Gun violence in the United States - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Gun violence
Gun violence
Gun violence defined literally means the use of a firearm to threaten or inflict violence or harm. Gun violence may be broadly defined as a category of violence and crime committed with the use of a firearm; it may or may not include actions ruled as self-defense, actions for law enforcement, or...

in the United States is an intensely debated political issue in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Gun-related violence is most common in poor urban areas and in conjunction with gang violence, often involving juveniles or young adults. Gun violence is not new in the United States, with the assassination

Assassination

To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...

s of President Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

in 1865, and of Presidents James Garfield

James Garfield

James Abram Garfield served as the 20th President of the United States, after completing nine consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Garfield's accomplishments as President included a controversial resurgence of Presidential authority above Senatorial courtesy in executive...

, William McKinley

William McKinley

William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...

, and John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

. High profile gun violence incidents, such as the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy

Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...

, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...

, and, more recently, the Columbine High School massacre

Columbine High School massacre

The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...

, the Beltway sniper attacks

Beltway sniper attacks

The Washington sniper attacks took place during three weeks in October 2002 in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Ten people were killed and three others critically injured in various locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia...

, the Virginia Tech massacre

Virginia Tech massacre

The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. In two separate attacks, approximately two hours apart, the perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people...

, and the 2011 Tucson shooting

2011 Tucson shooting

On January 8, 2011, a mass shooting occurred near Tucson, Arizona. Nineteen people were shot, six of them fatally, with one other person injured at the scene during an open meeting that U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was holding with members of her constituency in a Casas Adobes Safeway...

, have fueled debate over gun policies

Gun politics

Gun politics addresses safety issues and ideologies related to firearms through criminal and noncriminal use. Gun politics deals with rules, regulations, and restrictions on the use, ownership, and distribution of firearms.-National sovereignty:...

.

There were 52,447 deliberate and 23,237 accidental non-fatal gunshot injuries in the United States during 2000. The majority of gun-related deaths in the United States are suicides, with 17,352 (55.6%) of the total 31,224 firearm-related deaths in 2007 due to suicide, while 12,632 (40.5%) were homicide deaths.

Policies at the Federal

Federal government of the United States

The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

, state, and local levels have attempted to address gun violence through a variety of methods, including restricting firearms purchasing by youths and other "at-risk" populations, setting waiting periods for firearm purchases, establishing gun "buy-back" programs, targeted law enforcement and policing strategies, stiff sentencing of gun law violators, education programs for parents and children, and community-outreach programs. Research has found some policies such as gun "buy-back" programs are ineffective, while Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

's Operation Ceasefire

Operation Ceasefire

Operation Ceasefire is a youth gun violence intervention strategy, first implemented in 1996 in Boston.-Boston:...

, a gang violence abatement and intervention strategy, has been effective. Gun policies are also highly influenced by debates over the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights.In 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court issued two Second...

, and in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court took a position for the first time on this issue in District of Columbia v. Heller
District of Columbia v. Heller
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 , was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes in federal enclaves, such as...

, holding that the second amendment secures an individual right to own firearms.

Suicides involving firearms

Some research shows an association between household firearm ownership and gun suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

rates, while other research indicates no such association between firearm ownership and gun suicide rates. During the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a strong upward trend in adolescent suicides with a gun, as well as a sharp overall increase in a suicides among those age 75 and over. In the United States, firearms remain the most common method of suicide, accounting for 50.7% of all suicides committed during 2006.

Research also indicates no association vis-à-vis safe-storage laws of guns that are owned, and gun suicide rates, and studies that attempt to link gun ownership to likely victimology often fail to account for the presence of guns owned by other people. Researchers have shown that safe-storage laws do not appear to affect gun suicide rates or juvenile accidental gun death.

Homicides

While people during the 19th century were concerned about violent crime, it often took the form of riot

Riot

A riot is a form of civil disorder characterized often by what is thought of as disorganized groups lashing out in a sudden and intense rash of violence against authority, property or people. While individuals may attempt to lead or control a riot, riots are thought to be typically chaotic and...

s and other forms of disorder

Civil disorder

Civil disorder, also known as civil unrest or civil strife, is a broad term that is typically used by law enforcement to describe one or more forms of disturbance caused by a group of people. Civil disturbance is typically a symptom of, and a form of protest against, major socio-political problems;...

in cities. Gun violence, however, sometimes played a role in these riots (see Haymarket riot). Homicide rates in cities such as Philadelphia were significantly lower than in modern times.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, homicide rates surged in cities across the United States (see graphs at right). Handgun homicides accounted for nearly all of the overall increase in the homicide rate, from 1985 to 1993, while homicide rates involving other weapons declined during that time frame. The rising trend in homicide rates during the 1980s and early 1990s was most pronounced among youths and Hispanic

Hispanic

Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...

and African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

males in the United States, with the injury and death rates tripling for black males aged 13 through 17 and doubling for black males aged 18 through 24. The rise in crack cocaine

Crack cocaine

Crack cocaine is the freebase form of cocaine that can be smoked. It may also be termed rock, hard, iron, cavvy, base, or just crack; it is the most addictive form of cocaine. Crack rocks offer a short but intense high to smokers...

use in cities across the United States is often cited as a factor for increased gun violence among youths during this time period.

Gun-related homicide rates in the United States are twenty to thirty-five times higher than they are in countries that are economically and politically similar to it. Higher rates are found in developing countries and those with political instability.

Prevalence of homicide and violent crime is greatest in urban areas of the United States. In metropolitan areas

United States metropolitan area

In the United States a metropolitan statistical area is a geographical region with a relatively high population density at its core and close economic ties throughout the area. Such regions are not legally incorporated as a city or town would be, nor are they legal administrative divisions like...

, the homicide rate in 2005 was 6.1 per 100,000 compared with 3.5 in non-metropolitan counties. In U.S. cities with populations greater than 250,000, the mean homicide rate was 12.1 per 100,000. According to FBI statistics, the highest per capita rates of gun-related homicides in 2005 were in D.C. (35.4/100,000), Puerto Rico (19.6/100,000), Louisiana (9.9/100,000), & Maryland (9.9/100,000) . The Bureau of Justice statistics from 2004 do not include D.C or Puerto Rico. see

Homicide rates among 18- to 24-year-olds have declined since 1993, but remain higher than they were prior to the 1980s. In 2005, the 17 through 24 age group remains significantly overrepresented in violent crime statistics

Crime statistics

Crime statistics attempt to provide statistical measures of the crime in societies. Given that crime is usually secretive by nature, measurements of it are likely to be inaccurate....

