The United States began on conquered land mostly in opposition to the British Tyranny. The British had banned the colonies from moving West of the Appalachian Mountains. Still, some of the rich American colonists at the time wanted to move West and be independent of their British oppressors. After independence, on the second amendment, the Unites states established the individual right to bear arms so that independent militia can invade indigenous nations and form an Anglo-American country (Wintemute, 2015). In this regard, the second amendment had nothing to do with preserving the art of hunting. The gun industry has further propelled the gun culture, and the US is one of the leading importer and exporter of military weapons today. Gun violence has its roots in armed-settler colonialism that had massacres at the core of their projects, and mass shootings are just a continuation of the same phenomenon.
Gun violence or mass shootings have become part of American Culture. Technological advancements have made the attacks even more deadly than they used to be in the past. The deadliest mass murder in history, Texas Tower Sniper, in 1966 had 16 fatalities and over 31 people wounded in slightly over one and a half hours. The deadliest one currently, happened in Las Vegas in 2017, on a country music festival with 58 fatalities and over 546 injuries in just over 10 minutes.
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There are laws and guidelines that gun owners need to follow as per the law. The first is a tax on manufacturers and distributors of guns as well as those who import and export the same. All firearms are also required to be registered with the secretary of the treasury. Conditions to purchase barrelled shotguns, machine guns, and silencers, a thorough background check must be conducted, acquisition of a tax stamp and registration with the NFA registry (Cornell, 2006). States like New York and California have banned ownership of these firearms, though. Also, under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, the purchase of a gun has some restrictive conditions.
One could not purchase a gun if they were convicted for more than a year in prison or is a fugitive from justice. If one is illegally using or is addicted to controlled substances, they also cannot purchase a firearm. Any aliens living in the country illegally cannot also purchase guns and citizens who renounce their citizenship as well. A dishonorable discharge from the force also forbids one from owning a firearm. Anyone convicted for domestic violence or has a restraining order involving spouses or their children cannot also own a gun. The law was passed in 1994, but the federal government has not enacted any gun control laws except the change in the definition of what a machine gun is after the mass shooting in October 2017.
State gun laws, on the other hand, vary between states, with some being more restrictive than others. Some states allow the freedoms of members from foreign states to apply specifically to them while in their state while some don’t. For example, 38 states allow employers to restrict their employees from having guns in their cars on company grounds while the rest forbid the employers from this restriction. States generally fall into one of four categories regarding ‘open carry’ laws of guns.
Permissive Open Carry states allow the owner to carry their gun without any permissions or licenses. Licenced Open Carry States only allow you to carry a gun in the open only with a permit or license. The Anomalous Open Carry States that are ambiguous in a sense where members of the state are allowed to carry guns openly, but local authorities can pass stricter measures against the same. The Non-Permissive Open Carry States forbid openly carrying a gun unless in certain conditions like self-defense or in the case of hunting. State gun laws also change as a response to tragedies like mass shootings.
The gun culture is deeply engraved in America, and three in ten adults in America own a gun. According to a research done between March and April 2017, 48% of adults grew up in a household with a gun, 59% also have friends with guns and 72% have fired a gun at some point in their lives even though 55% of them have never personally owned a gun. Among the gun owners, 66% of them own more than one gun, while 29% own more than five guns. The majority, 72%, own handguns or pistols, while 62% own rifles and 54% own shotguns (Rubak, Shaffer & Clark, 2011). Among them, 73% cannot imagine themselves not being able to possess a firearm in their lives. Acquiring a gun in America even from a store is as easy as going in and buying one. In most cases, provided you are over the age of 18, you can buy long guns and 21 for handguns. Anyone who can legally buy a beer can buy a gun, well within their rights.
Most of the victims of gun violence sadly are African Americans. They only comprised of 13% of the United States population as per the 2010 census and comprised 55% of the total victims of homicides from guns (Planty & Truman, 2013). White people were only 25% of the victims, and Hispanics were 16%. Offenders, on the other hand, are mostly male offenders. Statistics from 1982 to 2018 recorded 98 male shooters, two female shooters, and one partnership of a male and a female. In the breakdown, 58 of these are white, 16 are black, 8 are Asians, 7 Latinos, and 3 Native Americans while the other eight are unknown or of other ethnicities (Fox & Allen, 2014).
