At present we often find ourselves in flight or fight situations where our lives are under threat. No wonder, there are people who support the idea of owning a gun as a means to protect themselves and their possessions. But does gun ownership really make the world a safer place to live in?
The Gun Owners Foundation claims that guns are mostly used as a means of self-defence. It is rather misleading, as the correlation between the usage of guns for self-defence and less peaceful purposes is currently 1:22. The advocates of gun ownership use this figure, however, to show that forbidding guns has no effect on the criminal world, because perpetrators still manage to get their hands on the arms. We all know that violence gives rise to more violence, so the best way to address the problem would be to establish better and stricter gun control instead of eliminating it all together. In addition to this, having a gun at home raises the risk of a homicide or a suicide. Not all people who have a gun in their possession are trained to use it, which sometimes results in accidental shootings and injuries. Besides, as statistics shows, one in ten of the guns owned by private households is loaded and only one in eight is equipped with a child safety lock. As you can see, failing to observe some safety guidelines of guns’ conservation is really unsafe and might be a cause of accidents.
All in all, guns are highly dangerous, as they take away thousands of lives each year. Consequently, stricter gun control laws should be introduced to reduce the number of people dying because of gunshot injuries and make our world a safer place to live in.