, particularly homicides involving firearms. In 2005, 17- through 19-year olds were 4.3% of the overall population

Demographics of the United States

As of today's date, the United States has a total resident population of , making it the third most populous country in the world. It is a very urbanized population, with 82% residing in cities and suburbs as of 2008 . This leaves vast expanses of the country nearly uninhabited...

of the United States. This same age group accounted for 11.2% of those killed by firearm homicides. This age group also accounted for 10.6% of all homicide offenses. The 20- through 24-year-old age group accounted for 7.1% of the population, while accounting for 22.5% of those killed by firearm homicides. The 20 through 24 age group also accounted for 17.7% of all homicide offenses. Those under age 17 are not overrepresented in homicide statistics. In 2005, 13- through 16-year-olds accounted for 6% of the overall population of the United States, but only accounted for 3.6% of firearm homicide victims, and 2.7% of overall homicide offenses.

People with a criminal record

Criminal record

A criminal record is a record of a person's criminal history, generally used by potential employers, lenders etc. to assess his or her trustworthiness. The information included in a criminal record varies between countries and even between jurisdictions within a country...

are also more likely to die as homicide victims. Between 1990 and 1994, 75% of all homicide victims age 21 and younger in the city of Boston

Boston

had a prior criminal record. In Philadelphia, the percentage of those killed in gun homicides that had prior criminal records increased from 73% in 1985 to 93% in 1996. In Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...

, the risk of gunshot

Gunshot

A gunshot is the discharge of a firearm, producing a mechanical sound effect and a chemical gunshot residue. The term can also refer to a gunshot wound caused by such a discharge. Multiple discharges of a firearm or firearms are referred to as gunfire. The word can connotate either the sound of a...

injury is 22 times higher for those males involved with crime.

In 2005, 75% of the 10,100 homicide

Homicide

Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...

s committed using firearms in the United States were committed using handgun

Handgun

A handgun is a firearm designed to be held and operated by one hand. This characteristic differentiates handguns as a general class of firearms from long guns such as rifles and shotguns ....

s, compared to 4% with rifle

Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

s, 5% with shotgun

Shotgun

A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...

s, and the rest with a type of firearm not specified. Due to the lethal potential that a gun brings to a situation, the likelihood that a death will result is significantly increased when either the victim or the attacker has a firearm. The mortality rate for gunshot wounds to the heart

Heart

The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...

is 84%, compared to 30% for people who sustain stab wounds to the heart.

Approximately 6,500 homicides were committed using handguns in 1999; since there were roughly 70 million handguns, the chance of any particular gun being used in a homicide is very low.

U.S. President assassinations and attempts

Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated while in office. Three of the incidents involved handguns and one involved a rifle. President Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

lived only a few hours after being hit in the head by a single .44-caliber handgun round fired by John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...

. President James A. Garfield was killed by Charles J. Guiteau

Charles J. Guiteau

Charles Julius Guiteau was an American lawyer who assassinated U.S. President James A. Garfield. He was executed by hanging.- Background :...

using a .44-caliber handgun. President William McKinley

William McKinley

was killed by two rounds fired from a .32-caliber revolver

Revolver

A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...

. President John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...

who used a bolt-action

Bolt-action

Bolt action is a type of firearm action in which the weapon's bolt is operated manually by the opening and closing of the breech with a small handle, most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the weapon...

Carcano

Carcano is the frequently used name for a series of Italian bolt-action military rifles and carbines. Introduced in 1891, this rifle was chambered for the rimless 6.5x52mm Mannlicher-Carcano Cartuccia Modello 1895 cartridge. It was developed by the chief technician Salvatore Carcano at the Turin...

M1891/38 rifle in 6.5 x 52 mm.

Presidents Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...

and Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

were uninjured during assassination attempts, as was President Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford

Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...

in two separate attempts only a few weeks apart. President Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

survived an assassination attempt after being shot by John Hinckley, Jr.

John Hinckley, Jr.

John Warnock Hinckley, Jr., attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, as the culmination of an effort to impress teen actress Jodie Foster. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has remained under institutional psychiatric care since...

with a Röhm

Röhm (RG)

Röhm, often referred as simply RG, is a German brand of firearms and related shooting equipment. Since 2010 Röhm RG is a brand name of UMAREX GmbH & Co. KG.- History :...

RG-14 .22-caliber revolver. Former President Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

was shot and wounded during the 1912 presidential campaign. On February 15, 1933, Giuseppe Zangara attempted to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt while the then President-elect was giving a speech in Miami, Florida.

See also List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots

Other violent crime

In the United States, a quarter of commercial robberies

Robbery

Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take something of value by force or threat of force or by putting the victim in fear. At common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the person of that property, by means of force or fear....

are committed with guns. Robberies committed with guns are three times as likely to result in fatalities compared with robberies where other weapons were used, with similar patterns in cases of family violence. Criminologist Philip J. Cook

Philip J. Cook

Philip J. Cook is a professor of public policy, sociology, and economics at Duke University in the United States. His research has focused on firearms and crime, as well as alcohol abuse and related problems....

hypothesizes that if guns were less available, criminals may likely commit the crime anyway but with less-lethal weapons. He finds that the level of gun ownership in the 50 largest U.S. cities correlates with the rate of robberies committed with guns, but not overall robbery rates. A significant number of homicides result as a by-product of another violent crime which escalates, with the offender going into the crime without a clear or sustained intent to kill or be killed. Overall robbery and assault

Assault

In law, assault is a crime causing a victim to fear violence. The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact. The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more...

rates in the United States are also comparable to other developed countries, such as Australia and Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

, notwithstanding the much lower levels of gun ownership in those countries.

See also Assault with a deadly weapon

Gun ownership

The General Social Survey

General Social Survey

The General Social Survey is a sociological survey used to collect data on demographic characteristics and attitudes of residents of the United States. The survey is conducted face-to-face with an in-person interview by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, of a...

(GSS) is a primary source for data on firearm ownership, with surveys periodically done by other organizations such as Harris Interactive

Harris Interactive

Harris Interactive , headquartered in New York, New York, is a custom market research firm, known for the Harris Poll. Harris works in a wide range of industries...

. In 2004, 36.5% of Americans reported having a gun in their home and in 1997, 40% of Americans reported having a gun in their homes. At this time there were approximately 44 million gun owners in the United States. This means that 25 percent of all adults owned at least one firearm. These owners possessed 192 million firearms, of which 65 million were handguns. The number of American homes reporting have a gun in their homes is down from 46% as reported in 1989. Philip J. Cook suggests that increased numbers of female-headed households may be a factor in declining household ownership figures. A National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms (NSPOF), conducted in 1994, indicates that Americans own 192 million guns, with 36% of these consisting of rifles, 34% handguns, 26% shotguns, and 4% of other types of long guns. Most firearm owners own multiple firearms, with the NSPOF survey indicating 25% of adults own firearms. In the United States, 11% of households report actively being involved in hunting

Hunting

Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wildlife, for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law...

