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• Gun Violence Widely Viewed as a Major – and Growing – National Problem

1. Views of U.S. gun laws, impact of gun ownership on safety

Table of contents.

• Majority of Americans say gun laws should be stricter
• Views of gun policies among gun owners, non-owners
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

U.S. adults are evenly divided over whether gun ownership does more to increase safety by allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, or more to reduce safety by giving too many people access to firearms and increasing misuse (49% each).

This question highlights the sharp contrasts between partisans over the role of guns in society: 79% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that gun ownership does more to increase safety, while a nearly identical share of Democrats and Democratic leaners (78%) say that it does more to decrease safety.

Gun owners and non-owners also are divided. Among the 32% of adults who say they personally own a gun, 71% say that gun ownership increases safety. Among the 65% of adults who do not own a gun, just 37% say the same. A majority of non-owners (61%) say that gun ownership does more to decrease safety.

There are also large divisions among Americans based on community type.

Among those who say they live in urban areas, 64% say gun ownership makes people less safe, while 34% say it does more to increase safety. Among those who live in rural areas, these shares are roughly reversed: 65% say gun ownership does more to increase safety, compared with 33% who say it does more to decrease safety.

Those who report living in suburban areas are about as likely to say that gun ownership increases safety (51%) as to say it decreases safety (47%).

(About half of Americans – 49% – say they live in suburban areas, while roughly a quarter report living in either rural (26%) or urban areas (24%). For more on self-reported community type, read our publication, “Evaluating what makes a U.S. community urban, suburban or rural.” )

Views on whether gun laws in the United States should be stricter, less strict, or are about right have fluctuated modestly in recent years. Currently 58% say gun laws should be stricter, while 26% say laws are about right and 15% say they should be less strict.

Two years ago, 53% favored stricter gun laws. In 2019, 60% said laws should be stricter.

Demographic differences in views of gun policy have been stable in recent years. A majority of women (64%) say that gun laws should be stricter than they are today, compared with 51% of men.

Roughly three-quarters of Black (77%) and Asian adults (74%) say this, compared with 68% of Hispanic adults and 51% of White adults.

Younger adults are somewhat more likely to support stricter gun laws than older adults, though majorities across age groups favor stricter laws.

There also are educational divides on this issue: 72% of adults with a postgraduate education say that gun laws should be stricter, compared with 52% of adults with a high school degree or less formal education.

As in recent years, Republicans who identify as moderate or liberal are more likely to favor stricter gun laws than those who describe themselves as conservatives.

Roughly four-in-ten moderate or liberal Republicans (42%) say that laws should be stricter, while 40% say current laws are about right and 17% say they should be less strict. Among conservative Republicans, just 19% say laws should be stricter, while 33% say they should be less strict and 48% say current laws are about right.

Large majorities of Democrats across ideological groups say that gun laws should be stricter than they are today: 92% of liberal Democrats and 81% of conservative or moderate Democrats say this.

Americans who live in urban communities are substantially more likely than those who live in rural communities to favor stricter gun laws.

People who don’t own guns are about twice as likely as gun owners to say that gun laws should be stricter: 71% of non-owners say this, compared with 35% of gun owners. By contrast, gun owners are roughly twice as likely as non-owners to say that current laws are about right (39% vs. 20%) and about three times as likely to say that gun laws should be less strict (26% vs. 8%).

Within each party, there are divisions in the opinions of those who own guns and those who do not. Roughly four-in-ten Republicans who don’t own guns (41%) say that gun laws should be stricter, compared with just 15% of Republican gun owners. Republican gun owners are more likely than non-owners to say that current laws are about right (49% vs. 41%) or that they should be less strict (35% vs. 17%).

While large majorities of Democratic gun owners (73%) say that laws should be stricter, Democrats who don’t own guns overwhelmingly hold this view (89%).

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About 1 in 4 u.s. teachers say their school went into a gun-related lockdown in the last school year, striking findings from 2023, key facts about americans and guns, for most u.s. gun owners, protection is the main reason they own a gun, most popular, report materials.

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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New Histories of Gun Rights and Regulation: Essays on the Place of Guns in American Law and Society

Lanty L. Smith 67 Distinguished Professor of Law

Associate Professor of Law

Melvin G. Shimm Distinguished Professor of Law

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The future of Second Amendment law and scholarship will continue to be determined in large part by history. In this area of constitutional law, perhaps more than in any other, our understanding of the past continues to shape the present—the scope of the constitutional right, and accordingly, the government’s power to regulate in the interest of public safety, hangs in the balance. The essays in this book explore the historical tradition of gun rights and regulation, broadening the growing scholarly conversation about the law and history of firearms. The contributors, which include distinguished historians and legal scholars, add valuable new context and content to the place of guns in American law and society.

