GUNS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN PUBLIC - PERSUASIVE SPEECH JINY IB1

Can you ever imagine someone carrying a gun to your university? Or to a church? Surprisingly, this is exactly what is happening in many states of United States. As a matter of fact, possession of firearms in public places should never be allowed because it certainly presents serious threat to us and our loving family. There are three main reasons to support this argument: increased crime rate, difficulty to investigate, and needlessness of guns in public. It is becoming increasingly clear that in today’s modern society, people are finding emotions such as anger, hatred and jealousy difficult to control. Once we fail to control these aggressive emotions, guns can turn into terrifying killing weapons which harm us rather than protect us. Therefore, despite of gun advocates’ argument that guns help us to protect ourselves, there is no doubt that allowance of guns in public places will potentially promote more crimes and cause more losses of lives which could have been saved otherwise. In fact, a study done by Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University in 2012 has proved that “Right-to-carry” gun law has resulted in higher crime rates in terms of robbery, murder and aggravated assault in several states. Now think for a moment, if the government allows guns in public which has been proved to have an effect of increasing crime rate, will our children be able to grow up in a safe society in the future?

Moreover, possession of firearm in public might hamper investigation of crime because it is difficult to distinguish the lawful man with gun and the criminal if everyone in public places are holding guns. For example, if a man comes into a bank with a gun in a country where firearms are prohibited, the bank clerk or the guard will be able to immediately recognize the gun and carry out actions to prevent him from creating any harm on us. However, if the same person comes into public bank in Virginia, where guns are allowed in public, it will be much harder to prevent accidents or even be able to notice this man since we have no clue whether he’s licensed or not, and there is no reason to assume that he isn’t licensed. Thus, the “gun open-carry” law does not help us to react more quickly to upcoming threats. It rather makes us more clueless about possible attacks.

Last of all, why would we need self-defense when there is already safety preparation for us? In many public places, especially where security is extremely important, such as bank or hospital, there are always trained safety guards with suitable weapons. Therefore, ordinary people like us do not need to carry personal guns to public places. Furthermore, as technology develops, most of the public places had equipped various high-tech devices such as CCTV to guarantee safety of us people. Thus, it is certainly not necessary to possess guns in public places.

From the facts that I have given, it is clear that “gun open-carry” law presents us more threats than benefits. Thus, it is our responsibility to stop this law to protect our family from a variety of hazards and ultimately create a better, safer and more developed society for all.