, with the remaining firearm owners having guns for self-protection and other reasons. Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, the rate of gun ownership in the home ranged from 45-50%. Gun ownership also varies across geographic regions, ranging from 25% rates of ownership in the Northeastern United States

Northeastern United States

The Northeastern United States is a region of the United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau.-Composition:The region comprises nine states: the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; and the Mid-Atlantic states of New...

to 60% rates of ownership in the East South Central States

East South Central States

The East South Central States constitute one of the nine Census Bureau Divisions of the United States.Four states make up the division: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee...

. The GSS survey and other proxy measures of gun ownership do not provide adequate macro-level detail to allow conclusions on the relationship between overall firearm ownership and gun violence. Criminologist Gary Kleck

Gary Kleck

Gary Kleck is a criminologist at Florida State University.-Criminology:He has done numerous studies of the effects of guns on death and injury in crimes, on suicides, and gun accidents, the impact of gun control laws on rates of violence, the frequency and effectiveness of defensive gun use by...

compared various survey and proxy measures and found no correlation between overall firearm ownership and gun violence.

Self-protection

Between 1987 and 1990, David McDowall found that guns were used in defense during a crime incident 64,615 times annually. This equates to two times out of 1,000 incidents (0.2%) that occurred in this time frame. For violent crimes (assault

Assault

, robbery

Robbery

, and rape

Rape

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

), guns were used 0.83% of the time in self-defense. Of the times that guns were used in self-defense, 71% of the crimes were committed by strangers, with the rest of the incidents evenly divided between offenders that were acquaintances or persons well-known to the victim. Of all incidents where a gun was used for self-defense, victims shot at the offender 28% of the time. In 20% of the self-defense incidents, the guns were used by police officer

Police officer

A police officer is a warranted employee of a police force...

s. During this same time period, 1987 and 1990, there were 46,319 gun homicides, and the National Crime Victimization Survey

National Crime Victimization Survey

The National Crime Victimization Survey , administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is a national survey of approximately 49,000 to 77,400 households twice a year in the United States, on the frequency of crime victimization, as well as characteristics and consequences of victimization...

estimates that 2,628,532 nonfatal crimes involving guns occurred.

The findings of the McDowall's study for the American Journal of Public Health
American Journal of Public Health
The American Journal of Public Health is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Public Health Association covering health policy and public health. The journal was established in 1911 and its stated mission is "to advance public health research, policy, practice, and...

contrast with the findings of a 1993 study by Gary Kleck

Gary Kleck

, who finds that as many as 2.45 million crimes are thwarted each year in the United States, and in most cases, the potential victim never fires a shot in these cases where firearms are used constructively for self-protection. The results of the Kleck studies have been cited many times in scholarly and popular media.

McDowall cites methodological issues with the Kleck studies, stating that Kleck used a very small sample size

Sampling (statistics)

In statistics and survey methodology, sampling is concerned with the selection of a subset of individuals from within a population to estimate characteristics of the whole population....

and did not confine self-defense to attempted victimizations where physical attacks had already commenced. The former criticism, however, is inaccurate — Kleck's survey with Marc Gertz in fact used the largest sample size of any survey that ever asked respondents about defensive gun use — 4,977 cases, far more than is typical in national surveys. A study of gun use in the 1990s, by David Hemenway

David Hemenway

David Hemenway is Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in economics. He is the director of the and the . He is also currently a James Marsh Visiting Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont. Dr...

at the Harvard

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

Injury Control Research Center, found that criminal use of guns is far more common than self-defense use of guns. By the Kleck study, however, most successful preventions of victimizations are accomplished without a shot being fired, which are not counted as a self-defense firearm usage by either the Hemenway or McDowall studies. Hemenway, however, also argues that the Kleck figure is inconsistent with other known statistics for crime, citing that Kleck's figures apparently show that guns are many times more often used for self-defense in burglaries, than there are incidents of bulgaries of properties containing gun owners with awake occupants. Hemenway concludes that under reasonable assumptions of random errors in sampling, because of the rarity of the event, the 2.5 million figure should be considered only as the top end of a 0-2.5 million confidence interval

Confidence interval

In statistics, a confidence interval is a particular kind of interval estimate of a population parameter and is used to indicate the reliability of an estimate. It is an observed interval , in principle different from sample to sample, that frequently includes the parameter of interest, if the...

, suggesting a highly unreliable result that is likely a great overestimate, with the true figure at least 10 times less.

Public policy

Public policy as related to preventing gun violence is an ongoing political and social debate regarding both the restriction and availability of firearms within the United States. Policy at the Federal level is/has been governed by the Second Amendment, National Firearms Act, Gun Control Act of 1968, Firearm Owners Protection Act, Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, and the Domestic Violence Offender Act. Gun policy in the United States has been revised many times with acts such as the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which loosened provisions for gun sales while also strengthening automatic firearms law.
Recently at the local and state level, gun laws such as handgun bans have been overturned by the Supreme Court in cases such as District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, these cases hold that an individual person has a right to posses a firearm for legitimate purposes, Columbia v. Heller only addressed the issue on Federal enclaves, while McDonald v Chicago addressed the issue as relating to the individual states.

Gun control proponents often cite the relatively high number of homicides committed with firearms as reason to support stricter gun control laws. Firearm laws

Firearm case law in the United States

Firearm case law, in the history of the United States, has been directly addressed by the Supreme Court and other federal courts, many times. These cases deal with Second Amendment, which is a part of the Bill of Rights, the Commerce Clause and/or federal laws regulating firearms possession.-United...

are a subject of great debate in the United States, with firearms also widely used for recreational purposes, and for personal protection. Gun rights advocates cite the use of firearms for self-protection and to deter violent crime as reasons why more guns can reduce crime. Gun rights advocates also say criminals are the least likely to obey firearms laws, and so limiting access to guns by law-abiding people makes them more vulnerable to armed criminals.

Access to firearms

U.S. policy aims to maintain the right of legitimate users to own most types of firearms, while restricting access to firearms by those individuals in high risk groups. Gun dealers in the United States are prohibited from selling handguns to those under the age of 21, and long gun

Long gun

The term long gun is used to describe classes of firearm and cannon with longer barrels than other classes. In small arms, a long gun is designed to be fired braced against the shoulder, in contrast to a handgun, while in artillery a long gun would be contrasted with a howitzer or carronade.-Small...

s to those under the age of 18. There are also restrictions on selling guns to out-of-state residents.

