Write A Debate | Should Guns Be Legalized in the United Kingdom | Criminology | Law | School of Thought | Psychology

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Use Havard Referencing Style. Write an intriguing debate (not less than 1500 words) discussing whether guns should be legalized in the United Kingdom. Use at least 10 scholarly articles to back your debate. This is a criminology paper, so make use of law jargon extensively and appropriately where it applies.

Guns should be legalized in the U.K. Discuss

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Guns should be legalized in the U.K

Introduction

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The debate on whether to legalize guns in the United Kingdom remains a huge topic over years drawing it argument on security concepts and defense issues in the country. Some people agree to the legalization of guns while significant other strongly oppose the free ownership of lethal weapons. Both sides have many supporters with various reasons to assert their argument. In countries such as the United States, gun ownership is still legal but several stern measures to evaluate the background of gun buyers underlie though this has not a controlled misuse of guns and smuggling of illegal firearms by unlicensed dealers (Jones and Stone, 2015). In the United Kingdom, most of the people claim that they need guns for security and sports reasons. However, the presence of guns at home increases the rate of homicides, suicide, chaos, and accidents. In my opinion, guns should remain illegal in the United Kingdom for several factors discussed in this paper.

Free gun ownership translates to increased homicides. Certain groups of people feel that owning guns improve self-defense. Self-defense cannot be limited to mere ownership of guns, as gun usage requires advanced skills and emotional control to handle it. In fact, before that former President Obama of the United State Federal government signed sanctions to ownership of semi-automatic guns and other lethal weapons gun-related crimes had shot up to uncontrollable levels in the country. Gun-related murders in the United States stood at 63% of the recorded homicides in the United States in 2015. Talking of possession of guns as improving self-defense make an insignificant point since possession will equal and discerning who has right intention from a criminal is difficult for dealers (Fleegler 2013, p. 732-740).

Apart from homicide rates being high, the prevalence of guns in the society will increase the probability of anarchical governments. Despite the government having trained and well-equipped soldiers, police and other security organs, the ratio of citizen versus government soldiers possessing firearms will be greatly imbalanced. The government cannot take sides on people since its role is to protect its citizen. Gun possession undermines that flexibility of government operations and renders a government weak. A practical example is Somalia, where many citizens possess guns though illegally. This Eastern African country has remained in an anarchy state for over 2 decades since the recent emergence of a group of individuals who had access to firearms. The groups later formed a terrorist movement popularly known as Al Shabaab that has become a nail on the wound to the economy of this country and the neighboring nations.

It will increase protection for children and families. It is obvious that the law will not advocate for gun ownership by minors and children falls under the vulnerable group in the gun-infested society. Similarly, women are less likely to involve themselves in direct confrontation to the level of pointing guns to one another. People have compromised the concept of protection before and sometimes due to financial worries and improper stress management, men have terminated their families before committing suicide too. Such cases will significantly increase invalidating the reason to possess guns at family levels. In a recent publication in The Sun Magazine, A man by the name Jason Fairbanks shot his wife and two kids for unclear reasons at the family home in Scottsdale, Arizona (Sam, 2017). Considering the fact that families in the present experience many difficulties and chaos, the ill-tempered couple will not have a place on this earth upon legalization of guns the United Kingdoms.

Legalizing gun in the U.K make the presence of defense bodies pointless. If citizens can freely own guns it means that “unavoidable circumstances” will significantly increase and police involvement and other law organs will be pointless since it will always be “too late” to solve major disputes between individuals. Critics favoring the liberty of weapon ownership argue that people should perceive gun possession on a different scale other than with the intention of just propelling crimes since other weapons such as knives exist yet people do not go stabbing others for no reason. However, unlike knives guns do not have other utility other than killing. This is why the concept of possessing guns for other unstated reasons is invalid. The concept of acquiring guns to protect the society leave the United States countries at a state of oblivion on the number of accidents and intended families to undergo the same fate stated above. Similarly, the population possessing the guns will outnumber the presumed self-defense cases. This population includes the robber and other masters of mischief. According to the Journal of Homicide and Major Incident Investigation, the number of gun-related homicides accounted for about 26% of the total number of homicides that were recorded in 2016 (Roache and Bryant, 2015)