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Gun Control Argumentative Essay: The Definitive Guide

What Is Gun Control?

Gun control refers to the regulation and management of firearms within a given jurisdiction. It involves the creation and enforcement of laws, policies, and measures aimed at restricting the possession, use, and distribution of firearms. The objectives of gun control vary, but they often include enhancing public safety, preventing gun-related crimes, reducing the likelihood of mass shootings, and addressing concerns about domestic violence.

Gun control measures can encompass a range of policies, such as background checks for gun buyers, restrictions on the types of firearms and accessories available for civilian use, waiting periods before obtaining a firearm, and limitations on the number of firearms an individual can own. Additionally, some jurisdictions may implement licensing requirements, mandatory firearm registration, and regulations regarding the storage and carrying of firearms.

Debates surrounding gun control often involve discussions about individual rights, constitutional interpretations (such as the Second Amendment in the United States), and the balance between personal freedoms and public safety. Advocates for gun control argue that it is necessary to curb gun violence and prevent tragedies, while opponents may emphasize the importance of individual liberties and the right to bear arms for self-defense.

Overall, gun control is a complex and contentious issue that involves finding a balance between protecting public safety and respecting the rights of individuals to own firearms.

How to Choose a Topic for Argumentative Essay on Gun Control?

Choosing an argumentative essay on gun regulation involves considering various factors to ensure that your topic is relevant and engaging, allowing for a thorough exploration of the issue. Here are some tips to help you choose a compelling argumentative essay topic on gun control:

1. Define Your Position

• Consider your stance on the issue. Are you in favor of stricter gun control measures, or do you argue for more permissive policies? Understanding your position will guide your topic selection.

2. Consider Current Events

• Look at recent news and developments related to gun control. Timely and relevant topics often generate more interest and provide an opportunity to engage with current debates.

3. Narrow Down the Focus

• Gun control is a broad topic. Narrow it down to a specific aspect or angle that interests you. For example, you could focus on the impact of gun control on reducing crime, the effectiveness of background checks, or the constitutional implications.

4. Research Available Data

• Ensure that there is enough research material available on your chosen topic. Access to credible sources and data will strengthen your argument and provide evidence to support your claims.

5. Consider the Audience

• Consider your target audience and choose a topic that resonates with their interests and concerns. Tailoring your argument to your audience can make your argumentative essay more persuasive.

6. Explore Both Sides

• Choose a topic that allows for a balanced discussion. Exploring both sides of the argument demonstrates a thorough understanding of the issue and can make your argumentative essay more nuanced and convincing.

7. Avoid Extreme Positions

• While it's important to have a clear stance, avoid overly extreme positions that may alienate readers. Aim for a topic that allows for a reasonable and well-supported argument.

8. Address Local or Global Perspectives

• Consider whether you want to focus on gun control at a local, national, or global level. Different regions may have unique challenges and perspectives on the issue.

9. Check Assignment Guidelines

• Ensure that your chosen topic aligns with the guidelines and requirements of your assignment. Check for any specific instructions provided by your instructor.

10. Personal Connection

• If you have a personal connection or experience related to gun control, it can add depth and authenticity to your argumentative essay. However, be mindful of maintaining a balanced and evidence-based argument.

By carefully considering these factors, you can choose a great argumentative essay topic on gun control that allows for a thorough exploration of the issue and engages your readers.

How to Write a Gun Control Argumentative Essay?

Writing a gun control argumentative essay involves presenting a clear and persuasive argument on the topic. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you structure and write your argumentative essay:

1. Understand the Assignment

• Before you start writing, make sure you understand the requirements and guidelines of your assignment. Know the purpose of your argumentative essay and any specific instructions from your instructor.

2. Choose a Strong Thesis Statement

• Develop a concise and specific thesis statement that outlines your main argument or position on gun control. This statement should clearly convey your stance on the issue.

3. Research Thoroughly

• Gather information from credible sources to support your argument. Look for data, statistics, expert opinions, and case studies related to gun control. Ensure that your research is balanced and addresses both sides of the issue.

4. Outline Your Argumentative Essay

• Create a well-organized outline to structure your argumentative essay. Divide it into an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Each section should have a clear purpose and contribute to the overall coherence of your argument.

5. Write a Compelling Introduction

• Start your argumentative essay with an engaging introduction that introduces the topic, provides background information, and ends with your thesis statement. Capture the reader's attention and set the tone for your argument.

6. Develop Strong Body Paragraphs

• Each body paragraph should focus on a specific point or aspect of your argument. Start each paragraph with a clear topic sentence and provide evidence to support your claims. Use examples, statistics, and quotations to reinforce your points.