Assuming access to guns, the top ten types of guns involved in crime in the U.S. show a definite trend in favoring handguns over long guns. The top ten guns used in crime, as reported by the ATF in 1993, included the Smith & Wesson

Smith & Wesson

Smith & Wesson is the largest manufacturer of handguns in the United States. The corporate headquarters is in Springfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1852, Smith & Wesson's pistols and revolvers have become standard issue to police and armed forces throughout the world...

.38 Special and .357 revolvers; Raven Arms

Raven Arms MP-25

The MP-25 is a .25-caliber semi-automatic pistol developed by George Jennings in the late 1960s. In 1970, Jennings designed the inexpensive MP-25 pistol and founded Raven Arms, which was also known as the original Ring of Fire company...

.25 caliber, Davis

Raven Arms MP-25

P-380 .380 caliber, Ruger

Ruger MK II

The Ruger MK II is a rimfire single-action semi-automatic pistol chambered in .22 Long Rifle and manufactured by Sturm, Ruger & Company. Ruger rimfire pistols are some of the most popular handguns made, with over three million sold.-Models:...

.22 caliber, Lorcin

Raven Arms MP-25

L-380 .380 caliber, and Smith & Wesson semi-automatic handguns; Mossberg

Mossberg 500

Mossberg 500 is a series of shotguns manufactured by O.F. Mossberg & Sons. The 500 series comprises widely varying models of hammerless, pump action repeaters, all of which share the same basic receiver and action, but differ in bore size, barrel length, choke options, magazine capacity, and...

and Remington

Remington Arms

Remington Arms Company, Inc. was founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, as E. Remington and Sons. It is the oldest company in the United States which still makes its original product, and is the oldest continuously operating manufacturer in North America. It is the only U.S....

12 gauge shotguns; and the Tec DC-9

Intratec TEC-DC9

The Intratec TEC-DC9 is a blowback-operated, semi-automatic firearm, chambered in 9×19mm Parabellum, and classified by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as a handgun. Designed by Intratec, an American offshoot of Interdynamic AB, it is made of inexpensive molded polymers...

. An earlier 1985 study of 1,800 incarcerated felons showed that criminals prefer revolvers and other non-semi-automatic firearms over semi-automatic firearms. In Pittsburgh, a change in preferences towards pistols occurred in the early 1990s, coinciding with the arrival of crack cocaine and rise of violent youth gangs. Background checks in California, during 1998 to 2000, resulted in 1% of sales being initially denied. The types of guns most often denied included semiautomatic pistols with short barrels and of medium caliber.

Among juveniles (for example, minors under the age of 16, 17, or 18, depending on legal jurisdiction) serving in correctional facilities, 86% owned a gun at some point, with 66% acquiring their first gun by age 14. There is also a tendency for juvenile offenders to own many firearms, with 65% owning three or more. Juveniles most often acquire guns from family, friends, drug dealers

Illegal drug trade

The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...

, and street contacts. Inner-city youths cite "self-protection from enemies" as the top reason for carrying a gun. In Rochester, New York

Rochester, New York

Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

, 22% of young males have carried a firearm illegally, though most for only a short period of time. There is little overlap between legal gun ownership and illegal gun carrying among youths.

Firearms market

Policy that is targeted at the supply side of the firearms market is based on limited research, with this an active area of ongoing research. One important consideration is that only 60-70% of firearms sales in the United States are transacted through federally licensed firearm dealers, with the remainder taking place in the "secondary market." Most sales to youths and convicted felons take place in the "secondary market," in which previously-owned firearms are transferred by unlicensed individuals. Access to "secondary markets" is generally less convenient and involves such risks as the gun perhaps having been used previously in a homicide. Unlicensed private sellers are permitted by law to sell privately-owned guns at gun shows, or at private locations, in 24 states (as of 1998). Regulations that limit the number of handgun sales in the primary, regulated market to one handgun a month

One handgun a month law

A one-handgun a month law is a law which limit handgun purchases to one per 30-days, for an individual. Proponents support such laws in the effort to keep criminals, or would be criminals from amassing large numbers of handguns in a short period of time...

per customer have been shown to be effective at reducing illegal gun trafficking by reducing the supply into the "secondary market." Tax

Tax

To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...

es on firearms and ammunition

Ammunition

Ammunition is a generic term derived from the French language la munition which embraced all material used for war , but which in time came to refer specifically to gunpowder and artillery. The collective term for all types of ammunition is munitions...

purchases are another means for government to influence the primary market.

Federally licensed firearm dealers in the primary (new and used gun) market are regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is a federal law enforcement organization within the United States Department of Justice...

(ATF). Firearm manufacturers are required to put serial number

Serial number

A serial number is a unique number assigned for identification which varies from its successor or predecessor by a fixed discrete integer value...

s on all new firearms. This allows the ATF to trace guns involved in crimes back to their last Federal Firearms License

Federal Firearms License

A Federal Firearms License is a license that enables an individual or a company to engage in a business pertaining to the manufacture of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms...

(FFL) reported change of ownership transaction, although not past the first private sale involving any particular gun. A report by the ATF released in 1999, found that 0.4% of federally-licensed dealers sold half of the guns used criminally in 1996 and 1997. This is sometimes done through "straw purchase

Straw purchase

A straw purchase is any purchase wherein the purchaser knowingly acquires an item or service for someone who is, for whatever reason, unable to purchase the item or service themselves...

s." State laws, such as those in Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

and California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, that restrict the number of gun purchases in a month may help stem such "straw purchases." An estimated 500,000 guns are also stolen

Theft

In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...

each year, allowing them to get into the hands of prohibited users. During the ATF's Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative

Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative

The Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative was led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives during the late-1990s...

(YCGII), which involved expanded tracing of firearms recovered by law enforcement agencies, only 18% of guns used criminally that were recovered in 1998 were in possession of the original owner. Guns recovered by police during criminal investigations often have been previously sold by legitimate retail sales outlets to legal owners and then diverted to criminal use over elapsed times ranging from just a few months to just a few years, which makes them relatively new compared with firearms in general circulation.

Federal legislation

The first Federal legislation related to firearms was the Second Amendment

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

, ratified in 1791. For 143 years, this was the only major Federal legislation regarding firearms. The next Federal firearm legislation was the National Firearms Act

National Firearms Act

The National Firearms Act , 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, , enacted on June 26, 1934, currently codified as amended as , is an Act of Congress that, in general, imposes a statutory excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. The...

of 1934. This Act created regulations for the sale of firearms, established taxes on their sale, and required registration of some types of firearms such as machine gun

Machine gun

A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....

s.

