stateofconversation Essays - Gun Politics, Weapons, Firearms

Guns Guns have been a major part of America ever since its beginning. Every citizen has the right to "bear arms", a concept that was one of the founding principles of the United States. There have been issues involving firearms that coincided with a rise in mass shootings, especially at schools, colleges, and religious venues. Because of these shootings, the public have blamed the shootings on gun laws being too lenient, but the problem is more complex than that. In my research I aim to explore and answer the questions of "will gun restrictions solve the problem of mass shootings in the United States?"When researching this topic, I searched through many databases and resources, such as the EBSCOhost Academic Search Complete database, Google scholar, and google searches of gun laws. The most helpful resource was the Google searches and Google scholar. Those were the resources I used that provided different viewpoints and different perspectives that I needed for this project. There wer e many articles that not only enriched my knowledge about gun laws, but also helped me investigate the different relationships between gun violence and gun laws that was presented to me. I did encounter some difficulty in finding many alternative viewpoints that would justify why these tragedies happen. As I looked closely I found the most information for three different perspectives and viewpoints. The most common view is that if guns were restricted more than the shootings would be less common, the second viewpoint is that gun restrictions will not have a significant impact on the shootings, and the last viewpoint is that guns are not even the problem behind these unfortunate events .Like I stated the most prevalent position in the articles is that guns need to be restricted more. In one article I was reading, it showing that where there were more access to guns, there was a link to more mass shootings and where there was also a link between weak gun laws and mass shootings. It is stated that "A 10 unit increase in the permissiveness of state gun laws was associated with an approximately 9 percent higher rate of mass shootings after adjusting key factors," and "A 10 percent increase in gun ownership was associated with an approximately 35 percent higher rate of mass shootings after adjusting for key factors." (Douglas). This shows that there is a direct link between the amount of guns available and the strength of the guns laws to mass shootings with the states with weak gun laws having the stronger correlation which is still growing. It is also noted in the article that the researchers while the states with more restrictive laws shootings are decreasing even less compared to the states with more lenient laws. In fact, mass shootings are increasing in states with weaker laws. This is interesting when combined with the fact that the United States not only has the highest level of gun ownership among its citizens when compared to the rest of the world, but it also has the weakest overall gun laws compared to the rest of the world. The research is showing that the high gun ownership and weak oversight is the main culprit over the epidemic of mass shootings in the Untied States (Douglas). Other counties that are civilized and developed at the least require one or multiple background checks, specific training, and many licensing requirements while even a background check in the United States is not a total requirement for a gun purchase. Even if a state has enforced stricter rules, a person can simply cross state lines to buy a gun with looser rules. When talking about the guns in the United States, there are 120.5 guns per every 100 residents in the United States, the world leader. The second leading nation in the world, Yemen, has 52.8 guns per 100 residents. This also leads to the United States leading the world in homicide rates as well. The US has about six times the amount of killings in which a firearm was used than Canada, seven tim es higher than Sweden, and nearly sixteen times that of Germany (Douglas). Countries with stricter and better enforced gun laws. Even though if there is