7. Address Counterarguments

• Acknowledge and address opposing viewpoints. Anticipate counterarguments and refute them with strong evidence and reasoning. Demonstrating awareness of alternative perspectives adds credibility to your argumentative essay.

8. Use Clear and Convincing Language

• Write in a clear, concise, and persuasive manner. Avoid vague language and ensure that your arguments are logically presented. Use transition words to create a smooth flow between paragraphs.

9. Provide Real-Life Examples

• Support your arguments with real-life examples or case studies. Personal stories, historical events, or current news stories can add depth to your argumentative essay and make your points more relatable.

10. Conclude Effectively

• Summarize your main points in the conclusion and restate your thesis. Avoid introducing new information in the conclusion. End with a strong closing statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

11. Revise and Edit

• Review your essay for clarity, coherence, and grammar. Check for any inconsistencies or gaps in your argument. Consider seeking feedback from peers or instructors to improve the overall quality of your argumentative essay.

12. Format According to Guidelines

• Ensure your argumentative essay follows the required formatting guidelines, including citation style (APA, MLA, etc.). Properly cite all sources used in your research.

By following these steps, you can craft a well-structured and persuasive gun control argumentative essay that effectively communicates your position on the topic.

Gun Control Argumentative Essay Topics

Here’s a list of excellent argumentative essay topics on gun control to use in writing your argumentative paper. If you like any of the topics but have no time to develop them properly in a written form, please consult our argumentative essay writing service .

• Stricter laws could help reduce gun violence.
• Background checks may prevent crimes involving guns.
• The Second Amendment's role in individual rights and public safety is unclear.
• Checking mental health might improve gun control efforts.
• Countries with fewer guns tend to have lower homicide rates.
• Gun lobbyists have a significant impact on making laws.
• Arming teachers may not be the best idea for school safety.
• Gun shows contribute to unregulated gun sales.
• Gun buyback programs aim to make communities safer.
• Community policing could be better for public safety than strict gun control.
• Access to firearms affects domestic violence rates.
• Preventing mass shootings may require more than just gun control.
• Gun control may affect racial groups differently.
• Concealed carry laws may impact personal protection and public safety.
• Smart guns and new technology aim to make firearms safer.
• America's love for guns impacts gun control discussions.
• Deciding on gun laws raises questions about federal vs. state control.
• Gun violence has significant economic costs to society.
• Learning from other countries may inform better gun control approaches.
• Media plays a role in shaping public perception of gun control issues.

Pro-Gun Control Argumentative Essay Topics

Stricter gun control regulations get all the hype nowadays, given the recent events in the United States. It may be a smart choice to examine pro-gun control topics if you want to draw readers’ attention.

• Making background checks universal can help control guns.
• Waiting periods before buying guns may prevent impulsive violence.
• Strict licensing for guns is necessary for public safety.
• Banning high-capacity magazines can reduce the severity of mass shootings.
• Smart gun technology enhances safety and limits unauthorized use.
• Mental health screening should be a part of gun purchases.
• Red flag laws can prevent individuals at risk from accessing guns.
• Understanding public opinion is crucial for effective gun control.
• Gun control is vital in addressing domestic violence and protecting victims.
• Examining the impact of gun-free zones on public safety is important.
• Community policing can help collaboratively address gun violence.
• Reducing accidental shootings involves looking at gun ownership.
• Addressing gun trafficking requires better cooperation between federal and state authorities.
• Gun control is crucial for reducing injuries and promoting public health.
• Connecting gun control with suicide prevention is essential.
• Examining the influence of corporate interests in the firearms industry is important.
• Gun control can be a deterrent, learning from international success stories.
• Banning assault weapons mitigates the impact of military-style firearms.
• Stricter regulations are needed to reduce the economic cost of gun violence.
• Promoting responsible gun ownership laws through education enhances safety and awareness.

Anti-Gun Control Argumentative Essay Topics

Always weigh in on the pros and cons of a certain topic. Although it may seem contradictory, anti-gun control topics can allow the classroom to explore an opposing point of view to understand the counterparts better and maybe come up with interesting conclusions on the matter.

