The United States tops the list of countries with people who own private guns. Consequently, there have been increased cases of lost lives as a result of gun violence. The debate about gun laws and firearm restrictions is not a new topic in this country. Some people support ownership of firearms while others refute by the threat that guns and firearm pose in everyday life. Here, the paper concurs that ownership of weapons should be more strictly controlled in the country.
About eight months ago, there was news all over the place about a mass shooting that occurred in Parkland, Florida. It left 17 people dead, and this is just one of the incidences that have happened within the past decade. Occurrences of gun violence always trigger the general public to support the need for stricter rules when it comes to ownership of a firearm. What is even more unfortunate is that deaths related to firearms mostly involve the young population, as such causing premature deaths (Branas et al. 2017). Besides the loss of life, there is a substantial number of victims who get away with massive injuries, and the burden goes back to the American health system, and as a result, the whole economy is burdened.
Laws relating to guns vary significantly as you move from one state to the other, considering the kinds of firearms that are allowed and how their registration should be done. According to research, states that have stricter laws and regulations such as New York, tend to have fewer cases of firearm attacks as compared to States with less stringent rules such as Alabama (Jehan et al. 2018). When the rules are strict, most people will not meet the cut for owning a firearm, and when only a few people are the legal owners, it becomes easier to track them and their weapons.
In 1791, the constitution of the US protected the rights of people to keep firearms. Sadly afterward, the issue has been a constant debate (Vizzard, 2015). The problem is as a result of a lack of public safety. When lawmakers tried to limit access to firearms, it became a violation to the rights of the citizens in accordance to the constitution, but really, the aim has always been to protect the larger population that do not own the guns. It is important to note that this is not the 1990s where people merely owned guns for hunting (Wertz et al. 2018). The shift nowadays is that people own firearms to protect themselves, and this means anyone can own a gun, whether in the city or the rural, unlike in the past where most gun owners were old White men who used the firearms in their farms in the rural areas. The problem now is that the more people own guns, the more the violence being experienced as a result of the firearms.
It is unfortunate that firearm laws debate only heats up after a tragedy has fallen upon us. For instance, after the shooting of Gifford, a Congresswoman in 2011, or the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School back in 2012, or this year’s Florida case. However, the main thing to note is that there is a need to construct laws that are stricter when it comes to ownership of firearms
References
Branas, C. C., Flescher, A., Formica, M. K., Galea, S., Hennig, N., Liller, K. D., Madanat, H. N., Park, A., Rosenthal, J. E., Ying, J. (2017). Academic Public Health and the Firearm Crisis: An Agenda for Action. American journal of public health, 107(3), 365-367.
Jehan, F., Pandit, V., O'Keeffe, T., Azim, A., Jain, A., A Tai, S., Tang, A., Khan, M., Kulvatunyou, N., Gries, L., Joseph, B. (2018). The burden of firearm violence in the United States: stricter laws result in safer states. Journal of injury " violence research, 10(1), 11-16.
Vizzard, J. W. (2015). The Current And Future State Of Gun Policy In The United States, 104 J. Crim. L. " Criminology 879 https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol104/iss4/5
Wertz, J. et al. (2018). Differences Between New and Long-Standing US Gun Owners: Results from a National Survey. American Journal of Public Health. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304412
