Guns And Suicide Research Paper

Gun violence kills 33,000 Americans and injures over 80,000 people per year. It is ridiculous how much damage guns have brought to not only us, but the world itself. From Columbine, to Sandy Hook, to the movie theatre to the Oregon Community College shooting, it has just been ridiculous. This is all because we in America believe it is okay for people to carry guns and for them to be used if “needed”. If they were always banned to begin with, we would never have had this problem. The private ownership of handguns should be banned in the United States. Handguns have been proved to be dangerous to society in recent events, they are the deadliest weapon in America, and lastly, guns cost Americans hundreds of extra dollars that could be avoided if they were banned.

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 control should not exist at all in the United States. Mass shootings have almost become seen as normal event in the United States. What people do not understand is that gun control is not the answer; there are countries with little to no control that have fewer shootings. According to The Washington Post,Finland is ranked number 4 in countries with the most guns despite that they only had 24 homicides by firearm (“Gun homicides and ownership by countries” n.pag.) . In the article Did Gun Control Work In Australia “it is shown that gun control has reduced the problems but it still has not completely got rid of all firearm deaths”(Matthews n.pag.). The number of murders, homicides, or suicides do not go up due to people just owning more guns. Clayton Perry, a staff writer at the University of Maine, even points out “Stricter gun laws were in place during the Assault Weapons Ban between 1994 and 2004, but that didn't stop the shooters at Columbine in 1999 ”(Perry n. pag.). In Iceland, thirty out of a hundred people own a gun and they have zero homicides caused by guns a year(“Gun Homicides and ownership by country” n. pag.). In this day and age, everything is unpredictable, guns are a form of protection for everyone and there should not be restrictions on protection. The U.S. Department of Justice released a data brief that states, “ On average in 1987-92 about 83,000 crime victims per year used a firearm to defend themselves or their property”(Rand BJS Statistician n. pag.). The National Sheriffs Association released that the average police response time is at eighteen minutes while the average school shooting only last twelve minutes (“Embracing Technology To Decrease Response Time” n. pag.). Gun control should not exist because other countries do fine without it , high gun ownership has no link with increasing death rates , and guns are not harmful when instructions are followed.

Research shows that whether attempters live or die depends in large part on the ready availability of firearms. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health of all 50 U.S. states reveals a powerful link between rates of firearm ownership and suicides. Based on a survey of American households conducted in 2002, it was found that in states where guns were prevalent—as in Wyoming, where 63 percent of households reported owning guns—rates of suicide were higher. The inverse was also true: where gun ownership was less common, suicide rates were also lower ( Harvard). Many lives could be saved if firearms weren't so accessible. The American government needs to adopt policies that would keep guns out of the hands of vulnerable adults and

Gun control has been a long debate to determine if it’s better to have stricter access to firearms. America is one of the few countries that has gun rights embedded in their constitution. But what makes the US exceptional is that it has the right to keep and bear arms, other countries do not provide the right to have access to them, but rather, the government is allowed to regulate its use. The right to bear arms has also been the cause of growing violence and crime, at least according to anti-gun lobbyists. Citizens should be aware the dangers and harm that guns present to society. Controlling the sale of firearms can greatly decrease the number of violent crimes.

Too many Americans die due to firearms. “New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof this past summer wrote an impassioned call for gun control that included a recounting of horrific gun-related statistics. Since 1968, he noted, more people have died from guns in the U.S. than on the battlefields of all the wars in American history combined” (“Technology” -Gralla 6). This country is supposed to

Since 1982, at least sixty-two mass shootings have occurred, thirty-two of them since 2006. (Aronsen). Jared Loughner was sentenced to life in prison after shooting nineteen people in January of 2011. Last July, fifty-eight people were shot and twelve killed while watching the new Batman movie in a theater in Colorado. In December, twenty-six people were murdered, including twenty first-graders, in a Connecticut elementary school (Follman). The issue of gun violence only becomes relevant after a horrific event such as these, then fades from public concern after about two weeks. The number of injuries and murders using guns in the United States is a large number, which can hopefully be

This means more than half of the suicide in America was done using a firearm. Perhaps the use of firearms use in suicides are high is because it is also reported by GunPolicy that, “The estimated total number of guns held by civilians in the United States is 270,000,000.” Also it is important to take in an account that this number possibly can be much greater because illegal guns and unregistered guns might not be included. With this amount of guns in America, someone with the passion to kill someone or themselves, the most convenient way to commit suicide or kill someone would be to obtain one of the million guns across America. The number of suicides from firearms are so high because the availability to obtain the potentially greater 270,000,000 guns in America. Gun control laws can potential decrease passion crimes and suicides. In Australia, they have passed guns laws that have reduced homicides and suicides. The law that made it possible for the decrease in firearm suicides and homicide for civilians is that

