Gun Control in the USA

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Gun Control in the United States

Stephen Clement and Madison Boyd

In the United States, there are 88.8 guns per every 100 people, in other words 270,000,000 guns, making it the highest total and per capita number in the world. 22% of Americans own one or more guns, 35% being men and 12% being women.

Americans favoring gun culture comes from its colonial history and the Second Amendment, which states: "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 undeniable right to keep firearms goes hand-in-hand with the other rights granted to American citizens within the Bill of Rights, and should be treated similarly to rights of speech, religion, and assembly, among others, which are almost sacredly protected from an overbearing government.

Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 6,850 times a day. Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense.This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz published a study back in 1995 in which they analyzed the usage of guns and found that gun use accounted more for defensive gun use than it did for criminal activity. Each year, 205,000 women use a firearm to defend themselves against potential rapists and criminals.

There are more mass shootings in the United States than in any other country in the world.

Mass killings in the United States are most often carried out with guns, usually handguns, most of them obtained legally. According to the Gun Violence Archive, which compiles data from shooting incidents, a “mass shooting” is any incident in which a gunman: shoots or kills four or more people in the same general time and location. By this definition, there have been 307 mass shooting from January 1st to November 5th, which averages about 7 mass shootings in a week.

Australia, which has a similar frontier history to that of the United States, enacted gun control following the horrific Port Arthur Massacre, in which a deranged man murdered 35 town residents and wounded 23 more. The restrictions were enacted by a conservative Prime Minister and resulted in a 59% drop in gun-related homicides. Further, recent studies reveal that “higher gun ownership rates were correlated with higher homicide rates, both within the U.S. and amongst different high-income countries."

There were 464,033 total gun deaths between 1999 and 2013: 270,237 suicides (58.2% of total deaths); 174,773 homicides; and 9,983 unintentional deaths. Guns were the leading cause of death by homicide (66.6% of all homicides) and by suicide (52.2% of all suicides). The involvement of guns within these figures has brought gun ownership to the forefront of arguments over violence and national security.

Since its founding, the United States has immersed itself in gun culture. In 2016, there were 14.84 million paid hunting license holders within the United States. States hold the sovereignty and power in determining local gun laws and can control and profit from gun culture. The gross cost of hunting licenses in the United States amounted to $821 million in 2015. Not only are the amounts of guns and licenses on the rise, but recreational shooting ranges and competitions as well. Over 1,000 shooting ranges exist within the southeastern region of the United States alone, and this figure is projected to grow across the nation over the next ten years.