Gun control has been a serious topic in the city of Chicago for decades. Hundreds of shootings occur in the city on a yearly basis, resulting in countless injuries and casualties. Who is to blame? Are guns really the problem, or are the people who own them the problem? Getting a firearm in Chicago becomes more and more difficult every year, yet the shootings seem to increase. Some say this is due to and increase in gang violence. Others say that the city is not monitoring the sales of guns and who is able to purchase firearms. According to Vidal “Illinois still has one of the strictest gun laws in the country.” The city is in controversy on whether or not to ban handguns entirely. 2012 was a record year for homicides. According to Vidal …show more content…
Hadiya was an innocent teenager in this violent shooting. She was a very good student and aspired to become successful. How many times does an innocent child with so much potential have to be taken away from this world? Guns are falling into the wrong hands of gangs and criminals, especially at very young ages. How are 16 year olds able to purchase guns at this young age? The previous notion was that guns were stolen from private owners or gun stores. According to Noyes and Wachtel “Stolen guns account for only about 10% to 15% of guns used in crimes (Noyes and Wachtel 1). However According to Noyes and Wachtel “one of the most common ways criminals get guns is through straw purchase sales.” A straw purchase goes as follows, a teen walks into a gun store accompanied by someone who is of age to purchase a gun, the teen then selects the gun he wants and the accomplice then purchases the gun. The selections are either done at the store or before hand. However it is done this is highly illegal (2). But what if this method does not work? There is another way criminals are getting their hands on illegally purchase guns. According to Noyes and Wachtel many guns are also purchased from “legally licensed but corrupt at home commercial gun dealers.” Straw purchases become obsolete with at home gun dealers. This opens the door to underage kids buying guns. With the right amount of money and the right dealer and 17-year-old gangbanger
These people usually go to gun shows to sell firearms and many people refer to this as the gun show loophole. But these vendors don’t always have to go to gun shows, they can use classified ads or the internet to sell firearms without a background check. According to Watkins, “ Experts estimate that over six million guns a year - perhaps 40% of all sales – are made by unlicensed private dealers not subject to the law” (Watkins 5).
This question is important to everyone related to the issue. Weapons have a big role in everyone?s lives. Most have their own hunting rifle or a collectible pistol. But either of these in the hands of a youth in your neighborhood could be dangerous. Americans value their rights to freedoms granted to them by the Constitution, which includes the possession of firearms as stated in the Second Amendment.
The store [selling the guns] then calls the FBI, which runs a background check on the person [trying to obtain a gun] through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, also known as NICS. The background check can
In the paragraph in which you stated that the age to purchase and own a firearm legally should be raised to 21, your logic does not seem to make sense to me. You suggest that teenagers do not possess “hot cognitive abilities” since their brain is not fully developed, and “cannot make decisions when emotional aroused, in groups, or and in a hurry.” For one, going through the legal process to purchase a firearm is not a quick process, it is also not something that you would do in group. Even if you were making this decision emotionally, the process to purchase a firearm takes longer than 30 days and would give you more than enough time to re-think your
Also, many people obtain guns from stealing it from another person, or buying it off a citizen who is unknowledgable or uncaring for the law, or the temperment of the buyer. Besides, if a person who is of age, and has a clear record wishes to buy a gun to be violent with it, there is no way of preventing him or her.
According to a source at Lawcenter.giffords.orga; “18 year olds account for a disproportionate percentage of arrests for homicide and violent crimes”. Even though 18 year olds are legally an adult they are still teenagers who don’t know much from what’s to come in the world. In my experience an average of Americans are killed with guns each year by young adults. It’s all I see in the news whenever there is a shooting anywhere in the word. By restricting the age of buying a gun this can solve a quarter of the violence happening now. Remember all the lives that has been lost over the years by a mass shooting caused by young adults who don’t know what there doing when they pull that trigger and take a
Imagine your child was nearing high school graduation with their whole life ahead of them. Next year, they will be going to college and you will see them bloom into the wonderful person you know they are. Now imagine the horror of hearing that your child had been shot and killed while they were at school. It is difficult to fathom the enormous amount of grief and anger that would flood the body of a person in a situation like this. No one should have to endure such pain. Now imagine how much this pain would be intensified if there was a possibility that the whole incident could have been prevented.
