Argumentative Essay: Gun Violence In Chicago

This year’s shootings has climbed by twenty percent from 2013, there have been nearly one hundred homicides involving guns so far this year. This is an upsurge from sixty nine during the same period in both 2013 and 2014.In. In New York city officials have blamed the upsurge of homicides on deadly conflicts between career criminals and blamed gang activity in Brooklyn and the Bronx. On the other hand what’s been happening in Baltimore is different. The number of homicides has doubled while shootings has climbed more than eighty percent, and the vast majority of experts say that it is at partially connected to a averseness by police officers to aggressively do their jobs. (Sanburn, 2015)During the year of 2013 the population in New York, NY was 8,396,126 and they had 335 reported homicides, while Baltimore, MD had a population of 622,671 people and 233 reported. (Crime in te Unied States 2013,

Every day 297 people in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides, unintentional shootings, and police intervention. Everyday 89 people die from gun violence, 31 of those people are murdered. Today I'm going to be talking about the social justice issue of gun violence. Gun violence, death and injury from firearms is a major issue in all parts of our world. Gun violence continues to affect young people, lower-income people, and communities of color. This social justice and public health issue occurs in places all over the world, however it has become such an epidemic in the United States that it will result in gun violence being one of the main topics in the 2016 presidential election. There are many causes for gun violence, for example, in this day and age pop culture influence is the greatest cause of gun violence. Guns have also became more accessible and easy to obtain. Poor identification and treatment of mentally ill people is another significant cause for gun violence.

With the popular culture providing positive images of guns, the United States has a gun prevalence that is very rare in the modern world. While many people appreciate the “gun culture”, guns are heavily involved in violence in the United States. According to U.S. Department of Justice, since 1960, more than 750,000 Americans have died under firearms, including homicides, suicides, and unintentional injuries. The figure 1 provides a comprehensive survey of U.S. violent crimes for the period from 1993 to 2011.This figure illustrates that from 1993 to 2011, about 60% to 70% of homicides were associated with a firearm. Over the same period, between 6% and 9% of all nonfatal violence, with about 20% to 30% of robberies and 22% to 32% of aggravated assaults involving a firearm.

Gun violence is the sign of a far greater universal problem in America today. Violence and gun violence specifically, is surrounded within, and spread all through every part of our society. All the reasons remain intimately related to the actual solution, which can only be a general solution one by treating it as one issue. The region that I live in is considered a peaceful part of Harvest, which I am particularly grateful about. I do not have to worry about gunfights in the roads of my community, nor maybe being helpless confronted by students with a gun at school. That, nevertheless, does not mean that my community is impermeable to gun violence. Huntsville has seen its share of gun violence from the incident at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), where three people were murdered and three others injured on February 12, 2010. Throughout the course of a routine gathering of the biology department attended by about 12 people, professor Amy Bishop stood up and began shooting those next to her with a 9-millimeter handgun (Hall 2010)

Before I get into the strategies put in place to reduce gun violence, I want to touch on the things that contribute to gun violence in New Haven. According to the “Selected Strategies for Community Gun Violence Prevention” report, violent crimes contribute to and are exacerbated by economic disadvantage (City-Wide). The main area in New Haven where gun violence occurs is in areas of low-income and poverty and the gun violence are being executed by the youth ages 15-24. In this day and age, we are living in a society where your income level determines your life expectancy, whether it is homicide, suicide or another form of violent activity. Living in New Haven and experiencing this first hand, I was able to see how the power and the struggle of poverty, low-income, gang wars and even drug activity can exacerbate gun violence. New Haven has as many as 2,500 people who are in gangs. These gangs lie in six neighborhoods in New Haven. The gangs being, The Ville, The Tre, The Tribe, The Jungle, The Island and The Hill hold responsibility

According to the Toronto police, an Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy was a necessary investment in wake of increasing gun violence among poor (primarily black) youth in the city of Toronto, which peaked to its ultimate high in the year 2005 known as the ‘year of the gun’. A media spectacle of the Toronto’s gang violence primarily involving young black men from poor inner suburban

Everyday, the biased news media reports another mass shooting. The media reports the cases of “police brutality” and the media reports the tragic accidents. The media doesn’t report the research by David Burnett and Clayton Cramer who track incidents of defensive gun use. The stories include women fighting off would be rapists and senior citizens protecting themselves from robbers. They are stories that prevent violent crimes from occurring, for they are stories that save lives.

