Gun Control Policy in The United States

In the absence of effective gun control measures, Americans citizens have access to very deadly weapons that are a threat to the society. Simple weapons such as the pistol are enough for self-protection. Moreover, simple armaments cannot result to the death of large numbers of individuals as compared to semi-automatic and automatic weapons. In 1994, the U.S government banned the sale of the AR-5-style gun and other assault weapons to the public after it was used in a school shooting in Florida and resulted to the death of many students (Winkler and Adam, 2011). The assault weapons ban lapsed in 2004 but was re-introduced in 2017 after 26 individuals were killed at a Texas’ church by a shooter using an assault rifle. Even after the re-introduction of the assault weapons bans it has not yet been fully implemented since still has access to such weapons. Effective implementation of the assault weapons ban will ensure that the public does not have access to deadly weapons that can results to a high number of casualties when used to perpetrate gun violence (Bingham and Amy, 2017).

Likewise, lack of effective gun control measures causes the U.S government to incur a lot of costs that are linked to gun violence. According to Spitzer and Robert (2012), gun violence cost each American citizen 564dollars in 2010. In the same year, gun violence cost the U.S government 5.5billion dollars in lost tax revenue, 4.1billion dollars in Medicaid and Medicare costs and 4.7billion dollars in litigation costs (Spitzer and Robert, 2012). Lack of effective gun control measures will only cause the government to continue using a lot of its finances on issues brought about by gun violence. Effective gun control measures will reduce cases of gun violence in the country hence, reducing the finances the government spends on the problem. Increased cases of gun violence in the country have resulted to decline in property costs as well. According to Winkler and Adam (2011), increased gun violence cases have in various neighborhoods has caused property values to reduce by 12.5%.

Gun control in the United States is necessary for combating increased cases of gun violence. An example of gun control measure that can be applied by the U.S government to combat gun violence is mental and background screening of gun buyers. Moreover, effective gun control will ensure that appropriate guns are sold to the public. To ensure that proper guns are sold to the public, the government should effectively implement the assault weapons ban that limits access of the people to assault rifles.