The history of guns has long been embedded in our society and culture. Back in the old days, people used guns for the hunting of food. Most people in those days also would use guns as their main source of income as wells as for the protection of themselves from Indians, wild animals, and other enemies. There had less rules concerning the purchasing of guns and the handling of it. However, the times are really changing and the intents of civilians to do things are sometimes not for the better. According to the viewpoint essay “Stronger Gun Control Laws Will Save Lives” by Christine Watkins, Watkins states that there are “400,000 crimes committed every year,” and “the United States has the highest rate of firearm deaths (more than 30,000 each year) among twenty-five high-income nations.” Firearms are very dangerous, and having guns does not necessarily mean that it will protect a person from enemies. It is the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens, not the citizens themselves. There would be a reduction of gun-related deaths and incidents by having stricter gun regulations and performing more thorough background checks or gun owners.

Gun law advocates argue that gun control laws diminish the amount of weaponry in the streets, and, by extension, in the hands of criminals. Likewise, gun control will diminish suicide. There were 464,033 total gun deaths between 1999 and 2013: 270,237 suicides (58.2% of total deaths); 174,773 homicides (37.7%); and 9,983 unintentional deaths (2.2%) (CDC, 2014). If perhaps, one of these families had a surviving brother or sister, mother or father, due to the current policies, it is worth enacting change. It is inhuman to allow people to die by firearms when they could simply be banned. In light of the recent mass shootings, families are left with the lingering wonder as to whether these national tragedies could be prevented. Criminals can easily

I read the article “The Association Between State Laws Regulating Handgun Ownership and Statewide Suicide Rates”. I have found that in 2010, suicide by a hand gun was ranked tenth in the U.S. for cause of death. The data supported that states with stricter laws on having a hand gun had less suicide rates then the other states who didn’t have strict laws on owning a hand gun. The data also gave an overall ideal that the states with stricter gun laws had more attempts of suicide (Anestis, 2015). This article was written with the intent to influence voters to pass new laws on gun control to prevent as many suicides as possible.

Somewhere around the world somebody just got shot. Somewhere else somebody just got stabbed to death. Some people would have been affected more by the death by gun because a decent amount around the world dump a lot of hatred towards guns and gun owners. It seems that guns have always received the most attention and concern from citizens, for years. They have been either hated or loved by the citizens of the United States since before the colonial days. They are not a bad mechanism for people to use; they are just, occasionally, misused or put into the wrong hands, that is how it is with every weapon. Many Americans, actually, honor this tool and have for centuries because guns are quite a big part of American history. It was a big enough part of history for the Founding Fathers of America to include it in one of the original ten Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, a part of the nation misuse the right given to citizens from the Second Amendment for things like murder. This has caused a good amount of people to believe gun use is the cause of the majority of deaths and the basis of crime, but these beliefs have been proven not true from various collections of studies and data. Guns are not as bad as they seem, and they should not be taken away or restricted harshly because they were trusted by the Founding Fathers of the United States and protected by the Second Amendment, are not one of the leading causes of all deaths and crimes in America, and taking them away will just stir

Suicide is one leading cause of death in the United States; thousands of people commit suicide or attempt it each year. Firearms is one method people use to commit suicide, and gun control is a way to reduce it. Different types of organizations want to place gun control policies because it could reduce gun violence. The policies will restrict ownership of a gun and purchasing of a gun. Now there are laws that involve with gun control in every state. Andres (2011) found, there are laws that won’t sell guns to people with a bad history, sale of certain guns, and gun trafficking . According to Andres (2011), prohibitions related to mental illness, a drug or alcohol problem, or history of domestic violence problems may linked to suicide prevention.

Gun ownership should be banned to reduce the 100,000 deaths of americans that are shot every year in the United States. Throughout America’s history, we have been known as the extremely gun violent country unfit to protect our citizens from danger. The television news reports continue to display the violent crimes and school shootings that has harmed innocent people especially children. When the government allows guns to be legal in the United States, they are giving people the responsibility to use this weapon for self defense purposes and recreational sport such as hunting. However, gun owners have been unable to handle this responsibility

Typically, firearms are divided into two categories, there are handguns and long guns. Handguns are firearms such as pistols that are designed to be held and fired with one hand. The most common types of handguns are single shot handguns, revolvers, and semiautomatics (Saferstein, 2016, p. 192-193). All handguns can be classified as either single action or