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
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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
Right now, the U.S. has a National Instant Background Check System; however, it contains many flaws. This system is meant to act as a filter to stop the wrong people from having guns. In 2007, the Bipartisan legislation was passed to strengthen this system. It relies on data supplied by the states, but the data is often incomplete and inadequate (Merino 104). Unlicensed gun sellers have also created a dangerous loophole. The law makes an exception for gun sellers who aren’t federally licensed gun dealers. These sellers sell guns informally through venues such as gun shows, and are not required to run background checks. This is a dangerous loophole where people who should not have guns can get them (“Gun”). Senator Frank R. Lautenberg once stated, commenting on the gun sh...
Individuals acquire guns in a variety of ways, from inheritance, purchasing, or theft. Regardless of the means of attainment, the possession of firearms is widespread in the United States. Those who possess guns do so for many reasons, such as for sport, protection, or illegal activities (Bilchik, 1999). Gun buyback programs receive weapons from all types of individuals, regardless of how they originally acquired their firearms or why. The first gun buyback program was employed in Baltimore in 1977 to curb violence perpetrated by the use of firearms (Carter, 2002).
The Federal Government today is putting forth much effort in order to control the purchase and registration of handguns. In 1993, Congress approved the Brady Bill that requires a mandatory five-day waiting period when buying a gun. The recent school shootings have pushed Congress to pass a bill requiring approximately 80% of handguns to be produced with child safety locks. The ultimate goal of the government is to ban the sale of firearms to the public. By starting out small, and having big goals, later generations will enjoy peaceful lives.
Imagine... you are driving down the street to see your loving family. You stop at a gas station and a guy comes in. He has a bandana and bad intentions. All of a sudden, he loads a pistol and aims it towards you. What are your options? Try to visualize, a guy going to see his wife and kids, but when out of nowhere a person pulls you aside and then points a pistol at you. Over the course of years, ninety-three United States citizens are killed with guns. Due to these reasons, it seems it is necessary to get rid of guns because of the 21,175 suicides, 505 deaths due to accidental/ negligent discharge of a firearm. Guns should be banned for civilian use, due to too many deaths from unregistered users, misuse, and increased crime rate.
The debate over firearms has been polarized for too long. Gun law is a never-ending issue because there hardly is any true debate. Americans (and even gun owners) do support the governments efforts to make sure guns are less dangerous in violent hands, but that is the main problem-the guns getting in the wrong human hands. Millions of law-abiding Americans do own and do enjoy their guns. But criminals and sometimes-disconcerted kids often use firearms to kill. The use of firearms has increased tremendously. An average day in Los Angeles is four people dying in a gun related crime and the United States faces approximately 87 deaths a day. There are more than 200 million guns in circulation in the United States and if you don’t own a firearm, chances are that your neighbor or friend does (Fineman 27). Sure, the Founding Fathers incorporated the Second Amendment as “the right to keep and bear arms,” but it did not give the distinction of using guns to kill more children and people than anywhere in the world.
Gun violence has been and continues to be one of the major problems in American. The U.S. has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world and consequently the highest rate of gun violence and fatalities compared to other developed countries. In a study by the University of Sydney it is estimated that there are 270,000,000 to 310,000,000 guns in the United States. According to the same study in 2010 there were 31,672 fatalities caused by firearms and on the following year the number went up to 32,163. Homicides resulting from guns are high in the United States and they are claiming more than eleven thousand lives every year (Guns in the United States: Firearms, Armed Violence and Gun Law). According to Vision for Humanity, an initiative for the Economics and Peace, the United States is ranked 99 out of 162 countries in the 2013 global peace index, homicide rates and violent crimes are among the various criteria used to determine the ranking (Vision of Humanity). Mass shootings at work places, schools, shopping malls and places of worship are happening in an a...
Today in the United States many people argue over the fact of guns being legal or illegal. There are people using guns for personal safety and there are others who use them for crimes, as well as for other situations. Firearm deaths in the United States have slowly been decreasing from year to year with all these bills getting passed to promote a safer country than ever before. Guns are the main weapon for youth suicide, school shootings, and for committing murder. In 2010 there were 2,711 infants, child, and teenage firearm deaths. As in school shootings and in committing murder, studies show shooters often had multiple, non-automatic guns, shootings were planned, most youth tell before shooting, shooters have a history of being bullied or threatened, shooters have mental issues, and shooters have done suicidal gestures before (Gun Control with School Shootings). Although there are people who use guns for murdering, there are also those who oppose guns being used without the proper requirements. 85% of all respondents to the survey supporting requiring states to report people to national background-checks systems who are prohibited from owning gu...
