Table of Contents
What is a Gun Violence?
According to wikipedia, Gun-related violence is violence committed with the use of a gun. Gun-related violence may or may not be considered criminal. Criminal violence includes homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, and suicide, or attempted suicide, depending on jurisdiction. It is very dangerous, it can ruin many people.Every day, 100 Americans are killed with guns and hundreds more are shot and injured. The effects of gun violence extend far beyond these casualties—gun violence shapes the lives of millions of Americans who witness it, know someone who was shot, or live in fear of the next shooting.A staggering number of people are killed with guns in the United States every year.
More than 30,000 men, women, and children are killed with guns each year in the United States.
Among high-income countries, the United States accounts for 80 percent of all gun deaths in the world, 86 percent of all women killed by guns, and 87 percent of all children younger than 14 who are killed by guns.
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Fueling this epidemic, laws on guns in the United States are inconsistent and weak – and federal, state, and local governments are not meeting their obligation under international law to protect people’s safety. There are many type of gun violence:
Gun Suicide
- Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides. The U.S. gun suicide rate is eight times that of other high-income countries.
- Access to a gun increases the risk of death by suicide by three times. Gun suicides are concentrated in states with high rates of gun ownership.
- Most people who attempt suicide do not die—unless they use a gun. Across all suicide attempts not involving a firearm, less than five percent will result in death. But for gun suicides, those statistics are flipped: approximately 85 percent of gun suicide attempts end in death.
- White men represent 74 percent of firearm suicide victims in America.
According to ‘Empirical research on the causal effects of firearm availability on the risk of suicide is consistent with the claim that firearms increase suicide risk, but this research cannot yet rule out some other explanations for observed associations between guns and suicide. There are, however, theoretical or logical arguments for believing firearms elevate suicide risk that are sufficiently compelling that individuals and policymakers might reasonably choose to assume that gun availability does increase the risk of suicide’.
According to “OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS, There are at least a dozen U.S. case–control studies in the peer-reviewed literature, all of which have found that a gun in the home is associated with an increased risk of suicide. The increase in risk is large, typically 2 to 10 times that in homes without guns, depending on the sample population (e.g., adolescents vs. older adults) and on the way in which the firearms were stored”.
The association between guns in the home and the risk of suicide is due entirely to a large increase in the risk of suicide by firearm that is not counterbalanced by a reduced risk of non firearm suicide. Moreover, the increased risk of suicide is not explained by increased psychopathological characteristics, suicidal ideation, or suicide attempts among members of gun-owning households.Among children, the majority (89%) of unintentional shooting deaths occur in the home. Most of these deaths occur when children are playing with a loaded gun in their parent’s absence.Among suicide victims requiring hospital treatment, suicide attempts with a firearm are much more deadly than attempts by jumping or drug poisoning — 90 percent die compared to 34 percent and 2 percent respectively. About 90 percent of those that survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide.
Gun Homicide
- One-third of gun deaths are homicides. The U.S. gun homicide rate is 25 times that of other high-income countries.
- Access to a gun increases the risk of death by homicide by two times.
- Gun homicides are concentrated in cities—half of all gun homicides took place in just 127 cities, which represented nearly a quarter of the U.S. population. Within these cities, gun homicides are most prevalent in racially segregated neighborhoods with high rates of poverty.
- Black Americans represent the majority of gun homicide victims. In fact, Black Americans are 10 times more likely than white Americans to die by gun homicide.
According to Scutty Suzan on “Gun homicides on the rise”, A CDC-sponsored study from 2013 found that ‘guns are used in self-defense anywhere from 500,000 to 3 million times a year,’ Pratt said. ‘That means that compared to the CDC figures for ‘firearm homicides’ in 2016, guns are being used 35 to 208 times more often to save [lives].’
For this reason, then, the new chart tells us only ‘part of the story,’ he said. ‘It would be like only focusing on deaths resulting from doctor’s negligence — which are around 250,000 per year — and ignoring the overwhelming amount of good that physicians do.’
To read more about suicide and firearms. In states with increased gun availability, death rates from gunshots for children were higher than in states with less availability. The vast majority of accidental firearm deaths among children are related to child access to firearms either self-inflicted or at the hands of another child. Studies have shown that states with child access prevention laws have a lower rate of unintentional death than states without cap laws.
Domestic violence is more likely to turn deadly with a gun in the home. An abusive partner’s access to a firearm increases the risk of homicide eight folds for women in physically abusive relationships.
Gun Assault
- Three-quarters of nonfatal gun injuries are caused by assaults.
- Black males are 15 times more likely than white males to be shot and injured in assaults involving guns.
