Public Attitudes Toward Gun Control - The Debate Is Bitter, Polarizing

Some Americans are convinced that more federal regulation of firearms is necessary to reduce the number of murders and injuries that are inflicted with guns and to ensure a safer, more civilized society. Others who support private ownership of guns insist that the right to bear arms is guaranteed by long-standing custom and by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. These gun rights advocates believe that no cyclical increase in crime, no mass killing, or any rash of political murders should lead the nation to violate the Constitution and the individual rights it guarantees. They also claim that knives and other instruments are used to kill people, and there is no talk of regulating or banning them.

The National Rifle Association generally believes that if more ordinary, law-abiding citizens carried weapons, criminals would not have a safe place to commit mass murders and other violent crimes. Advocates of gun rights claim, for example, that twenty-three people killed at a cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, in 1991 might still be alive if a law-abiding citizen with a gun had been at the scene.

Both supporters and opponents of gun control agree that some means should be found to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Not surprisingly, the two sides approach the issue differently. The two different strategies for gun control involve "deterrence" (discouraging by instilling fear) and "interdiction" (legally forbidding the use of). Advocates of deterrence, most notably the Second Amendment Foundation and the National Rifle Association, recommend consistent enforcement of current laws and instituting tougher penalties to discourage individuals from using firearms in crimes. They maintain that interdiction will not have any effect on crime but will strip away the constitutional rights and privileges of lawabiding Americans by taking away their right to own guns.

On the other hand, advocates of interdiction, led by such organizations as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and the Violence Policy Center, believe that controlling citizens' access to firearms will reduce crime. Therefore, they favor restrictions on public gun ownership.