Firearm violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and injuries every year. In 2013 alone, 73,505 people were mildly, but not fatally injured by firearms. That represents 23 people out of every 100,000 people, while there were 33,636 fatalities, representing 10 out of every 100,000 people. Out of these numbers, 21,175 were suicides, and 11,208 were homicides. Accidental or negligent discharge of firearms had 505 deaths, and 281 deaths had no clear intent. In 2017, the gun deaths reached their peak with 39,773 deaths recorded. Part of these 23,854 was suicide, and 14,542 were homicides. The rate rose from 10 to 12 fatalities per 100,000 people. Between 1968 and 2011, over 1.4 million people had died in firearm-related deaths. This number includes Homicides, suicides, and accidents.
More than 58% of the victims of gun violence are black, and a majority of them are male. In 2015, for example, 91% of black victims were male, and what makes these numbers even sadder is some of them were unarmed black men who were shot fatally by the police (Felson & Pare, 2010). These statistics rarely get attention in the debate against gun reforms on the national level. Even in the case of school shootings, where black students comprise 16% of the school-going children, but they experience double the number of shootings.
None of these raise concerns because of the perception of a black man, or woman, as instigators of violence, as portrayed in the media. Most of these homicides and crimes that take place in black neighborhoods were black on black crime from gangs and mobs is prevalent. They used to be mostly associated when it was dark, but things slowly shifted to daytime crimes in the open. Those cases affiliated to suicide raise the concern about mental health and whether someone’s state of mind should matter in the criteria to purchase a gun. The data on illegal firearms is scarce as most are not documented, but some believe that most crime is conducted using illegal guns. There are approximately 390 million civilian-owned guns, and the number of illegal ones cannot be confirmed.
On the first of August 1966, Charles Whiteman, a former marine, opened fire indiscriminately on the main tower building at the University of Texas to people on the campus and the streets. He had stabbed his mother and wife to death the previous night and had an assortment of weapons he had taken with him (Heide, 2008). For exactly 96 minutes, he shot and killed 14 people, including an infant and injured 31 more. One of his victims died later from his wounds in 2001.
On 20 th April 1999, 12 graders, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from Columbine High school in Columbine, Colorado, shot indiscriminately and attempted to bomb the school. A teacher and twelve students died that day. There were 21 people injured with gunfire and another three injured as they tried to escape the school, during the police shoot out (Hong et al., 2011). Four bombs were deployed but never set off, with two placed in the car to go off at noon and two more in the cafeteria. Two more were placed as diversions, and only one went off partially. The motives were unclear, and they killed themselves later on.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) studied gun violence in the past, but their efforts have been halted following the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 1996. The National Rifle Association(NRA) convinced Congress to slash the budget of the CDC following their report that gun ownership was a risk factor for homicide. As a result, the appropriations bill that year included a clause that prevented the use of the funds allocated to the CDC for injury prevention can be used for the promotion of gun control. The funds were later allocated for traumatic brain injury prevention. The CDC was later expanded to include other agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services(HSS), which further limited the resources that can be allocated to this cause.
President Obama encouraged Congress to expand the National Violent Deaths Reporting System(NVDRS), to all the 50 states. He also helped to try and boost their funding to enable them to better understand the role of firearms in violent deaths.
References
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to Bear Arms, Firearms Regulations, and the Lessons of History. Stan. L. & Pol'y Rev. , 17 , 571.
Felson, R. B., & Pare, P. P. (2010). Firearms and fisticuffs: Region, race, and adversary effects
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Fox, K. A., & Allen, T. (2014). Examining the instrumental–expressive continuum of homicides:
Incorporating the effects of gender, victim–offender relationships, and weapon choice. Homicide Studies , 18 (3), 298-317.
Heide, R. (2008). Texas tower shooting victim recalls Aug. 1, 1966. Valley Courier .
Hong, J. S., Cho, H., Allen-Meares, P., & Espelage, D. L. (2011). The social ecology of the
Columbine High School shootings. Children and youth services review , 33 (6), 861-868.
Planty, M., & Truman, J. L. (2013). Firearm Violence, 1993-2011 . Washington, DC: US
Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Ruback, R. B., Shaffer, J. N., & Clark, V. A. (2011). Easy access to firearms: Juveniles’ risks for
violent offending and violent victimization. Journal of Interpersonal Violence , 26 (10), 2111-2138.
Wintemute, G. J. (2015). The epidemiology of firearm violence in the twenty-first century
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