Just a month ago a boy named Dijibi was killed by two people just because of a phone. They shot him three times and Djibi’s dad was beaten outside of a gas station by a baseball bat now he cannot do anything because he has nerve damage. He doesn’t even know that his son is dead. When people were coming to his house to pay they consolation for djibi’s family he was just staring. Djibi’s was shot by his two friends because he was buying a phone he was supposed to go to Senegal to visit his family but unfortunately, they saw his corpse. When he was dying he called his mom and told her ‘i’m dying’ it was a sad moment for his mom because he lost his son and his sister was sad about losing him his mom called the ambulance and they come and they get they operate and take two bullets out of him but the other bullet was inside of him it was too deep they ran out of time to take the bullet then he died holding his mom’s hand, his family was so sad because they lost somebody who was important for them. He was just a young man minding his business.
Children and Teens
- Firearms are the second leading cause of death for American children and teens and the first leading cause of death for Black children and teens.
- Nearly 1,700 children and teens die by gun homicide every year.For children under the age of 13, these gun homicides most frequently occur in the home and are often connected to domestic or family violence.
- Black children and teens are 14 times more likely than white children and teens of the same age to die by gun homicide.
Mass shootings that occur in schools are rare events relative to other gun violence. However, mass casualty events in schools can have a profound impact that pervades every aspect of school, family and community life.
In many cases, these schools are closed or entirely renovated in an attempt to decrease the traumatic reminders that they have become for community members. Families relocate from the towns or neighborhoods in which the shooting occurred and grief pervades the ethos of all connected. We often focus on the number of deaths and injuries of mass shootings in schools, but we should pay equal or more attention to the psychological casualties, which far exceed the physical ones.
The vast majority of school shootings are perpetrated by students who currently attend the school and sometimes by ex-students. It is rare that individuals from outside the school community perpetrate mass casualty violence.Twenty-seven students and teachers were murdered (and 2 injured) in a school mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown CT on December 14, 2012. Since then, there have been four school/ university shootings taking the lives of 41 people and injuring an additional . Firearm is the second leading cause of death of teenagers.
Domestic Violence
- Women in the U.S. are 16 times more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other high-income countries.
- In an average month, 52 American women are shot to death by an intimate partner,and many more are injured.
- Nearly one million women alive today have been shot or shot at by an intimate partner.Approximately 4.5 million American women alive today have been threatened with a gun by an intimate partner.
- Access to a gun in a domestic violence situation makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed.
- Black women are twice as likely to be fatally shot by an intimate partner compared to white women.
There are more than 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the United States, or enough for every man, woman and child to own one and still have 67 million guns left over.
Those numbers come from the latest edition of the global Small Arms Survey, a project of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
The report, which draws on official data, survey data and other measures for 230 countries, finds that global firearm ownership is heavily concentrated in the United States. In 2017, for instance, Americans made up 4 percent of the world’s population but owned about 46 percent of the entire global stock of 857 million civilian firearms.
On gun ownership, the United States stands out among the world’s wealthiest nations, with an ownership rate more than three times higher than the rate in the next-highest country, Canada. The gun ownership rate in the United States is more than six times higher than the average among similar wealthy nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
A complex and variable constellation of risk and protective factors makes persons more or less likely to use a firearm against themselves or others. For this reason, there is no single profile that can reliably predict who will use a gun in a violent act. Instead, gun violence is associated with a confluence of individual, family, school, peer, community, and sociocultural risk factors that interact over time during childhood and adolescence. Although many youths desist in aggressive and antisocial behavior during late adolescence, others are disproportionately at risk for becoming involved in or otherwise affected by gun violence. The most consistent and powerful predictor of future violence is a history of violent behavior.
According to Apa, Any account of gun violence in the United States must be able to explain both why males are perpetrators of the vast majority of gun violence and why the vast majority of males never perpetrate gun violence. Preliminary evidence suggests that changing perceptions among males of social norms about behaviors and characteristics associated with masculinity may reduce the prevalence of intimate partner and sexual violence. Such interventions need to be further tested for their potential to reduce gun violence
Policies and programs that identify and provide treatment for all persons suffering from a mental illness should be a national priority. Urgent attention must be paid to the current level of access to mental health services in the United States; such access is woefully insufficient. Additionally, it should be noted that behavioral threat assessment is becoming a standard of care for preventing violence in schools, colleges, and the workplace and against government and other public officials. Threat assessment teams gather and analyze information to assess if a person poses a threat of violence or self-harm, and if so, take steps to intervene.
Gun Control Laws
According to wikipedia, Gun control (or firearms regulation) is the set of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians.
Most countries have a restrictive firearm guiding policy, with only a few legislations being categorized as permissive. jurisdictions that regulate access to firearms typically restrict access to only certain categories of firearms and then to restrict the categories of persons who will be granted a license to have access to a firearm. In some countries such as the United States, gun control may be legislated at either a federal level or a local state level.
According to Kopel, David in “The Costs and Consequences of Gun Control” in the website “Cato Institute”, the private sale of guns between strangers is a small percentage of overall gun sales. Worse, the background check bills are written so broadly that they would turn most gun owners into criminals for innocent acts — such as letting one’s sister borrow a gun for an afternoon of target shooting.