In the aftermath of the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, the Gun Control Act of 1968

Gun Control Act of 1968

The Gun Control Act of 1968 , by president Lyndon Johnson, is a federal law in the United States that broadly regulates the firearms industry and firearms owners...

was enacted. This Act regulated gun commerce, restricting mail order

Mail order

Mail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer...

sales, and allowing shipments only to licensed firearm dealers. The Act also prohibited felons

Felony

A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...

, those under indictment

Indictment

An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...

, fugitive

Fugitive

A fugitive is a person who is fleeing from custody, whether it be from private slavery, a government arrest, government or non-government questioning, vigilante violence, or outraged private individuals...

s, illegal aliens

Alien (law)

In law, an alien is a person in a country who is not a citizen of that country.-Categorization:Types of "alien" persons are:*An alien who is legally permitted to remain in a country which is foreign to him or her. On specified terms, this kind of alien may be called a legal alien of that country...

, drug users, those dishonorably discharged

Military discharge

A military discharge is given when a member of the armed forces is released from their obligation to serve.-United States:Discharge or separation should not be confused with retirement; career U.S...

from the military

Military of the United States

The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...

, and those in mental institutions

Psychiatric hospital

Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...

from owning guns. The law also restricted importation of Saturday night special

Saturday night special

The phrase Saturday night special is pejorative slang used in the United States and Canada for any inexpensive handgun. Saturday night specials have been defined as compact, inexpensive handguns with low perceived quality; however, there is no official definition of "Saturday night special" under...

s and other types of guns, and limited the sale of automatic weapons and semi-automatic weapons conversion kits.

The Firearm Owners Protection Act

Firearm Owners Protection Act

The Firearm Owners' Protection Act , , codified at et seq., is a United States federal law that revised many statutes in the Gun Control Act of 1968.-Federal Firearms License regulatory reform:...

, also known as the McClure-Volkmer Act, was passed in 1986. It changed some restrictions in the 1968 Act, allowing federally-licensed gun dealers, as well as individual unlicensed private sellers, to sell at gun show

Gun show

A gun show is a temporary exhibition or gathering in the United States where firearms, firearm accessories, ammunition, literature, knives, jerky, militaria, and miscellaneous collectibles are displayed, bought, sold, traded, and discussed. Gun shows also often include exhibitions related to...

s, while continuing to require licensed gun dealers to require background checks. The 1986 Act also restricted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms from conducting repetitive inspections, reduced the amount of recordkeeping required of gun dealers, raised the burden of proof for convicting gun law violators, and changed restrictions on convicted felons

Felony

from owning firearms.

In the years following the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, people buying guns were required to show identification

Identity document

An identity document is any document which may be used to verify aspects of a person's personal identity. If issued in the form of a small, mostly standard-sized card, it is usually called an identity card...

and sign a statement affirming that they were not in any of the prohibited categories. Many states

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

enacted background check

Background check

A background check or background investigation is the process of looking up and compiling criminal records, commercial records and financial records of an individual....

laws that went beyond the federal requirements. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act

Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act is an Act of the United States Congress that, for the first time, instituted federal background checks on firearm purchasers in the United States....

passed by Congress in 1993 imposed a waiting period before the purchase of a handgun, allowing a background check. The Brady Act also required the establishment of a national system to provide instant criminal background checks, with checks to be done by firearms dealers. The Brady Act only applied to people who bought guns from licensed dealers, whereas most felons buy guns from a black market. Restrictions, such as waiting periods, are opposed by many, who argue that they impose costs and inconveniences on legitimate gun purchasers, such as hunters.

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act

Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, , , was an act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement that became law in 1994. It is the largest crime bill in the history of the US at 356 pages and will provide for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and...

, enacted in 1994, included the Federal Assault Weapons Ban

Federal assault weapons ban

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was a subtitle of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a federal law in the United States that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms, so called "assault weapons"...

, and was a response to public concern over mass shootings

Mass murder

Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...

. This provision prohibited the manufacture and importation of some semiautomatic firearms that exhibitied military style features such as a folding stock, pistol grip and flash suppressor, as well as magazines holding more than ten rounds. A grandfather clause

Grandfather clause

Grandfather clause is a legal term used to describe a situation in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations, while a new rule will apply to all future situations. It is often used as a verb: to grandfather means to grant such an exemption...

was included that allowed firearms manufactured before 1994 to remain legal. A short-term evaluation by University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

criminologists, Christopher S. Koper

Christopher S. Koper

Christopher S. Koper is the Director of Research for the Police Executive Research Forum , a police membership and research organization based in Washington, D.C. He holds a Ph.D...

and Jeffrey A. Roth

Jeffrey A. Roth

Jeffrey A. Roth is criminologist and associate director for research at the University of Pennsylvania's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology.Roth's research has focused on juvenile crime trends, particularly the decrease in crime rates since 1993....

, did not find any clear impact of this legislation on gun violence. Given the short study time period of the evaluation, the National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

also advised caution in drawing any conclusions. In September 2004, the assault weapon ban expired, with its sunset clause.

The Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban

Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban

The Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban is an amendment to the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act of 1997 enacted by the 104th United States Congress in 1996...

, 'the Lautenberg Amendment' , prohibited anyone previously convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence

Domestic violence

Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...

from owning a firearm. It also banned shipment, transport, ownership and use of guns or ammunition by individuals convicted of misdemeanor

Misdemeanor

A misdemeanor is a "lesser" criminal act in many common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished much less severely than felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences...

or felony

Felony

domestic violence. This law also outlawed the sale or gift of a firearm or ammunition to such a person. It was passed in 1996, and became effective in 1997. Some opponents believe that the law conflicts with the right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

, and this law has modified the Second Amendment to a revocable privilege from a fundamental protection. Opponents of this law tend to describe the law by the name "the Lautenberg Amendment." The law applies to everyone, including police officers and military personnel, and can cause difficulties by prohibiting active duty military and police from carrying guns, due to prior civilian misdemeanor convictions.

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

, police and National Guard units in New Orleans confiscated firearms from private citizens in an attempt to prevent violence. In reaction, Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

passed the Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006

Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006

The Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006 was a bill introduced in the United States Congress intended to prohibit the confiscation of legally possessed firearms during a disaster...

in the form of an amendment to Department of Homeland Security

United States Department of Homeland Security

The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the United States and protectorates from and responding to...

Appropriations Act, 2007. Section 706 of the Act prohibits federal employees and those receiving federal funds from confiscating legally-possessed firearms during a disaster.