Legalizing guns in the United Kingdom will significantly undermine the economic status quo. As opposed to improving the security levels in the firms and companies in the nation, bringing in guns closer to the citizens will cause a lot of chaos in the competing industries. Strong cartel will outcrop and tries to use unethical competition approaches of eliminating their counterparts in the business. Gang robberies and advanced shoplifting will be the order of the day. Both existing and potential investors will be scared out of business since the government will have little control over the crimes afflicting the business environments. On the other side, however, if the guns can be used productively, cases of robbery and attacks might significantly reduce as security levels will be tighter (Tilley, 2017). Tourism in the U.K will be suppressed since security is the major consideration by most global tourists. The government will start focusing more attention on maintenance of law and order foregoing other corporate governmental projects.Introducing such a legislation can be very costly to the U.K government because it will involve allocating some budget to equip the military and law enforcement bodies with more sophisticated weapons since the government will never stoop low to its subjects. This implies a general decline in the  Gross Domestic Product of the country (Coates and Pearson-Merkowitzz, 2017).

Moreover, gun liberty in the United Kingdom will be a threat to the international peace. Since the end of World War II, all nations have been concentrating on building their ravaged economies to date. Legalizing guns in the United Kingdom will have an impact on other comparative nations as this may be misinterpreted to be a weaponry program to launch attacks in other countries. The United Kingdom cover a huge geographical area and has a significant contribution to the world’s economy and overall peace. Bearing in mind that some people are still convinced the World War II was instigated by Germany during the time of Hitler, weaponizing these nations will make a similar impression to the international scope. For instance, most of the activities that presided the World War II involved constant armory development arising a lot of global tension. This mistrust is likely to develop between the United States and her allies or even her political enemies (Logevall, 2012).

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is evident that gun possession liberty in the United Kingdom bears a lot of chaos that disturbs citizen relationships with one another and also international peace. However, if the United Kingdom government was to legalize possession of guns by all individual, the best approach would be restricting people to less destructive shotgun and revolvers. Moreover, firearms use policies should be based on certain circumstances that should occur to guarantee use of gun force. Otherwise, the government should introduce quotas to the number of guns issued or purchased annually by citizens.

Moreover, the gun license should be renewed each month upon mental check-up of the bearer to determine whether that person has bad intentions behind acquiring the gun. Perhaps, people should not be allowed to buy the guns from other sources other than government designated areas in order to make it easier to track entry of smuggled guns in the various countries that make up the United Kingdom. Moreover, gun owners should undergo counseling frequent therapies to limit the number of suicide deaths emanating from self-shooting. According to Chris Bird, “gun psychology is not for simple minds” (Bird, 2011). He does not try to offend anyone in his book the concealed handgun manual but makes it clear that guns should handle with care since different people have different personality traits and react differently to events.

However, consenting to gun possession by citizen majorly influences the economy and the GDP of the country at large. Maybe the only benefactors would be big cartels who use another competitive advantage other than security for survival. The government, however, remains to lose trust from international countries and there is a high likelihood of civil wars between different races in the country creating a state of anarchy (Cunningham and Lemke 2014, p.328-345).

References

Logevall, F. (2012). Embers of war. New York: Random House, pp.42-55.

Bird, C. (2011). The concealed handgun manual. San Antonio, Tex.: Privateer Publications.

Jones, M. and Stone, G. (2015). The U.S. Gun-Control Paradox: Gun Buyer Response To Congressional Gun-Control Initiatives. Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER), 13(4), p.167.

Cunningham, D. and Lemke, D. (2014). Beyond Civil War: A Quantitative Examination of Causes of Violence within Countries. Civil Wars, 16(3), pp.328-345.

Coates, M. and Pearson-Merkowitzz, S. (2017). Policy Spillover and Gun Migration: The Interstate Dynamics of State Gun Control Policies*. Social Science Quarterly, 98(2), pp.500-512.

Tilley, N. and Sidebottom, A. eds., 2017. Handbook of crime prevention and community safety. Taylor & Francis.

Roach, J. and Bryant, R., 2015. Child homicide: generating victim and suspect risk profiles. Journal of Criminal Psychology, 5(3), pp.201-215.

Fleegler, E.W., Lee, L.K., Monuteaux, M.C., Hemenway, D. and Mannix, R., 2013. Firearm legislation and firearm-related fatalities in the United States. JAMA internal medicine, 173(9), pp.732-740.