...Guns and Violent Crime “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” (The Charters of Freedom, n.d.). The National Rifle Association (NRA) is widely recognized as America’s foremost defender of the Second Amendment. Wayne LaPierre executive vice president and CEO of the NRA made the statement, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” (LaPierre, 2012, p.5). Is LaPierre correct? Do more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens reduce violent crimes? Moms Demand Action (MDA) states that stronger and more sensible gun laws are needed to protect children, and loved ones (MDA, n.d.). There are only eight states left that are considered rights restricted or very limited issue by the NRA in issuing concealed carry weapon (CCW) permits (NRA, n.d.). Florida alone issued 251,882 CCW permits in one year (Florida Departments of Agriculture and Consumer Services, 2014). The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) performed over sixteen million background checks for the purchase of a firearm in 2011 (Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 2011, p.8). Record numbers of law-abiding citizens are choosing to get concealed carry permits than ever before, and gun sales have reached an all-time high. Violent crimes, however, have almost steadily declined over the last 19 years (FBI, 2012). Carrying a Firearm Law-abiding citizens of...
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...There were close to 160 homicides in St. Louis within this year and the cities homicide rate is only growing (Lippmann, 2017). According to St. Louis, Missouri Police Departments 2017 UCR Homicide Analysis, reported on November 6, 2017, the homicide number has gone up to 172 and 162 of them involved a firearm (St. Louis Police Department, 2017). The increase of guns owned by young men are beyond control in St Louis (Eckholm, 2015). Missouri is a pro-gun state and gun owners can carry without a permit (Ekcholm, 2015). This not only raises the issue of who in the city are gun owners but how many individuals who are not supposed to have firearms have firearms. Gun-related deaths are on the rise and will only increase from this point on. For the...
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...firearms represents danger, violence, and linked together with evil. I’m interested in gun laws and why people always think that using guns are wrong, so I chose the topic “Law and Criminality”, I’m also interested in how can laws control over criminality and why people decide to be criminals. My main research question is “How do gun laws affect crime rates in a country?”. I chose this as a main research question is because guns are dangerous and I think that the countries that are illegal to guns shouldn't be illegal, so I have to investigate/discover more in this topic to know why some countries allow...
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...merica which has over 320 million people, it is important to note that homicide crimes that are gun related caused by Americans who legally own a gun involved in the crime is relatively very low and arguably nonexistent , most of these crimes are perpetuated by individuals that purchased firearms illegally. Instead of penalizing law-abiding gun owners, who use their firearms to save thousands of people every year, lawmakers should work to reduce crimes and gun related homicides by creating harsher penalties for homicides and gun related violence. CASE STUDY 3 THE PHENOMENOM OF HOMICIDES IN BIG CITIES The increase in homicides in the United States of America big cities is alarming and quite unprecedented. According to the Police and other law enforcement it is concentrated more in a few cities with large African-American populations. According to different sources , homicides in the United States increased by 16.8 percent in 2014 , based on these 10 cities accounted for two-thirds of this increase, and together they experienced a 33.3% jump in homicide. The three most important, plausible explanations of the homicide rise in the...
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...I chose to look at an article relating to gun crimes and the cause and affect they have on gun ownership. The article takes several things into consideration such as gun types like rifle, shotgun, or handgun, and also whether the owning of a gun increases the related crime. The writer also looked at several different crimes including murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and vehicle thefts (Southwick Jr., L. (1997). By looking at the different crimes and the guns used to commit these crimes the researcher was abe to gather a positive or negative relationship between gun ownership and the time the crime was committed. Another article which I looked at examines the events of guns used in intimate relationship assaults....
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...This week lecture discussed the use of guns and drugs, in regards to violence and crime. To begin with, gun are the immediate cause of about 40,000 U.S. deaths annually, in the event of injury however, they are less likely to occur if a gun is being used, compared to the using a knife since they are more lethal. For every gun homicide there are 6 gun crime victims who are injured and many more who are threatened. Consequently, suicide rates are higher in homes where an individual owns a gun. That being said, 49% of households own a gun and there is about 200 million guns in circulation. Though, the percentage of households with a gun has not increased, the number of guns in private hands has however grown. What this means is that individuals...
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...Most statistics point to where there are more guns there is less crime. Other people would argue that there is more crime in areas that allow guns. The facts and statistics show differently. Research shows that 98.4% of mass shooting between 1950 and July of 2016 have happened in gun-free zones (Analysis of Recent Mass Shootings). This percentage shows that almost all of the mass shootings from 1950 to 2016 have happened in gun-free zones such as schools, childcare facilities, state and national parks, and many other places that prohibit guns. It is safe to assume that gun free-zones will always be a target for criminals. As the number of guns in America increased, violence decreased. Mark Perry, who is a professor of economics and finance...
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...Over the years there has been a significant decrease chance in which criminals will attack someone who is armed. From a 1997 study, " robbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all" It was also noted that people who draw out their guns for self-defense often make the criminal retreat from crime. Without gun control how would someone defend themselves from a criminal in a time of need. Having a gun was meant for this use; protecting yourself. Armed citizens can help reduce crime because according to John Lott,gun laws helped reduce "homicides by 8.5%, aggravated assaults by 7%, rapes by...