Magazine bans are acts of futility because the extant supply is enormous. Today, magazines of up to 20 rounds for handguns, and 30 rounds for rifles, are factory standard, not high-capacity, for many of the most commonly owned firearms. These magazines are popular with law-abiding Americans for the same reason they are so popular with law enforcement: because they are often the best choice for lawful defense of one’s self and others.
Gun-control advocates have been pushing for a ban on assault weapons for more than 25 years. This proposal is essentially a political gimmick that confuses people. That is because the term is an arbitrarily defined epithet. A federal ban was in place between 1994 and 2004, but Congress declined to renew it after studies showed it had no crime-reducing impact.
President Obama points to the mass confiscation of firearms in Great Britain and Australia as models for the United States. Such confiscation would be impossible, as a practical matter, in the United States, and if it were attempted, the consequences would be catastrophic.
Policymakers can take steps to make treatment available for persons with serious mental illness, and, when necessary, to incapacitate such persons if they are proven to be at grave risk of perpetrating violent crime. Better care, treatment, and stronger laws for civil commitment (consistent with constitutional safeguards) could prevent some horrific crimes.
Finally, before adding new gun regulations to the legal code, policymakers should remember that several mass murders in the U.S. were prevented because citizens used firearms against the culprit before the police arrived on the scene.
According to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more than 36,200 deaths from firearms in the United States in 2015, with guns killing more people than motor vehicle crashes.
While mass shootings tend to garner the most media attention, on average almost 100 people die each day in the United States from gun violence, including suicides, domestic violence, accidents, and local criminal incidents.
She wanted to help find answers on the best ways to prevent these tragedies, so she decided to investigate the impact of state laws on gun violence.
‘Specifically, in the U.S. most firearm policy is made at the state level, but states do not exist in a vacuum, and firearms can cross state lines, just like any other consumer good,’ Kaufman told CBS News. ‘No one had really investigated what this means for states with different degrees of firearm restriction in place.’
The first was a state policy score based on the strength of its firearm laws. The laws the researchers focused on include:
- Laws mandating strict licensing requirements or increased law enforcement oversight of gun dealers.
- Laws requiring background checks for private sales of firearms, including gun show sales.
- Laws that require individuals to obtain licenses to purchase or own firearms.
- Regulations setting minimum design standards for firearms, to limit the availability of inexpensive handguns.
- Laws restricting multiple purchases of guns, designed to prevent ‘straw purchasers’ from buying multiple weapons on behalf of someone who cannot legally purchase a firearm.
- Laws requiring owners to report loss or theft of a firearm.
The researchers also gave each county an interstate policy score, where a higher score meant stricter laws in nearby states. This is important because firearms can be moved so easily across state lines, presenting a challenge to states that have stronger policies in place. Counties were then divided into low, medium, and high scores.
Using statistical models to compare groups of counties, the researchers found strong firearm laws in a state were associated with lower rates of firearm homicide. Conversely, counties in states with weak gun laws had the highest rates of firearm homicide.
They also discovered that counties in states with weaker gun laws had lower rates of firearm homicide when surrounding states had strong gun laws. This suggests that when a state strengthens its firearms laws, both that state and its neighbors could see protective benefits.
‘We thought that because guns can cross state lines, counties in states with restrictive laws might have higher homicide rates if they were near other states with more lenient laws,’ Kaufman said. ‘But what we found was somewhat the opposite. Counties in states with weak laws had fewer deaths than expected when surrounding state laws were strong.
‘We can’t say what causes this relationship,’ she continued, ‘but it is encouraging to think that these policies might have benefits that extend across state lines — a bit of a halo effect.’
Few things you can do right now to help stop gun violence:
- Join a local gun violence prevention organization. Visit States United to Prevent Gun Violence, the national umbrella organization for state gun violence prevention organizations to find a group in your state
- Host your very own evening of information and action to educate your friends and community about gun violence while helping support the Violence Policy Center.
- Reduce easy access to dangerous weapons.
- Opposition to the sale of what it classifies as assault weapons to private citizens.
- Support for ‘counter marketing’, a strategy intended to force changes in gun industry’s marketing and distribution practices.
- Opposition to removing the duty to retreat in self-defense law (i.e., stand your ground laws).
- Support for stricter mental health screening for firearm purchases.
- Support for the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence(Ed Fund) was founded in 1978 as a 501(c)(3) affiliate organization of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. The Ed Fund develops and implements evidence-based policy advocacy campaigns that reduce gun death and injury.
The Ed Fund prides itself on developing innovative strategies to move the gun violence prevention movement forward. We have pioneered new approaches to address the intersection between mental illness and gun violence; promoted 21st century crime-solving technologies like microstamping; and encouraged municipal officials to use their ‘buyer power’ as procurers of firearms for law enforcement to force the gun industry to engage in more responsible business practices.
Conclusion
The government supposed to take control about the gun before it got out the hand like I said gun is violence dangerous and you don’t know when it’s going to come in your way.
In my community most of the people die everyday because of a gun so it’s dangerous it take out people life. Most of the family lost their love one and family member because of it. I hope people will be more careful around guns.
