Exploring the Causes of Gun Violence

Section one: Introduction

            When one of my close friends told me that her son had died from a violent incident involving firearms just about two years ago, my heart sank deeply in depression. I had known the little boy very well and was quite fond of him myself. As I recall her narration of the incident while she was crying on the phone, I remember that she told me that the child was just walking along a street when he encountered a couple of teenagers who were in a fight. Without even the child knowing what was happening, one of the teenagers drew a gun and fired wildly. A stray bullet hit my friend’s boy in the back as he was running away and the child died before he could be brought to a hospital. Since that time, I have developed an extreme loathing for the level of gun violence that permeates in our American society. When I read the morning paper or listen to the evening news, there is almost always some sort of violence happening in some part of the country that is being reported. This endless cycle of victims and victimizers seems to have become a part of our very culture and I find this thought truly disturbing. Naturally, my reaction to government legislation that could tighten our gun control laws have always been positive, and I have read time and again how democrats continue to argue the benefits of implementing stricter gun control laws. However, although I am very interested in keeping our streets and our children safe from guns I have to admit that I never stopped to think whether or not simply placing stricter gun control laws would solve our gun violence problems.

Therefore, this assignment gives me the opportunity to explore various sources of information in order for me to figure out just where our gun violence problems come from. I believe that having a full understanding about what the main cause of gun violence is would be the first step to identifying clearly what needs to be done in order to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe from gun violence. To this end, I plan to search the internet for research findings about the causes of gun violence in the country as well as developments on legislation concerning gun control. I also intend to conduct interviews with individuals representing the opposite sides of the gun control fence, an advocate for stricter laws on acquiring firearms and a member of organization that are against such legislature such as the National Rifle Association. From the synthesis of these various sources of information I believe that I will be able to make a reliable conclusion regarding what has created such a culture of gun violence in the United States. It is my intention for this research to serve as an eye opener for those who are not yet aware of the causes of this major threat to societal peace. Through the findings of my work I hope that people would be better guided in making decisions that are truly anti-gun violence.

Section two: The Search

A brief search using popular engines revealed that there are a lot of sources on the web about gun control and gun violence. One website called GunCite, contains statistics on various details about how guns affect everyday society. It contains answers to basic statistics such as how much gun violence does the country experience annually and how many times a year are guns noted to have been used defensively by law-abiding gun owners. Further searching led me to a book called “The Seven Myths of Gun Control” by Richard Poe. Although I found that this book was unavailable to me from my immediate sources, a more extensive web search revealed that much of the concepts discussed by Poe in his book are available online. The book as based on the material that I gathered online gives a very different perspective about gun violence that takes the reader out of the box of simply considering tightening gun control laws. Poe presents evidences that take the blame of gun violence away from the mere intrinsic right to own a gun and defend oneself with it that is described as a protected right by the Second Amendment. I was also able to find a news and information website that presents the latest updates about gun control laws in the United States up until recent events which occurred just last June 2008.

            However, the greatest challenge in gathering information was securing the two interviews that I had sought to get while I was planning my research. However for the stricter gun control advocate, the task of finding someone was relatively easier since I was acquainted with someone who belonged to a civil society group that advocated against guns. She was able to point me to the right direction and acquaint me with a friend of hers who was very knowledgeable about the subject of gun violence and its relationship to gun control. Although he asked for his identity not to be disclosed, he agreed and even insisted that I include in my write-up that he was a civil rights lawyer and that that makes him very familiar with the common arguments that anti-gun control groups throw about the Second Amendment and told me that such arguments “did not hold so much water as they are presented to.” As for the member of the NRA, I was able to get contact details of three of their members at the start of my search but none of the three that I got replied to my messages. I also visited their website and I filled out a contact form informing them of my intentions to ask one of their members for an interview but they also never replied. As a last resort, I went to an online chat room looking for someone to interview. Luckily, I was able to get acquainted with an actual member of the NRA through chat. What was even more fortunate was that we actually lived in the same area and so we were actually able to meet in person and conduct the interview in that manner. This interviewee asked me to refer to him in my writings as “Peter.” Peter was a very cordial individual who was very adamant about people’s rights to own guns in order to be able to protect themselves. He has many interesting insights about the matter which seemed very logical. Before we parted, he urged me to watch the film “Bowling for Columbine” as he said that it “contained most of the things” that I was looking for in my paper. And so I rented the video from our local shop and watched it at home a another source. True enough, Michael Moore’s documentary did contain many of the things that I was looking for. It even had a synthesis of why there was so much gun violence in our country.

