Gun Violence In America

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.

Each year homicide and assault-related injuries result in an estimated $16 billion in combined medical and work loss (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/17/education-gun-violence-presidential-debate-2012_n_1974740.html). Gun violence may be broadly defined as a category of violence and crime committed with use of a firearm, it may or may not include actions ruled as self defense, actions for law enforcement. Gun violence is prevalent in African American Communities, although some might believe that it is not a racial issue ( CNN New’s stated “America’s Gun problem is not a race problem).

Researchers at the University of Alabama have conducted studies trying to find links between guns and mass shootings (Michaels). There are hundreds of millions of guns in circulation in America today. In fact, “the total number of guns in circulation is at least 240 million” (Ballaro and Finley). Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, suggests that “America’s high rate of public mass shootings is connected with the number of guns circulating in the country” (Michaels). Implementing stricter gun laws would cause fewer people to want to purchase guns, resulting in fewer guns in circulation in the coming years. In the United States, “around 30,000 people die from gun fire each year. Around half of these are murders, a little less than half are suicides, and the rest are lethal accidents” (Ballaro and Finley). (2) Currently there are several million guns in circulation, and gun deaths in America are higher than any other developed country. (5) If the trend continues, the number of gun deaths will continue to increase. As stated in the article “10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down.” author Dave Gilson states that “People with access to more guns tend to kill more people- with guns. States with higher gun ownership rates have higher gun murder rates- as much as 114% higher than states with lower gun ownership rates” (Gilson). (7) More

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.

“We lose eight children and teenagers to gun violence every day. If a mysterious virus suddenly started killing eight of our children every day, America would mobilize teams of doctors and public health officials. We would move heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children. But not with gun violence.” (Warren, 2014)Criminal gun violence, which violence enacted by the use of a firearm, includes murder, assault, and suicide, or attempted suicide. This violence imposes a heavy burden on our standard of living, not only on groups that have the highest victimization rates, but also on the community at large. By one estimate, this burden amounts to $80 billion per year. (Cook and Ludwig, 2000)

“According to the Congressional Research Service, there are roughly twice as many guns per capita in the United States as there were in 1968: more than 300 million guns in all” describe in the article Guns In America, By The Numbers by Scott Horsley at npr.org. The number of guns’ sale is increasing every year. Some people might think more gun more peach, but some of them think more gun more violence. In common sense, a place where has the incredibly lax gun law, the country has the strongest culture of gun ownership, highest rate of suicide, highest gun violence per capita. In the EBSCO article, Gun Control in America: An Autopsy report by Collier, Charles W,described “the United States with less than 5 percent of the world’s population and nearly half the world’s firearms (pg. 81). United States is the little country that allows people illegal to carry a gun protect their life in the right way. They use to teach their children how to use guns when they are little. The more we learn, the more we use to. More people using gun as tool to suicide and killing another because the unlimited availability of gun sale. The more gun we have sale, the country will be becoming an armed society. As the number of guns increasing, the US homicide rate was increasing and higher than other country. In the Google scholar article, Violent Death Rates: The US Compared with OECD Countries, 2010, explain that US homicide rates were much higher than other high-income countries, the gun homicide rate in the United States was 49.0 times higher and the overall firearm death rate in the United States from all causes was 10.0 times higher”. This year, I have heard about two homicide case from customer in where I used to work. The death rate of gun violence having a certain relationship to the lax gun laws and policy. The above evidences show how gun violence has been affected to our lives,

Have you ever thought why there are so many wars and killings everyday in the world? The greatest problem that I see facing society today is Gun violence. In order to help solve this problem I plan on speaking to the public, kids gun safety, and trying to stop illegal firearms.

This country was founded on the right to bear arms ,and the freedom to bear arms is overlooked.With all the killings and school shooting leading to gun violence,most Americans seem to believe if the government takes all the guns away the gun violence would end.

Stated by the National Vital Statistics Report “The United States has far more gun ownership than other developed countries, and far more gun violence. In 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation had more than 33,000 firearms deaths: 70 percent of all homicides (11,208), more than half of all suicides (21,175), and hundreds of accidental and unsolved deaths.” (Xu, Murphy, Kochanek, Bastian “Deaths: The Final Data 2013”)

According to "Gun Violence Archive 2015 Toll of Gun Violence” there has been a total of 48,677 incidents involving a firearm in America this year (2015). The number of deaths this year from gun violence is 12,323, while the number of injuries (24,890) is almost double the number of deaths (Gun Violence Archive 2015). The number of children (ages 0-11 years old) killed or injured due to gun violence is 645, while the number of teenagers (ages 12-17 years old) killed or injured is 2,440 (Gun Violence Archive 2015). The number of mass shootings in 2015 is 310 (Gun Violence Archive 2015). The number of officer-involved incidents is 4,060, and home invasion incidents 2,093 (Gun Violence Archive 2015). The number of times a firearm was used in self-defense

Gun control laws have been a huge debate in politics. It is an ongoing debate between not only politicians but average citizens of America. Guns have become a huge issue in the United States, with shootings controlling 60% of homicides. Numerous school shootings have happened throughout the years that have led to thousands of children dead. Compared to other countries, America's gun laws are much more lenient and the effect of this has created a high number of families affected by gun violence either directly or indirectly. With this being said, an organization called “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America” has been created to push legislators to reform gun laws. The organization created a ad to resemble a much more insignificant object

Personal use of guns causes large amount of deaths. The National Vital Statistics System of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides data on people killed by guns each year. Based on the five-year-average of these data, it

Las Vegas shooting has been one of the most recent terror attack in the United States. This attack has become one more mass shooting to the history of the United States, that involved the life of more than 300 people. The U.S. Department of Homeland security (DHS) was created to protect the United States to prevent danger such as terror attack to decrease the possibilities of terror attack in the United States. Since the attack that just happened in Las Vegas this past October 1, 2017. It has become a big controversy in our nation. In this essay, I’ll be focusing on what occurred in the mass shooting, the 2nd amendment and if the safety have improved regarding gun violence and mass shooting in the past years in the US. (1)

Throughout the years, the United States has experienced many different societal problems. All of the problems have the same dilemma being no one can agree on what the actual cause of these problems are so they don’t know where to begin on fixing them. Some of these problems include equality between men and women, environmental protection, political freedoms and so many more things. A very big issue right now is the amount of gun violence that takes place in our Country every day. It may sound too obvious that the cause of violence is the lack of control on guns, but it is actually much more extensive and the cause has many parts to it.

On the night of October 1, 2017, a 64-year-old gunman fired hundreds of rifle rounds from his suite on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel on the crowded concert. According to the Washington post, he killed at least 59 people and injured more than 500 others. He later killed himself. Gun violence is one of the major problems in the United States and the number of people dying from gun violence is increasing every year. The increase in drugs business, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, crimes, and robbery are the effects of guns violence.