Most people have a pretty firm stance on guns. They either strongly support gun control or strongly support gun rights. Very few people just say "Eh" when they talk about guns.

And the same goes for politicians. Democrats are generally very pro gun control and Republicans are generally very anti gun control. The more vocal politicians are in expressing their stances on guns, the more their hypocrisies come to the surface.

Let's look at the pro-gun control people first-

These politicians will generally bring up Australia and England as countries that have pretty much-banned guns as examples of what America could be. They say that these countries have banned guns and have very little gun crime. The statistic is true, but the reason behind it ultimately has nothing to do with guns.

Switzerland makes essentially every male sign up for the military. After their training, they are even allowed to keep their personal gun from the military in their home, and until 2007 were allowed to keep their ammo from the military as well. And Switzerland has very little gun crime. But that doesn't mean that everyone having guns equals no crime. Barbados has banned guns but has among the highest gun crime in the nation. America has the highest guns per capita in the world, and we seem to have mass shootings almost every week. Clearly the underlying issue doesn't lie with guns. It instead lies within the culture and demographics of the county. Switzerland is a very wealthy country with very low poverty, therefore, people don't need to resort to crime to survive. America has a poverty rate much higher than that of most of the developed world. And Barbados, well...

Would placing some limits on guns help reduce gun crime regardless? Sure, maybe. But an outright ban on guns doesn't solve issues of poverty and need to resort to crime.

Pro-gun control politicians also say when it comes to issues of gay rights, women's rights, reproductive rights, etc., that the government shouldn't tell us how to live our lives, and simply shouldn't get involved in our personal lives. But then when it comes to guns, they want the government to take complete control, limit what guns legal law abiding citizens can buy, register every gun in a database, and in extreme cases, have the government confiscate guns.

Clearly, you can see that pro-gun control politicians are flawed in some of their main arguments. That does not mean that they do not have some valid arguments. They do. But pro-gun control politicians need to not simply say "let's get rid of guns!", without saying how they intend to solve poverty and America's love for violence.

Now the anti-gun control folks-

You know, something that no one ever seems to talk about is the original intention of America's founding fathers when they wrote the 2nd Amendment. They wrote it at a time when governments and the people had the same weapons. They had muskets, cannons, and swords. The only thing governments really had that might have given them the upper hand on their people were ships. It would make sense to believe that the founding fathers wrote the 2nd Amendment because they wanted the people to be able to rebel against their government and take them over if they become oppressive.

Now look at our government. They have tanks, jets, aircraft carriers and guns that are way more advanced than anything an American citizen could buy. You'd be absurd to think that Americans could actually take down the government. It's not going to happen. Therefore, the original intent of the 2nd Amendment is gone. We now need to find a new reason to keep or amend it.

Most of the hypocrisies of anti-gun control politicians are just reversed from the pro-gun control ones. They say that they have the right to own guns and the government shouldn't tell them what they can and can't own. One of the biggest arguments is that they say they have the right to defend themselves. But then, some of them don't think that women should be able to purchase or receive contraceptives to protect themselves against rape and other unwanted pregnancies. They also say the government shouldn't get involved in their lives, yet they want the government to legally define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Opposite of the fewer guns equals crime argument from pro-gun control politicians, anti-gun control politicians argue that more guns equal less crime. But as I've already pointed out, guns have very little to do with the crime. It all lies within the culture and demographics of the country. We could completely ban guns, and our crime could go way up or way down. We could also reduce restrictions on guns, and our crime could go way up or way down. Until we actually address the real underlying issues, any laws regarding guns won't do much.

Ultimately, the hypocrisies of people on both sides of the gun debate are the same. But until the country actually addresses our issues with poverty, the gun debate will go nowhere and be completely pointless.