Right-to-carry

Right-to-carry laws expanded in the 1990s as homicide rates from gun violence in the United States increased, largely in response to incidents such as the Luby's massacre

Luby's massacre

The Luby's massacre was a mass murder that took place on October 16, 1991, in Killeen, Texas, United States when George Hennard ″Jo Jo" drove his pickup truck into a Luby's cafeteria and shot 23 people to death while wounding another 20, subsequently committing suicide by shooting himself...

of 1991 in Texas which directly resulted in the passage of a carrying concealed weapon
Carrying concealed weapon
Concealed carry, or CCW , refers to the practice of carrying a handgun or other weapon in public in a concealed manner, either on one's person or in proximity....

, or CCW, law in Texas in 1995.
As Rorie Sherman, staff reporter for the National Law Journal wrote in an article published on April 18, 1994, "It is a time of unparalleled desperation about crime. But the mood is decidedly 'I'll do it myself' and 'Don't get in my way.'"

The result was laws that permitted persons to carry firearms openly, known as open carry
Open Carry
In the United States, open carry is shorthand terminology for "openly carrying a firearm in public", as distinguished from concealed carry, where firearms cannot be seen by the casual observer....

, often without any permit required, in 22 states by 1998. Laws that permitted persons to carry concealed handgun

Handgun

A handgun is a firearm designed to be held and operated by one hand. This characteristic differentiates handguns as a general class of firearms from long guns such as rifles and shotguns ....

s, sometimes termed a concealed handgun license, CHL, or concealed pistol license, CPL in some jurisdictions instead of CCW, existed in 34 states in the United States by 2004. Since then, the number of states with CCW laws has increased; as of late 2006, 48 states have some form of CCW laws on the books.

Economist John Lott

John Lott

John Richard Lott Jr. is an American academic and political commentator. He has previously held research positions at academic institutions including the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland, College Park,...

has argued that right-to-carry laws create a perception that more potential crime victims might be carrying firearms, and thus serve as a deterrent

Deterrence (psychological)

Deterrence is a theory from behavioral psychology about preventing or controlling actions or behavior through fear of punishment or retribution...

against crime. Lott's study has been criticized for not adequately controlling for other factors, including other state laws also enacted, such as Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

's laws requiring background checks and waiting period for handgun buyers. When Lott's data was re-analyzed by some researchers, the only statistically significant effect of concealed-carry laws found was an increase in assault

Assault

s, with similar findings by Jens Ludwig. Since concealed-carry permits are only given to adults, Philip J. Cook suggests that analysis should focus on the relationship with adult and not juvenile gun incident rates. He finds a small, positive effect of concealed-carry laws on adult homicide rates, but states the effect is not statistically significant

Statistical significance

In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. The phrase test of significance was coined by Ronald Fisher....

. The National Academy of Science has found no evidence that shows right-to-carry laws have an impact, either way, on rates of violent crime

Violent crime

A violent crime or crime of violence is a crime in which the offender uses or threatens to use violent force upon the victim. This entails both crimes in which the violent act is the objective, such as murder, as well as crimes in which violence is the means to an end, such as robbery. Violent...

. NAS suggests that new analytical approaches and datasets at the county or local level are needed to evaluate adequately the impact of right-to-carry laws.

Child Access Prevention (CAP)

Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws, enacted by many states, require parents to store firearms safely, to minimize access by children to guns, while maintaining ease of access by adults. CAP laws hold gun owners liable

Legal liability

Legal liability is the legal bound obligation to pay debts.* In law a person is said to be legally liable when they are financially and legally responsible for something. Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law. See Strict liability. Under English law, with the passing of the Theft...

should a child gain access to a loaded gun that is not properly stored. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...

showed that, on average, one child died every three days in accidental incidents in the United States from 2000 to 2005. In most states, CAP law violations are considered misdemeanor

Misdemeanor

s. Florida

Florida

's CAP law, enacted in 1989, permits felony

Felony

prosecution of violators. Research indicates that CAP laws are correlated with a reduction in unintentional gun deaths by 23%, and gun suicides among those aged 14 through 17 by 11%. A study by Lott

John Lott

did not detect a relationship between CAP laws and accidental gun deaths or suicides among those age 19 and under between 1979 and 1996. The National Bureau of Economic Research

National Bureau of Economic Research

The National Bureau of Economic Research is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community." The NBER is well known for providing start and end...

has found that CAP laws are correlated with a reduction of non-fatal gun injuries among both children and adults by 30-40%. Research also indicates that CAP laws are most highly correlated with reductions of non-fatal gun injuries in states where violations are considered felonies, whereas in states that consider violations as misdemeanors, the potential impact of CAP laws is not statistically significant. All of these studies are correlational, and do not account for other potential contributing factors.

Local restrictions

Some local jurisdictions in the United States have more restrictive laws, such as Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

's Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975

Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975

The Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 was passed by the District of Columbia city council on September 24, 1976. On June 26, 2008, in the historic case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court of the United States determined that the ban and trigger lock provision violate the...

, which banned residents from owning handguns, and required permitted firearms be disassembled and locked with a trigger lock. On March 9, 2007, a U.S. Appeals Court ruled the Washington, D.C. handgun ban unconstitutional. The appeal of that case later led to the Supreme Court

Supreme court

A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, instance court, judgment court, high court, or apex court...

's ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller

District of Columbia v. Heller

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 , was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes in federal enclaves, such as...

that D.C.'s ban was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

is also known for its strict gun control laws. Despite local laws, guns are often trafficked into cities from other parts of the United States, particularly the southern states. Results from the ATF's Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative indicate that the percentage of imported guns involved in crimes is tied to the stringency of local firearm laws.

Prevention programs

Violence prevention and educational program

Educational program

An educational program is a program written by the ministry of education which determines the learning progress of each subject in all the stages of formal education....

s have been established in many school

School

A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...

s and communities across the United States. These programs aim to change personal behavior of both children and their parent

Parent

A parent is a caretaker of the offspring in their own species. In humans, a parent is of a child . Children can have one or more parents, but they must have two biological parents. Biological parents consist of the male who sired the child and the female who gave birth to the child...

s, encouraging children to stay away from guns, ensure parents store guns safely, and encourage children to solve disputes

Dispute resolution

Dispute resolution is the process of resolving disputes between parties.-Methods:Methods of dispute resolution include:* lawsuits * arbitration* collaborative law* mediation* conciliation* many types of negotiation* facilitation...

without resorting to violence. Programs aimed at altering behavior

Behavior

Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...

range from passive (requiring no effort on part of the individual) to active (supervising children, or placing a trigger lock

Trigger lock

A trigger lock is a device designed to prevent a firearm from being discharged while the device is in place. Generally, two pieces come together from either side behind the trigger and are locked in place, which can be unlocked with a key or combination. This physically prevents the trigger from...

on a gun). The more effort required of people, the more difficult it is to implement a prevention

Crime prevention

Crime prevention is the attempt to reduce victimization and to deter crime and criminals. It is applied specifically to efforts made by governments to reduce crime, enforce the law, and maintain criminal justice.-Studies:...

strategy. Prevention strategies focused on modifying the situational environment and the firearm itself may be more effective. Empirical evaluation

Evaluation

Evaluation is systematic determination of merit, worth, and significance of something or someone using criteria against a set of standards.Evaluation often is used to characterize and appraise subjects of interest in a wide range of human enterprises, including the arts, criminal justice,...

of gun violence prevention programs has been limited. Of the evaluations that have been done, results indicate such programs have minimal effectiveness.