Section three: What I had discovered

            Based on my readings, it seems that gun control legislators have been quite active over the last decades. All over the country there are  “federal, state and even local legislation” (NB) relating to the sale, use, and handling of firearms by civilian citizens. Although the last 30 years of American history have seen a more or less constant rate of gun ownership, several laws that have been enacted on state and national levels before and during that period have successfully prevented felons from obtaining firearms (NB). The first of these initiatives was enacted by Congress in 1934 (NB). The bill regulated the sale of fully automatic firearms such as machine guns (NB). This was followed four years later by a federal law requiring gun selling individuals and establishments to be licensed and disallowing any person who has been previously convicted of violent felonies from purchasing firearms (NB). Laws such as these continued to be legislated during the late sixties and more requirements for gun shop licensing were added as well as restrictions on who are the only ones eligible to purchase firearms. In various states, laws were legislated that highly limited the possibility of guns falling on the hands of a minor (NB). There were also plenty of laws that banned more and more high-power weapons such as semi-automatic assault rifles and bullets that could pierce body armor (NB). The “most comprehensive effort at national gun control” (NB) is known as the Brady Bill which was passed in Congress in 1994. This bill “imposed a five day waiting period” for handgun buyers and required background checks of all purchasers to be conducted by local law enforcement authorities. However, some provisions of this bill such as the background check was later deemed as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the bill had since been amended to have gun purchasers to simply undergo an electronic background check that gives results instantly, thereby also eliminating the 5-day waiting period (NB). While only a recorded average of 3% of all gun applications are denied, these rejections are highly relevant when the statistics on gun violence throughout these years of legislation are viewed. From the 1980s to the present, deaths due to gun violence have decreased significantly (NB). For me, this implies that the current laws are doing their part in keeping guns off the hands of criminals who would use them to harm other people. Meanwhile, in my interview with the gun control advocate, he explained that all of the laws that have so far been passed on gun control had various loopholes that made them very ineffective. For example, he stated that while there are lots of laws on the regulation of the sale of guns, these laws do not prevent individuals with clean records from buying guns and giving it to another person who does not have such a clean record. He explained that this was how some gangs operated, by having more respectable members of their group purchase their guns for them. In our interview, I felt that what the gun control advocate believed was the appropriate direction for society to take would be to one that merely treated guns as a hunting tool. While this is a very ideal stance, I do not believe that it is a practical one. I do believe that gun also have significant value as a tool for self-defense and further readings confirmed that particular belief. According to a study conducted by Dr. Gary Kleck, law abiding citizens use guns for self-defense about 2 million times a year (GunCite). This statistics alone proves how useful guns are at providing protection for people’s homes. From the same website, it was revealed that guns were also a major deterrence to certain crimes such as burglary. One common concern of burglars which was found was to avoid getting shot during their operations and so they tend to avoid homes that have guns. During my interview with the NRA member, he explained that a majority of guns that are used to perpetrate crimes were acquired from the black market anyway. This means that regardless of the amount of gun control enforced on law abiding citizens, criminals who would wish to acquire firearms may simply do so by buying guns from less legitimate sources as they have always done. These discoveries led me to the realization that gun control laws should not be our only concern when it comes to considering how best to keep safe our families from gun violence. In fact, it is likely the case that the current gun control laws are already adequate and that further limiting gun ownership would already lead to dangerous repercussions for our citizens. Peter, the NRA member narrated to me several actual accounts of guns saving people from burglars , muggers, and rapists. In one of his narrations, he told me that another NRA member who always carried her pistol with her found that it saved her life when she was attacked one night by a serial rapist. Although she was not even able to shoot the rapist, she was able to pull her gun out in time so the rapist simply ran away. She reported the incident immediately after and the authorities caught the man who was later revealed to have already raped three women, none of which carried any firearms with them. Peter also talked about another incident which ended tragically because of a gun control law.  When the Brady bill still required a three day waiting period, a lady friend of his was shot in her own house by a burglar just 2 days after she had purchased a gun. This meant that because of the Brady bill, she had to wait 3 days and therefore did not have her gun yet at the time of the violent incident that occurred in her own home. I immediately related this to the last myth that Richard Poe talked about in his book which was that “reasonable gun-control measures are no threat to law-abiding gun owners.” Obviously for Peter’s lady friend, the Brady bill at that time cost her dearly. Upon Peter’s suggestion, I watched Michael Moore’s documentary about gun control and was surprised at the things that I discovered. The documentary revealed that while gun control laws in the United States are just as extensive as those in Britain, Japan, and other first world countries, it is America that experiences the most number of gun violence incidents. Moore confirms my previous assessment that gun control laws have little to do with this prevalence and presents another plausible reason: Popular Media. Moore explained in the documentary that media has always been known to depict violence in its offerings because this is what ratings call for. American media tends to prioritize violent incidents even in the news which is quite contrary to countries that experience less incidents of gun violence such as neighboring Canada.

            Therefore, gun control laws are not the only factors that affect the level of gun violence currently prevalent in the American society. What is a much graver concern are guns that are acquired outside of the regulation of the law. People who wish to protect their homes and loved ones from gun violence should advocate for tighter police movements against illegal gun sellers while considering that current gun control laws are already adequate to ensure that felons are highly restricted from acquiring guns legally. Those that advocate for stricter gun control should also consider the rights of individuals who wish to protect themselves by owning and knowing how to use guns themselves. Lastly, the role of media in promoting “a culture of fear” (Moore) in the American public through the prioritization of violence in their content should be considered.

Works Cited

GunCite. Gun Control Statistics. June 29, 2008. July 9, 2008. <http://www.guncite.com/>

Moore, Michael. Bowling for Columbine. MGM, 2002.

News Batch. Gun Control Policy Issues. June 2008. July 9, 2008. <http://www.newsbatch.com/guncontrol.htm>

Poe, Richard. Seven Myths of Gun Control. January 17, 2000. July 8, 2008. <http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/2nd_Amend/seven_myths_of_gun_control.htm>

Anonymous interview with gun control advocate.

Anonymous interview with NRA member, “Peter”.