These guns are sold on what is called the black market to basically anyone. Anyone of any age, with no waiting period, no matter what your criminal record is, can purchase these guns. The fact that these guns are sold illegally allows guns to fall into the wrong hands. Gang members and murderers purchase these guns and go onto the streets and kill members of our own families. These problems are trying to be prevented by catching them and putting them in jail. By this point it is too late, someone?s child or mother has been killed. If the guns were taken out of their hands the crime would never be committed.
Guns are a deadly weapon, and should be used with caution. This is why there are gun control laws. The methods of gun control at present consist of the government restricting the ability of individual citizens to purchase weapons. The different types of gun control vary from waiting periods between when you purchase the gun and when you actually get it, background checks so that high-risk people can't purchase guns through legal channels, and completely banning certain types of guns. There are countless ways for criminals to avoid these government regulations, causing them to only render the ability of innocent citizens protecting their home and family's ability to purchase guns. The "waiting period" method of gun control is basically a two-step process. The first step in the procedure is that the person wanting a gun goes to his local shop to place the initial order. Then, he must wait one to two weeks while the government performs a small background check for past criminal activities, disorderly conduct, or lack of mental/emotional stability.3 During this time, if the purchaser of the gun wanted the gun for impulse reasons, it is hoped that they will not still want to cause harm after a couple weeks. Unfortunately, underage buyers
According to the law, someone who has been convicted for violent crimes as a juvenile can still purchase guns as an adult. And the law says the mentally ill can own guns, as long as they have never been in a mental institution. But even if they have, they can still earn that right back later on.
Background checks are what they sound like--they check your past history for any red flags such as criminal history, credit history, and employment history. When that happens, the flagged person may not receive the desired job, or in this case--the gun. Legions of gun control supporters postulate that having a stricter background check will help solve a majority of this gun violence issue (Cooke). Little do they know, having a strict background check does not limit the issue, but only prolongs the time of crime if anything. The Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, was “a licensed armed security guard and passed the required checks to buy his gun” according to Knox. Knox, a reporter for USA Today, believes that background checks are a filter allowing ordinary people to purchase guns while screening out those prohibited from possessing guns--the point of a background check--however; “straw sales” are oftentimes used in this case to bypass the check. Straw sales are where the intended buyer
In the legal and illegal use of firearms, some ways of obtaining and the selling of guns are shocking and others are well known. Children, teens, and adults all have ways to obtain a firearm even if they are underage or do not pass a mandatory back-ground check, which causes
Laws have been put into place to help insure that guns are only sold to the people that are able to pass back ground checks. “With the 1994 Brady Handgun Violence and Prevention Act, Congress imposed a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases to allow law enforcement officers time to perform criminal background checks of potential buyers” (Front Line). This does not mean that guns do not fall into the hands of children and adults who are not lawfully registered to own them. There are guns shows that are held in almost any U.S. town at any given time, most of the dealers follow protocol but some do not. Pawn shops also buy and sell guns on a daily basis; most of these guys are just out to make a quick sell. They have no idea if the gun that they are buying was just used in a crime or not.
Guns are given to people that are not allowed to have guns. How is this happening? Some purchases are legal, some are not, and those illegal deals pivot the playing field. “Likely that many guns on the black market got there via straw purchases — where a person purchases a gun from a dealer without disclosing that they're buying it for someone else” (Ingraham). This is important because it explains that they can get their guns from the black market secretly from the government or they can have someone else buy it for another. This also explains that the government is still blind even after placing “strict” laws, because of this many people are getting away with illegal purchases. Is this really what is causing
In order to sense why and how it is possible for minors to gain access to firearms, it needs to be understood that there is an excessive amount of firearms that