“A handgun ban is not realistically enforceable. Confiscating guns would require house-to-house searches and alienate the very individuals whose compliance is essential to the success of any regulation. If gun ownership were prohibited, organized crime would step in to provide the firearms that will continue to be procured with criminal intent” (Done Kates). Over the past decade, the media has reported an increase in the severity of violent crimes as individuals have killed and hurt many others, including kids. Since 2006, there have been over 200 mass murders in the United States.
Guns save more lives than they take. According to statistics on gun owners.org two and a half million times a year, guns are used for self defense. Self defense can be anywhere from sexual assault, to open fire against the criminal. One example given on foxnews.com of open fire against a criminal, would be during the school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi. Luke Woodham walked into a high school and open fired. Luke tried to walk across the street to the intermediate building, only to be stopped by the assistant principal. While Luke was firing at the high school, the assistant principal got loose to get to his
“According to FBI statistics, 46, 313 Americans were murdered during the time period of 2007 to 2011. This translates to an average of 9,263 murders per year.” There was about one murder every hour. These murders involved guns. If gun control laws are enhanced then everyone would be safer. There would be less crime and no one would have to be as concerned. That would be a huge benefit to us all. According to JustFacts, “12% of Americans will be the victims of a complete violent crime in the course of their lives. 83% of Americans will be the victim of an attempted or completed crime. 52% of Americans will be the victim of an attempted or completed crime more than once.” Obviously many Americans have been involved in a violent gun act. Many probably live in fear. Maybe someone suffers from trauma after an incident like this happened. People who commit these crimes do not even stay in prison for that long. Thus, this makes the United States a scarier
Without sufficient gun control laws, the death rate in the United States is incredibly high. Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and many times more injuries annually. Many countries have death rates of gun violence at or lower than 200. This, as will be shown later, is quite It is reported that out of twenty-seven developed countries, the U.S. has the highest rate of gun deaths and the number is more than forty times larger than the deaths of Great Britain by guns (O’Brien 1). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, firearms were used in 84,258 nonfatal injuries and homicide deaths reached 11,208, suicide rates of 21,175, and accidental deaths by guns reaching a death count of 505 (23). From these similar high death counts from several different organizations, it is clear that the U.S must impose stricter gun control laws. If countries as developed as the U.S. are achieving low death rates from gun violence what is stopping the U.S. from making the same changes? Why not the U.S. too? By the same token, in an interview between Tiffany O’Callaghan and Garen Wintemute, Wintemute states that “It (guns) takes upward of
The problem with guns is fairly obvious: they decrease the difficulty of killing or injuring a person. In Jeffrey A. Roth's Firearms and Violence (NIJ Research in Brief, February 1994), he points out the obvious dangers. About 60 percent of all murder victims in the United States in 1989 (about 12,000 people) were killed with firearms. Firearm attacks injured another 70,000 victims, some of whom were left permanently disabled. In 1985, the cost of shootings was an estimated $14 billion nationwide for medical care, long-term disability, and premature death. In robberies and assaults, victims are far more likely to die when the perpetrator is armed with a gun than when he or she has another weapon or is unarmed.
The argument that guns are rarely used for self-defense implies that they have been used before for this purpose. Even if they are not always used for protection, guns have saved people from severe injury or death before. If guns were banned, those people who relied on them for protection would probably be in a lot worse shape than they are
First, and foremost many handguns have claimed the lives of too many people. This is a very serious issue we must tackle globally not just in the United States. The same problem is killing our past, present, and future. Gun violence has claimed the lives of so many Americans that we are the leading country in crimes committed by guns. These guns are claiming the lives of people ranging from babies to adults to even the elderly. Handguns are just causing too many deaths.
Guns have a long history in the United States. Guns are used for self-defense, but they are also used for hunting. Since guns are a part of the American culture, it is almost impossible to get rid of all the guns in the country. However, by training people how to use the guns properly, giving people the right mental care, and limiting the number of people who can have guns, could stop school shootings in America. Anything in the world could be dangerous if people do not know how to use them.