooting on the news, it all happened in a matter of seconds without a warning. I believed that because of this privilege Texas would be doomed, but, not long ago I came upon an article that stated that the crime rate has surprisingly lowered since the approval of open carry, I was shocked at the fact that they claim that in Texas the firearm homicide rate is at least one third down since 1996! Crazy Right? I would have thought it was the other way around, maybe open carry is for the better of Texas.
Hey, Priscila I can see where you are coming from but I will have to disagree. In many cases, the people who are wanting to own and carry a firearm are normal people. These are usually the ones want to protect themselves and their families from the crazy people you talk about. In many cases where there are more firearms, the likelihood for violent crimes to occur is greatly reduced. By allowing open carry in Texas it will allow Texans to easily utilize their second amendment rights. I personally think that it is the right choice for Texas to open carry.
ReplyDelete