Hello, my name is Brian, I am 15 years old and I live in the Netherlands near Amsterdam. I am currently attending high school in the year that compares to 10th grade in the US. I am currently working on an assignment which involves writing an essay. The subject I chose for this essay is the current debate in the US about gun control. To get a good view on this subject I am asking several people to fill in a survey. This concerns people on both sides of the debate. I hope you are willing to help me with my essay by filling in the survey below. I would much appreciate it if you could return your response before March 31st 2014. 1. Why is gun control a present-day subject in the US? 2. How are the following parties dealing with this debate? a) What do civilians think of the debate? b) Are there organizations that influence the debate and how? c) What role does the media play? Are they picking a side? (if so, which one?) d) What role do politicians take? 3. What are in your opinion the three arguments most frequently used by advocates of gun control? (please tick three of the boxes) (add additional arguments at the end of the list if needed) 1. More Guns Equal More Homicides (if your fellow citizens has a fire arm he is more likely to kill you even though he knows you are armed too) 2. More Guns Also Equal More Suicides (A lack of access to death will make people less likely to kill themselves, putting a firearm to your own head is easier than to do so with a knife) 3. The Public Supports (some) Gun Control (A large percentage of citizens support some gun control such as background checks) 4. Most Massacres Utilize Legal Weapons (In 49 of the 62 shootings that occurred in the US between 1982 and 2012 legal firearms were utilized) 5. Banning Them Saves Lives (When in 1996 the Australian government launched the most aggressive clamp-down on gun ownership in history, gun-homicides dropped by 59-percent) 6. The Second Amendment (most people focus on bear arms part, but the keyword is militia, in 1791 the Second Amendment was put in place to make sure that civilian militias could protect their state and country) 7. Assault Weapons Arent Sport 8. We Have Too Many Already (The US has the highest amount of guns per 100 citizens, even more than in war zones or countries overrun by drug cartels with murder counts as high as war zones) 9. Arming Everyone Wont Help (even if everyone is armed, you will only be able to know who is the shooter after the shooting has taken place) 10. Assault Weapons Wont Save You (even if you have assault weapons, you will not be able to take on the entire US Army, you will never have an equal amount of firepower) 11. 12. 4. What are in your opinion the three arguments most frequently used by adversaries of gun control? (please tick three of the boxes) (add additional arguments at the end of the list if needed) 1. There Is Murder In other countries (for example the UK) (since the Second Firearms Act of 1997 (which bans all handguns from civilian possession, ownership, purchase or sale in the UK, murder rates have not gone down, but they have risen) 2. Literary Infallibility (the American way of living considers having a firearm being a part of the right of freedom) 3. The Civilian Need For Assault Rifles (opponents of gun control say that assault weapons are not only for protection against burglars but also guarantee that the nation could never be overcome by any military power foreign or domestic) 4. Welcome To Texas (in 1966, the shooting at the University of Texas, Charles Whitman was shooting at students for 90 minutes. Bystanders who didnt take cover but ran to their vehicles and brought back their hunting rifles, together with the police they were able to take out Whitman) 5. It Didnt Work For Germany (Germany has very strict gun laws, but in 2009, seventeen-year-old Timothy Kretschmer shot a total of 15 people and wounded nine. All with a 9mm pistol legally owned by his dad, it was the only one not I his dads safe (illegally)) 6. Gun Control Equals Absolute Despotism (pro gun citizens arm themselves against the government the same way Facebook and Twitter want to protect themselves from the NSA spying on them) 7. Rampage Shooters Like Soft Targets (rampage shooters want to take as many innocent people with them as possible, thats why you wont see any shootings at places where almost no one is or where everyone is armed) 8. The Eighteenth Amendment (this prohibited the production, transport and sale of alcohol in the US, civilians responded like no one could have imagined, everywhere, alcoholic drink were being made and were making criminals (like Al Capone) extremely rich) 9. Laws Do Not Apply To Criminals 10. Maybe In A Perfect World . . . (With the amount of fire arms in the US, going from house to house to take all of the guns would be almost impossible, there are just too many) 11. 12. 5. Which party/parties in society can affect the debate the most? And how are they doing this? 6. How did politicians pick up the debate? a) Which standpoints did they take? b) What do you think of that? 7. Has something actually changed? (for example: have any laws been changed?) 8. What has happened as a result of the debate around gun control? a) In society? b) In politics? c) For you personally? 9. What additional comment (comments) would you like to make?
To answer you second #9 question on comments: 1. You ask too many questions 2. You ask too many questions that are leading and have already been answered 1. Try to use an English numbering system
if you're willing to clean up the survey questions I'll be willing to answer. It's largely unclear and misorganized.
The guy is just 15 years old, so putting this together demonstrates a pretty good scope of understanding. He could just use this "survey" as the draft for his essay. I might suggest that he do some searching and researching on the many gun forums, like calguns.net. Just google "gun forums", and you'll find one (at least one) for every State in the Union.
