Gun Control.

I have found two very different webpages, each looking at one side of gun control argument. Both websites are personal sites, being managed by what seems one person for each.

Anti-Gun Control: Lest Darkness Fall

http://www.lestdarknessfall.com/Pages/gun_rights.htm

The opening sentence to this website is “expression of personal freedom designed to interest, entertain and educate people interested in exploring the meaning and importance of freedom”. It is very much a place for the writer to vent about whatever they decide. The webpage itself is quite dark, with black background and various cartoons of shootings and murders.

I felt that the writer of this page was quite aggressive and very much believed they were right in every sense and their mind would never change.

Pro-Gun Control: Asahi-Net

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~zj5j-gttl/guns.htm

This website is run by a guy called Jason; who uses it as well to post about the situations he decides to. He graduated University with an English & East Asia Studies degree (thus he now lives in Japan) and also went to Harvard.

Comparison

Regarding the information that each person put into their post; there are very similar sections. The first would be that both mentioned the Constitution, in particular the second Amendment; "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Lest Darkness Fall (LDF) took this statement very literal. Believing that every person in America between the ages of 18 and 49 was included in this “well-regulated militia”, whereas Jason disagreed. LDF believed this article allowed each person own a gun, because that is what it states. Jason looked beneath the statement and thinks that each right that Americans hold have boundaries. Sometimes a person’s right contradicts another.

Both use murders in their posts, again pointing out different aspects of it. LDF use the well-known line of being able to protect yourself in your home or in a public area (agreeing to state laws of course). He believes, that taking away a criminals gun, will just make them pick up another weapon, which he links to England and our rise in knife crime.

Jason agrees with this and understands that a certain amount of people will just pick up something else. But that is only one type of murders in America. Another type which is mentioned, are those that shoot out of a “heat of the moment” situation. The gun is there and they’re angry; it’s the solution they see. And if guns were banned, this statistic would decrease.

LDF uses various statistics to back up the opinions stated, and frankly, was the only section of the post that I could acknowledge and like of it. It states that 6,000 crimes are stopped per day by pointing a gun at would-be rapists, thieves, murderers etc. I also believed that he made a valid point in that criminals, who are out with the motive to cause a murder or robbery, already discard the law so a new piece of legislation surely wouldn’t stop them either.

With being able to convince people one way or the other, I think my English views push me towards the pro-gun control. But still, discarding my English-ness, I like the fact that Jason recognised that banning guns is quite unrealistic, so controlling them was a better idea for the moment. He created his own points that could help with controlling murders and gun crime in America.

As opposed to LDF who disagrees with everything about gun-control. He is unable to acknowledge that sometimes in the hands of the public, guns can be a negative.