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...Guns and crime. Do these two go hand in hand? This is a question many citizens and lawmakers have been asking themselves over the past couple of years. The modern discussion of gun control has become a hot topic in both the social, and political arena for years. In particular, events at Columbine, Sadie Hook, and Virginia Tech, are ruling the social pressure for political gun reform. Guns are powerful weapons. They have the ability to kill, destroy, and harm whomever/whatever the bullet comes in contact with. Today, as sad as it is, it feels as if mass shootings are becoming more and more prevalent. Why is gun control such a hot debate? Perhaps it has to do with the frequency of murders in our society. Approximately 5 Americans per 100,000...
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...(Terry) Professor Auli Ek Writing 2 08/24/2015 More or Less: The Debate on Gun Control How can we reduce the crime rate? A good solution might be to have more guns! This is suggested by John Lott, who is an economist as well as political commentator. However, Garen Wintemute, the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, emphasized the negative effect of guns. On one hand, Wintemute believed that less guns lead to less violent crimes. On the other hand, Lott denied the direct relationship between crime rate and guns’ number and proposed that more concealed-handguns can actually deter crime. A common criticism of guns is that they stimulate more violent crime and this is what Wintemute (2004) tried to prove in his article, “Gun Control Laws Can Reduce Violent Crime” (p. 75). He (2004) explained that “firearms modify the consequences of crime” (p. 75). In other words, criminals find it easier to commit and complete crimes when they have guns. Wintemute (2004) took the example of robbery which is facilitated by guns and constituted of 44 percent of all violent crimes (p 75). With the guns, robbers will more likely venture “against [the] ‘harder’ targets” (Wintemute, 2004, p. 75). To emphasize how important guns are in crimes, Wintemute (2004) listed the data of Uniform Crime Reports, according to which the possibility that assaults lead to fatality by guns is 4.6 times of the possibility that assaults stimulate death by other weapons...
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...Gun Control Gun control is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as the regulation of selling, owning, and use of guns. Gun control has been a very controversial topic on Capitol Hill for a long time. Although, within more recent decades gun control has been a more heated topic of discussion. This is due to higher gun related death rates and an uprise of mass killings such as the Columbine highschool massacre which left 23 injured and 15 killed (CNN Library) and the recent Las Vegas shooting which left 58 killed and nearly 500 injured (Gomez and White). Gun control activist heavily support the controlling of firearms while Gun rights activist oppose heavy regulation. Gun control activist argue arms limitation is the answer and believe...
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...Tougher gun control will not decrease the US violent crime rate It is true that guns have caused many deaths and a lot of criminal violence in the United States, tougher gun control will not decrease the US violent crime rate, but getting a real solution to crimes caused by guns will be very expensive and hard to do. So the government decides to win future votes by creating more gun control. There is no country in the world that can say that after passing stricter firearms laws that it helped reduce crime. The National Rifle Association claims guns do not kill only the people kill, but the people who want guns controlled do not believe if you carry a gun that reduces the chance of a crime being committed against you. If you think about it the NRA might be correct in this assessment. You see it is not the gun that is doing the killing, it is not the knife that kills,or the the car that kills,or a pair of scissors that kills, or a bomb that kills, what is doing the killing in the human being who is in control of these items. People are what are controlling all of these items some will say. If we do not have control over our own body than we will not have control over any kind of weapon that we have access to. I decided to write on this topic before this week events that happened. You expect to wake up to another shooting in the news but one day this week it was different. We awake to fourteen people stabbed on college campus in Houston. ...
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...Running head: FIREARMS IN AMERICA Firearms in America Joyce W. Davis Oklahoma Wesleyan University Abstract The prevalence of guns in the United States and the frequency with which they are commit crimes has made gun control a much discussed and contentious issue. There are an estimated 200 to 250 million firearms in America, and of these, about a third are handguns. According to health researcher, Etienne Krug the homicide rate in the United States is six times higher than that of other developed nations. Though it varies from year to year, according to the FBI, in general guns are in about 70 percent of homicides. In 2000, for example, 52 percent of homicides were committed with handguns, and 19 percent were committed with other guns. The simple fact is that murder and other crimes committed with firearms occur more frequently, where gun control laws are least stringent. Firearms in America There is probably never a time in America history when guns were less popular in the culture. People fed up. Half the households in America are armed. Thirty-eight thousand Americas die from gunshots every year. A recent survey Yankelovich Partners found that 70 percent of Americans favor stricter gun-control laws. Yet, even in the face of lifelong anti-handgun convictions, more women than ever seem to be taking up guns. The Gainesville murder, the Los Angeles riots, the Florida Tourist killings, the California kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas—every time...
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...power. ” (Gun Rights FAQ). As citizens of this country it is important the rights that the people have and their real history and meaning behind the rights. Stricter gun laws is negative because fewer people will own guns, which means people will have a hard time protecting themselves and will have fewer privileges hunting. Stricter gun laws may be a good idea but only if we had a low rate of crime and criminals wouldn’t be able to get their hands on any firearms (Pratt Web). If criminals were not so smart and there was no way criminal could be able to get a gun then the stricter gun laws would and could possibly work. Connecticut...
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...Guns do not kill people. People kill people. The person is the one who pulls the trigger, killing someone. A gun cannot kill a person by itself. Some people disagree, and because of this, there is an issue on gun control, whether people should freely possess them or not. The debate is between making gun laws more or less strict, letting people wield them freely or not.Though the results of laws being less strict are far more acceptable than laws being more strict. Some reasons include that when guns are removed, crime increases, possessing a firearm can help with self defense, and when guns are taken out, gun violence still exists. Primarily, removing guns causes more crimes. Samuel Francis, contributor of Gun Control: Opposing Viewpoints,...
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