In the African American community, 83 percent of homicides are due to gun violence. In black communities gun violence is commonly misunderstood as gang affiliation, which is false. Studies show over 50 percent of gun crimes committed were not related to a felony, but were due to some disagreement. The gun epidemic in predominantly black communities aren’t just disagreements, but race wars, police brutality, gang related, and even no reason at all.

It has spread to the suburbs and small towns. Gun violence rates have increased in the last decade due to hatred and societal issues, and while shooters and victims both face many difficult obstacles, there are some solutions that the public and schools can enforce through awareness.

On January 17, 2017, “Surge in the Violence” was released by the Crime lab at the University of Chicago, which had combined a report on the statistics of homicides taken place in the year 2015 and 2016. The number of homicides taken place in the year of 2016 has soared by record high of 67 percent than the previous year. Chicago is one of the busiest and advanced cities in the world and getting such high numbers in the field of crime is a shame and leaves a bad impression on the rest of the world. The violence related to guns has also increased enormously and according to “Chicago Tribune”, 2,958 people have been shot dead by now this year. Though the data shows that the homicides by gun has decreased significantly but the number is still a problem. The gun violence now is a serious problem and the current situation demands strict gun laws.

In the DC Metropolitan Area, violence regarding firearm has been a big issue. It has one of the highest homicide rates involving firearm in the country even though they are known for having one of the strictest gun control laws in the country. Gun control in the an metropolitan area is impossible, but little changes can be made in order to reduce the amount of damage that firearms have brought to the city. Creating a system to take accountability of the

The Orlando nightclub shooting in Florida on June 12, 2016 was the single largest massacre in U.S history, taking the lives of 50 individuals, including the shooter himself, and injuring 53 others. This is one extreme example of the gun violence that has been occurring in this country, but mass shootings like this and the one at Newton in 2012 are only a small part of our gun violence issue. The everyday gun violence that takes place in cities all across the United States claims the lives of thousands every single year. According to The Guardian, 33,500 civilians die each year because of gun brutality- “that’s about 1 life every 15 minutes” (Beckett). Between the years of 1999 and 2013, there were 464,003 gun deaths in the U.S, about 58% of them were suicides 37% were homicides. (ProCon.org) Gun violence and the consequences of that violence, have become a real and dangerous problem in the U.S , why else would the CDC list the United States as having the highest rate of gun violence out of all developed countries today? (Gale Opposing Viewpoints) This issue is not just attributable to a single factor, there are several that play an important part in why gun violence is such an issue in the U.S, namely laws and poverty; and in these causes we can also find solutions.

Gun violence is a growing problem in society today. We need Shot Spotter systems implemented in high crime communities, such as Chicago, Illinois, to improve case closure rates, as well response times by police and first responders. In Chicago, from January 1, 2017 to March 23, 2017 there have already been 658 shooting victims (O'Connell, 2017). Today in a majority of communities, gun violence has to be called in or reported by civilians. Statistics show that only 20% of gun fire is reported (Shot Spotter, 2014). When they are reported, they often do not occur in a timely manner and the information provided is limited or incorrect. As a result, law enforcement agencies waste time following up on incorrect information provided.

It is impossible not to open a newspaper, watch the television, or listen to the radio with out hearing about some type of gun violence. Perhaps the main reason for such high gun violence is that guns are so plentiful in the Unites States. In fact, there are sixty five million handguns in America ("The `facts' about Guns"). These guns contribute to an annual medical cost of fourteen billion dollars, which is spent solely on treating gun victims ("Handguns in America"). Not surprisingly, handguns are the cause of eighty percent of homicides, seventy percent of suicides, and almost every accidental shooting ("Youth and Violence"). Handgun violence is a problem that is easy for everyone to see. How to solve this predicament is another

Handguns were used most often in homicides, most cases being in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s before falling to a low in 2008 (Cooper, et al.). Most gun involvement occurs with gang related activity, which increased from 73% in 1980 to 92% in 2008 (Cooper, et al.). The percentage of homicide victims killed with a gun increased with age of the victim until age 17, where it peaked at 79% and declined thereafter (Cooper, et al.). The sharp increase in homicides from the mid-1980’s through the early 1990’s, and much of the subsequent decline, is attributable to gun violence by teens and young adults (Cooper, et al.). From 1980 to 2008, more