How Does Gun Violence Cause Death In The United States

Gun violence is the leading cause of death in the United States. In recent news, we see school shootings and shootings in general occurring more often than usual. It is not hard at all to acquire a gun in the United States. Currently, many states have weak gun laws, which can lead to guns falling into the wrong hands. Guns are the cause of most of the crime in the United States, we need to enhance gun laws/gun control so that it is harder to possess a gun in public space.
To purchase a gun in most states all one has to do is fill out about two pages of forms at the gun store, wait for a quick background check, and then simply purchase the gun. In a news article called “Buying a semi-automatic rifle in Philadelphia in 7 minutes”, a columnist …show more content…

I agree that guns can be a good use for self defense, it can save many people in dire situations such as robberies. Though I concede that guns are good for self defense, we can see that more people are using guns for needs other than self defense. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention publish “National Vital Statistics Report” every two years. Author Sherry L. Murphy, along with others, report on the deaths, death rates, life expectancy, infant mortality, and trends from 2015 in the journal entry. The most common type of firearm death is suicide, the second most common is homicide. The various graphs in the “2015 National Vital Statistics Report,” give us information on the amount of deaths by firearm along with the causes. In 2015 there were 36,352 deaths by firearm, of that 22,018 were suicides (60%), and 12,979 were homicides (35%) (Murphy, et al., 2015). Suicide is a very important issue in today’s society, many people (mostly teens) are committing suicide not with their own guns, but with others. This is why guardians must make sure that weapons in a household are locked away or be sure that everyone in the household knows the dangers of a gun and why it is in the house. Gun violence can also show impacts on medical costs, costs of security precautions, and it reduces quality of life for many because most people are living life with the constant fear of gun