The 1-866-SPEAK-UP Hotline

SPEAK UP is a national youth violence prevention initiative created by The Center to Prevent Youth Violence

The Center to Prevent Youth Violence

The Center to Prevent Youth ViolenceThe Center to Prevent Youth Violence , formerly known as PAX, was co-founded in 1998 by Daniel Gross and Talmage Cooley, with the mission of ending the crisis of youth violence in America....

, which provides young people with tools to improve the safety of their schools and communities. The SPEAK UP program features the first-ever, anonymous, national hot-line for young people to report threats of violence in their communities or at school. The 1-866-SPEAK-UP hot-line is the only national hot-line for students to anonymously report weapon threats 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week. The hot-line is operated in accordance with a rigid protocol developed in collaboration with national education and law enforcement authorities, including the FBI. Trained counselors, with instant access to translators for 140 languages, collect information from callers and then immediately report the threat to appropriate school and law enforcement officials. The counselors also have access to an extensive database of local, city, and state referral sources, which they can offer callers who call with issues unrelated to youth violence. Since its launch in 2002, the hotline has received over 38,000 calls from youth nationwide.

Gun safety parent counseling

One of the most widely used parent counseling programs is Steps to Prevent Firearm Injury program (STOP), which was developed in 1994 by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. STOP was superseded by STOP 2 in 1998, which has a broader focus including more communities and health care providers. STOP has been evaluated and found not to have a significant effect on gun ownership or firearm storage practices by inner-city parents. Marjorie S. Hardy suggests further evaluation of STOP is needed, as this evaluation had a limited sample size and lacked a control group.

Children

Prevention programs geared towards children have also not been greatly successful. Many inherent challenges arise when working with children, including their tendency to perceive themselves as invulnerable to injury, limited ability to apply lessons learned, their innate curiosity, and peer pressure

Peer pressure

Peer pressure refers to the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or behavior in order to conform to group norms. Social groups affected include membership groups, when the individual is "formally" a member , or a social clique...

.

The goal of gun safety programs, usually administered by local firearms dealers and shooting clubs, is to teach older children and adolescents how to handle firearms safely. There has been no systematic evaluation of the effect of these programs on children. For adults, no positive effect on gun storage practices has been found as a result of these programs. Also, researchers have found that gun safety programs for children may likely increase a child's interest in obtaining and using guns, which they cannot be expected to use safely all the time, even with training.

One approach taken is gun avoidance, such as when encountering a firearm at a neighbor's home. The Eddie Eagle

Eddie Eagle

The Eddie Eagle program and its namesake character were developed by the National Rifle Association for children who are generally considered too young to be allowed to handle firearms...

Gun Safety Program, administered by the National Rifle Association

National Rifle Association

The National Rifle Association of America is an American non-profit 501 civil rights organization which advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection...

(NRA), is geared towards younger children from pre-kindergarten

Kindergarten

A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

to sixth grade, and teaches kids that real guns are not toys by emphasizing a "just say no" approach. The Eddie Eagle program is based on training children in a four-step action to take when they see a firearm: (1) Stop! (2) Don't touch! (3) Leave the area. (4) Go tell an adult. Materials, such as coloring books and posters, back the lessons up and provide the repetition necessary in any child-education program. The ineffectiveness of the "just say no" approach promoted by the NRA's Eddie the Eagle program was highlighted in an investigative piece by ABC's Diane Sawyer in 1999.http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7282623 Sawyer's piece was based on academic studies conducted by Dr. Marjorie Hardy, assistant professor of psychology at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. http://www.parents.com/kids/teens/violence/is-there-a-gun-in-the-house/?page=3 Dr. Hardy's study tracked the behavior of elementary age schoolchildren who spent a day learning the Eddie the Eagle four-step action plan from a uniformed police officer. The children were then placed into a playroom which contained a hidden gun. When the children found the gun, they did not run away from the gun, but rather, they inevitably played with it, pulled the trigger while looking into the barrel, or aimed the gun at a playmate and pulled the trigger. The study concluded that children's natural curiosity was far more powerful than the parental admonition to "Just say no". http://ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/pubs/ivpaguide/appendix/patten-sayingno.pdf

Some gun control

Gun control

Gun control is any law, policy, practice, or proposal designed to restrict or limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of guns or other firearms by private citizens...

advocacy groups have developed their own programs, such as Straight Talk about Risks (STAR), administered by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and Hands without Guns, run by the Joshua Horwitz Educational Fund to End Handgun Violence.

Community programs

Programs targeted at entire communities

Community

The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...

, such as community revitalization, after-school programs, and media campaigns

Public service announcement

A public service announcement or public service ad is a type of advertisement featured on television, radio, print or other media...

, may be more effective in reducing the general level of violence that children are exposed to. Community-based programs that have specifically targeted gun violence include Safe Kids/Healthy Neighborhoods Injury Prevention Program in New York City

New York City

, and Safe Homes and Havens in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. Evaluation of such community-based programs is difficult, due to many confounding factors and the multifaceted nature of such programs.

Intervention programs

Sociologist

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

James D. Wright suggests that to convince inner-city youths not to carry guns "requires convincing them that they can survive in their neighborhood without being armed, that they can come and go in peace, that being unarmed will not cause them to be victimized, intimidated, or slain." Intervention programs, such as CeaseFire Chicago

CeaseFire (organization)

CeaseFire is an anti-violence program and initiative of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention aimed at reducing street violence by using outreach workers to interrupt potentially violent situations. These violence interrupters work on the street, mediating conflicts between gangs and...

, Operation Ceasefire

Operation Ceasefire

Operation Ceasefire is a youth gun violence intervention strategy, first implemented in 1996 in Boston.-Boston:...

in Boston

Boston

and Project Exile

Project Exile

Project Exile was a federal program started in Richmond, Virginia in 1997. Project Exile shifted the prosecution of illegal technical gun possession offenses to federal court, where they carried a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison under the federal Gun Control Act of 1968,...

in Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia

during the 1990s, have been shown to be effective. Other intervention strategies, such as gun "buy-back" programs have been demonstrated to be ineffective.

