Gun Violence in The United States and My Solutions to This Problem

People nationwide are debating about ways to reduce gun violence. Guns have always been a part of America. In the beginning, guns were a key part of survival. They were needed to kill animals for food and for protection. However, in modern times, guns have gone from tools of need to novelty toys. Generally, people own guns in this century for sport or for protection. The simplicity of a gun and the lack of effort it requires owning one has lured many people to acquire a gun, and now there are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States. This event leads to the reality of our modern culture. As a machine that can kill many people very quickly, a vast amount of violence is naturally going to result from its existence.

For example, “On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza, a 20 year old with Asperger’s syndrome, shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut . According to the final report by the state attorney’s office he got in the school at 9:30 AM in the morning and shot the principal and the school’s psychologist that went out to the hallway to check loud bangs they heard. He then moved on to classrooms where innocent children were learning and started shooting and by 9:40 AM, just ten minutes later, he took the lives of twenty six people, including twenty children age twelve and below and six adults before taking his own life”. Also, “Oct. 1, 2017: Stephen Paddock opened fire on an outdoor music festival on the Las Vegas Strip from the 32nd floor of a hotel-casino, killing 58 people and wounding more than 500. SWAT teams with explosives then stormed his room and found he had killed himself and Oct. 27, 2018: Robert Bowers is accused of opening fire at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during Shabbat morning services, killing 11 and injuring others. It’s the deadliest attack on Jews in the U.S. in history.” The list goes on and on and just keeps growing by the day. Gun violence has been and continues to be one of the major issues in the United States.

The increasing rate of gun violence is a very significant problem in the United States. Loopholes in the gun control laws are allowing prohibited people to access of firearms easily. As the country with the largest stockpile of privately owned firearms, we aren’t doing much to prevent them from falling on the wrong hands. According to The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act “convicted felons, drug users and abusers, and mentally ill people are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms”. However, convicted criminals and mentally ill people are acquiring firearms without any difficulty and are using them for the wrong reasons because of weak laws that regulate the sale of firearms. Firearm sales at gun shows are not regulated by the FBI and buyers are not required to go through any kind of background checks at the time of purchase. According to a report by the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program titled “Inside Gun Shows: What Goes on When Everybody Thinks Nobody’s Watching”, more than 40% of gun sales occur privately without regulation. That is very scary and something needs to be done to fix this.

My first step to reduce gun violence is having permitted to purchase laws. These laws will require anyone interested in purchasing firearms to apply to law-enforcement agencies first. It will take about a month to get a full background check on the individual interested in purchasing a firearm. The additional time given for background checks leads to better prevention of mentally ill and people with criminal backgrounds getting ahold of firearms. Also, it may reduce impulsive gun purchases. My next step is safe storage practices. Unloading guns when storing them; use of lockboxes, trigger locks, cable locks; and other safe storage practices make it less likely that children or adolescents could access guns. Safely storing firearms also leads to a reduction in theft of firearms which in most cases end up on the black market, which is where criminals and the mentally ill can get them. My next step is red flag laws. “These regulations allow law enforcement agencies or a person’s family members who notice the person shows “red flags”— that the individual may pose a threat to themselves or others — to seek a court order to seize the person’s firearms temporarily”(2018). Lastly, ban all firearms besides handguns and shotguns. In my opinion, there is no need for a person to own an assault weapon and those are the main guns used in mass shootings, so banning everything but handguns and shotguns will reduce the effects of the shootings.

Controlling firearms is just part of the solution to gun violence. We need to understand why certain individuals decide to shoot up a school, or other places and once we figure that out we can get the people that have those urges the help they need to prevent any more mass shootings from occurring again. We already have a general idea of why people commit crime. People commit these crimes due to the routine activities theory which states, a crime occurs if there is a motivated offender, suitable target, and lack of guardianship. Also crime occurs because of strain theory which states that stress leads to crime and nowadays people are stressing more than ever thus leading to an increase in violent crime such as shootings. So we need to tackle this issue psychologically.

In conclusion, I do not agree with the way gun violence is being handled here in the United States, and that something needs to be done as soon as possible. My solutions are: Permit to purchase firearm laws need to be established, safely storing your firearms, red flag laws need to be established, all firearms should be banned excluding handguns and shotguns, and designating more resources to understanding why people commit gun violence. Therefore, there is no easy solution to gun violence and my solution is a fantastic start. Gun violence has been and continues to be one in each and each and every of the most quintessential troubles in yank. The U.S. has the very exceptional cost of gun possession internal the world and subsequently the very magnificent fee of gun violence and fatalities in distinction to choice developed countries.

Throughout the years gun violence has brought on many families to go via ache and suffering. I agree with that if we all got here together to an agreement to exchange gun laws and compromise, there would be much less gun violence, much less loss of innocent lives of each adults and children. Gun violence in America has been a brilliant trouble to society.

Works Cited

1. Alcorn, T., & Jansen, B. (2018). A national-level database of mass shootings in the United States, 1966-2017. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 088626051877329.
2. Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. (2021). The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. https://www.bradyunited.org/.
3. Cook, P. J., & Ludwig, J. (2019). Universal background checks and gun violence: Evidence from California. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 38(1), 63-80.
4. Giffords Law Center. (2021). Giffords Law Center. https://giffords.org/.
5. Hemenway, D., & Solnick, S. J. (2015). The epidemiology of self-defense gun use: Evidence from the National Crime Victimization Surveys 2007-2011. Preventive Medicine, 79, 22-27.
6. Koper, C. S., & Woods, D. J. (2019). The effects of gun shows on gun-related deaths: Evidence from California and Texas. Journal of Urban Health, 96(1), 49-58.
7. Krouse, W. J. (2012). Gun control legislation. Congressional Research Service.
8. Rosenfeld, R., & Fornango, R. (2014). The impact of concealed carry laws (CCWs) on violent crime: Evidence from county-level panel data in the United States. Journal of Law and Economics, 57(2), 351-382.
9. Siegel, M., & Rothman, E. F. (2016). Firearm ownership and suicide rates among US men and women, 1981-2013. American Journal of Public Health, 106(7), 1316-1322.
10. Swanson, J. W., & McGinty, E. E. (2018). Reducing gun violence in America: Evidence for change. JHU Press.