What is gun control?

 According to the site called Dictionary.com, the word gun control means "government regulation of the sale and ownership of firearms".The term "gun control" refers to any legal action taken to forbid or restrict the ownership or use of weapons, particularly firearms (Kavi,2023). (In a larger historical sense, the phrase also refers to restrictions on the ownership or use of other weapons, including some that date back before the discovery of gunpowder.) The majority of industrialised nations have tough and uncontested firearms laws. In other places, it is a contentious political issue that pits those who see it as vital for maintaining public safety against those who see it as a risky restriction on personal freedom.Nowhere in the world is gun control more contentious than in the United States, where the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected but where gun-related homicides, including mass shootings, are incredibly common. Of developed nations, the United States has by far the highest rate of homicides with firearms. The argument for stricter gun laws in the US is that doing so will prevent gun deaths and reduce crime, while the argument against them is that it will prohibit law-abiding citizens from defending themselves against armed criminals.The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "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," must also be properly interpreted in the context of the gun control debate in the United States. Up until the early 21st century, most U.S. courts had interpreted the first clause of the amendment (the preamble) to guarantee either the right of states to maintain militias or the right of individuals to "keep and bear arms" in connection with their service in a state militia. This interpretation was in line with a wide range of existing restrictions on individual gun ownership and use. For instance, the U.S. Supreme Court determined in United States v. Miller (1939) that sawed-off shotgun registration rules were not in violation of the Second Amendment since they had no "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." However, the Supreme Court for the first time specifically recognized an individual right to use weapons for customarily legal uses, such as self-defense in the house, in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). Two years later, in McDonald v. Chicago, the court ruled that this interpretation of the amendment applied to both municipal and state gun control laws as well as federal ones.Mass shootings involving firearms are so common in the United States that the vast majority of them go unreported by major media sources. Those that happen to be significant or heinous enough to garner national attention, such as the murder of 49 people in an Orlando nightclub in 2016 and the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at a primary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, usually spark a fleeting and pointless discussion about the necessity of stricter gun control. Fearing retaliation from the National Rifle Association (NRA), politicians from both major parties solemnly offer their "thoughts and prayers" while declining to enact reasonable and constitutional measures that the majority of Americans now support, such as increased background checks for gun purchases and the restoration of a federal assault weapons ban that Congress allowed to expire in 2004.

Duignan, B. (2016, July 18). Gun Control in the U.S.. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/story/gun-control-in-the-us

Kavi, A. (2023, January 26). Gun control, explained. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/explain/2023/gun-control