Gun "buy-back" programs

Gun "buy-back" programs are a strategy aimed at influencing the firearms market by taking guns "off the streets". Gun "buy-back" programs have been shown to be ineffective, with the National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

citing theory underlying these programs as "badly flawed." Guns surrendered tend to be those least likely to be involved in crime, such as old, malfunctioning

Firearm malfunction

A firearm malfunction is the partial or complete failure of a firearm to operate as intended. Malfunctions range from temporary and relatively safe situations, such as a casing that didn't eject, to potentially dangerous occurrences that may permanently damage the gun and cause injury or death...

guns with little resale value, muzzleloading or other blackpowder guns, antiques chambered for obsolete cartridges that are no longer commercially manufactured or sold, or guns that individuals inherit

Inheritance

Inheritance is the practice of passing on property, titles, debts, rights and obligations upon the death of an individual. It has long played an important role in human societies...

but have little value in possessing. Other limitations of gun "buy-back" programs include the fact that it is relatively easy to obtain gun replacements, often of better guns than were relinquished in the "buy-back." Also, the number of handguns used in crime (approximately 7,500 per year) is very small compared to the approximately 70 million handguns in the United States (i.e., 0.011%).

"Gun Bounty" programs launched in several Florida cities have shown more promise. These programs involve cash rewards for anonymous tips about illegal weapons that leads to an arrest and a weapons charge. Since its inception May 2007, the Miami program led to 264 arrests, confiscation of 432 guns owned illegally and $2.2 million in drugs, as well as solved several murder and burglary cases.

Operation Ceasefire

In 1995, Operation Ceasefire

Operation Ceasefire

Operation Ceasefire is a youth gun violence intervention strategy, first implemented in 1996 in Boston.-Boston:...

was established as a strategy for stemming the epidemic of youth gun violence in Boston. Violence was particularly concentrated in poor, inner-city neighborhoods including Roxbury

Roxbury, Massachusetts

Roxbury is a dissolved municipality and current neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was one of the first towns founded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and became a city in 1846 until annexed to Boston on January 5, 1868...

, Dorchester

Dorchester, Massachusetts

Dorchester is a dissolved municipality and current neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is named after the town of Dorchester in the English county of Dorset, from which Puritans emigrated and is today endearingly nicknamed "Dot" by its residents. Dorchester, including a large...

, and Mattapan. There were 22 youths (under the age of 24) killed in Boston in 1987, with that figure rising to 73 in 1990. Operation Ceasefire entailed a problem-oriented policing

Problem-oriented policing

Problem-oriented policing is an approach to policing in which discrete pieces of police business are subject to microscopic examination in hopes that...

approach, and focused on specific places that were crime hot spots—two strategies that when combined have been shown to be quite effective. Particular focus was placed on two elements of the gun violence problem, including illicit gun trafficking and gang violence. Within two years of implementing Operation Ceasefire in Boston, the number of youth homicides dropped to ten, with only one handgun-related youth homicide occurring in 1999 and 2000. The Operation Ceasefire strategy has since been replicated in other cities, including Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

Project Exile

, conducted in Richmond, Virginia during the 1990s, was a coordinated effort involving federal, state, and local officials that targeted gun violence. The strategy entailed prosecution of gun violations in Federal courts, where sentencing guidelines were tougher. Project Exile also involved outreach and education efforts through media campaigns, getting the message out about the crackdown. Project Exile was evaluated and shown to be effective, however researchers also point out that Richmond might have experienced declining homicide trends anyway during the evaluation period, owing to overall national trends.

Project Safe Neighborhoods

Project Safe Neighborhoods is a national initiative by the United States Department of Justice to reduce gun violence in the United States. The project is a partnership designed to develop, implement, and evaluate data-driven violence reduction strategies in communities, and improve the long-term...

(PSN) is a national strategy for reducing gun violence that builds on the strategies implemented in Operation Ceasefire and Project Exile

Project Exile

. PSN was established in 2001, with support from the Bush administration

George W. Bush administration

The presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...

, channelled through the United States Attorney's Offices

United States Attorney

United States Attorneys represent the United States federal government in United States district court and United States court of appeals. There are 93 U.S. Attorneys stationed throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands...

in the United States Department of Justice

United States Department of Justice

The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

. The Federal government

Federal government of the United States

has spent over US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

1.5 billion since the program's inception on the hiring of prosecutor

Prosecutor

The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...

s, and providing assistance to state and local jurisdictions in support of training and community outreach efforts.

Research limitations

In the United States, research

Research

Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

into firearms and violent crime is fraught with difficulties, associated with limited data

Data

The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...

on gun ownership and use, firearms markets, and aggregation of crime data. Research studies into gun violence have primarily taken one of two approaches: case-control

Case-control

A case-control study is a type of study design in epidemiology. Case-control studies are used to identify factors that may contribute to a medical condition by comparing subjects who have that condition with patients who do not have the condition but are otherwise similar .Case-control studies are...

studies and social ecology

Social ecology

Social ecology is a philosophy developed by Murray Bookchin in the 1960s.It holds that present ecological problems are rooted in deep-seated social problems, particularly in dominatory hierarchical political and social systems. These have resulted in an uncritical acceptance of an overly...

. Gun ownership is usually determined through surveys

Statistical survey

Survey methodology is the field that studies surveys, that is, the sample of individuals from a population with a view towards making statistical inferences about the population using the sample. Polls about public opinion, such as political beliefs, are reported in the news media in democracies....

, proxy

Proxy (statistics)

In statistics, a proxy variable is something that is probably not in itself of any great interest, but from which a variable of interest can be obtained...

variables, and sometimes with production

Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...

and import

Import

The term import is derived from the conceptual meaning as to bring in the goods and services into the port of a country. The buyer of such goods and services is referred to an "importer" who is based in the country of import whereas the overseas based seller is referred to as an "exporter". Thus...

figures. In statistical analysis of homicides and other types of crime which are rare events, these data tend to have poisson distribution

Poisson distribution

In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution is a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time and/or space if these events occur with a known average rate and independently of the time since...

s, which also presents methodological challenges to researchers. With data aggregation, it is difficult to make inferences about individual behavior. This problem, known as ecological fallacy

Ecological fallacy

An ecological fallacy is a logical fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data in an ecological study, whereby inferences about the nature of specific individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong...

, is not always handled properly by researchers, leading some to jump to conclusions that their data do not necessarily support.

External links

Gun violence - National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)

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