周冬暖 0111119074
American gun control
President Barack Obama has made enhancing gun control one of his priorities last year, and unveiled a plan to address gun violence in the United States, focusing on expanding background checks and a partial assault weapons ban. The tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally is deeply rooted in American history. The vulnerability to violent crime and the broad opposition to civilian handgun ownership has triggered a parading debate in the nation, and hereto the U.S remains divided over passing stricter gun control laws.
On December 14,2012, 20 children and six adult staff members were shot dead in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a single person, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, which was the second deadliest mass murder at a U,S elementary school. The incident spawned considerate nationwide debate about stricter gun control. According to a Gallup poll in 2000, about half of Americans believed that the law covering the sales of firearms should be strengthened and half maintain that the law should be the same or less strict.
About a year have passed after the Newtown, Conn., school shootings took place, Americans’ support for gun control had tapered. Yet the controversy of gun control is still a difficult issue for the two parties of the U.S. For the American citizens, a great part of them regard handgun ownership as an incredible support for their personal security. From the political standpoint, the attitude towards gun control is one of the main distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans. It is estimated that the United States has a population of 307 million people in 2009, and based on production data from firearm manufacturers, there are roughly 300 million firearms owned by civilians in the United States in 2010.1 Another Gallup polls shows that about 40% of Americans owns a gun, predominantly constituted by non-Hispanic Southern married males, and 17% do not own a gun but live in a household where someone does. The high level of gun ownership in the United States, with nearly one
1
Dataset: \
April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008.\
in three Americans being gun owners and almost half of the households do, indicates that if strict gun control law is to be released, tens of millions will be influenced. So it is obvious to find why the gun control problem is so difficult to solve and the two parties have never reached a compromise. It is something of a choice, of seeing the gun ownership as an limit against the gun violence or as a unacceptable infringing on citizen’s right to own guns.
As a supporter of gun control, I’m more curious about the position of the opponents of gun control laws. A nationwide survey reveals the top reason of gun control as personal protection, at 60%, followed by hunting(13%), after which recreation or sports ranks the third, with 8% citing target shooting. Only a 5% of American gun owners cite “second amendment rights”, which defends the right of individual American to keep and bear arms regardless of service in militia. Self-defense is the top reason of the high coverage of gun ownership, which illustrates why the general operation of gun control is so tough, for gun owners oppose it in fear of placing their personal safety at stake.
Another significant fact is that the uneven distribution of gun owners and gun ownership supporters. The older citizens, the less educated, the conservative, the Hispanic and those go to church more often are more likely to own firearms. To some degree gun control is a campaign of changing values of those subgroups.
Personally, I am in favor of the restriction of firearms ownership, not solely due to my identification as a younger citizen. Let’s see some stunning figures collected officially. According to the report of Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S department of justice,released in September, 2009, at the current homicide rate, roughly one in every 240 Americans will be murdered. A 1997 survey of more than 18,000 prison inmates found that among those serving time for a violent crime, “30% of state offenders and 35% of federal offenders carried a firearm when committed a crime.”2 And ever since outset of handgun ban in Chicago, the city murder rate have be 17% lower than it was before the ban took effect, and the U.S murder rate was averaged
2
Report: \2001. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=940 25% lower, though in June 2010, the handgun ban was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme court of the federal. All these data indicates that the handgun ownership ban is an essential step to confront against the severe gun violence in the United States. Nontheless, I am also approved to the so-called Right-to-carry Law, which permits individuals who meets certain “minimally restrictive”criteria, that is , a completion of background check and gun safety course to carry a gun in the most public places.3
3
Web page: \Firearm Permit Information By State.\USA Carry. Accessed November 6, 2012
athttp://www.usacarry.com/concealed_carry_permit_information.html \State of Arizona without a concealed weapon permit.\