• Individual rights should prevail over stricter gun control measures.
• The Second Amendment protects an inviolable right to resist further regulations.
• Background checks are doubted for their efficacy in preventing crimes.
• Waiting periods for gun purchases are seen as an infringement on personal freedom.
• High-capacity magazines' direct link to mass shootings is challenged.
• Pushback against smart gun technology raises concerns and critiques.
• Mental health screening is criticized for potential stigmatization and privacy issues.
• Red flag laws need to balance safety and individual liberties.
• Skepticism surrounds public opinion on the need for more gun control.
• Gun-free zones are questioned for their role in attracting criminal activity.
• Community policing is favored over strict gun control for addressing root causes.
• Accidental shootings raise questions about individual responsibility versus legislation.
• Gun trafficking solutions should focus on local rather than federal measures.
• Unintended consequences of gun control on law-abiding citizens are highlighted.
• Doubts persist about the effectiveness of gun control in improving public health.
• Corporate influence on gun control legislation deserves a closer examination.
• Skepticism exists about the applicability of international approaches to local contexts.
• The impact of an assault weapons ban on personal defense is scrutinized.
• The economic consequences of stricter gun control are considered unintended.
• Educational initiatives are suggested as an alternative approach to gun safety.

Gun Control Argumentative Essay Example

As we studied what gun control is, why it stirs so much controversy, and what are some great topics to write about, it’s time we analyzed one of the argumentative essay examples regarding gun control. Keep in mind – it’s for your inspirational needs only!

The Gun Control Debate: Constitutional Rights vs. Public and Personal Safety

The issue of gun control has been a contentious topic that has sparked intense debates across the United States. On the one hand, proponents argue for stricter regulations to curb the rising gun violence. On the other hand, opponents emphasize the importance of protecting individual rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Striking a balance between these two perspectives is essential to ensure public safety without infringing upon constitutionally protected freedoms.

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution states, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." This amendment has been at the center of the gun control debate, with advocates arguing that it guarantees an individual's right to own firearms for self-defense and protection against tyranny. Any attempt to restrict this right must be carefully examined to avoid violating the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.

The alarming increase in gun violence in recent years has raised concerns about public safety. Mass shootings, homicides, and suicides involving firearms have become all too common, necessitating a reevaluation of existing gun control measures. Stricter regulations on the purchase, possession, and use of firearms are essential to prevent firearms from falling into the wrong hands and to mitigate the devastating consequences of gun-related incidents.

Implementing effective gun control measures requires finding a middle ground that respects individual rights while promoting public safety. Background checks, waiting periods, and mandatory firearm training are potential measures that can help ensure responsible gun ownership. By focusing on these aspects, the government can maintain a balance that protects both individual liberties and the collective safety of the community.

Addressing mental health issues is a crucial aspect of the gun control debate. Many incidents involving firearms are linked to individuals with untreated mental health conditions. By investing in mental health resources and integrating mental health evaluations into the gun purchase process, society can strive to prevent individuals who pose a danger to themselves or others from accessing firearms.

Comparing the gun control policies of other developed nations can provide valuable insights. Countries with stricter gun control measures often experience lower rates of gun violence. Analyzing these models can help the United States identify effective strategies that balance individual rights and public safety.

In conclusion, the gun control debate is a complex and multifaceted issue that requires careful consideration of individual rights and public safety. Striking a balance between the two is crucial to addressing the escalating gun violence while respecting the constitutional rights of citizens. By implementing sensible regulations, focusing on responsible ownership, and addressing mental health concerns, society can work towards a safer future without compromising fundamental freedoms.

Final Remark

Gun control regulation sparks considerable controversy in the United States due to deeply entrenched cultural and political factors. The country has a long-standing tradition of gun ownership dating back to its founding, with the Second Amendment enshrining the right to bear arms in the Constitution. Additionally, the historical significance of firearms in shaping American identity and the perceived importance of self-defense contribute to staunch opposition to any perceived infringement on gun rights. 

Moreover, the issue is heavily politicized, with political parties and interest groups taking firm stances on either side of the debate. Given its complexity and relevance to contemporary society, students should explore this topic through argumentative essays to gain a deeper understanding of the multifaceted factors at play, ranging from constitutional interpretation and public policy to social and cultural dynamics.

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Racist Gun Laws and the Second Amendment

• Adam Winkler
• See full issue

For a significant portion of American history, gun laws bore the ugly taint of racism. 1 The founding generation that wrote the Second Amendment had racist gun laws, including prohibitions on the possession or carrying of firearms by Black people, whether free or enslaved. 2 A Florida law in 1825 authorized white people to “enter into all Negro houses” and “lawfully seize and take away all such arms, weapons, and ammunition.” 3 In Dred Scott v. Sandford , 4 Chief Justice Roger Taney argued that one reason Black people could not be citizens under the Constitution was that it “would give to persons of the negro race” the right “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” 5 After the Civil War, the Black Codes enacted in the South made it a crime for a Black person to have a gun. 6 Even facially neutral laws were used in a racially discriminatory fashion; Martin Luther King Jr. was denied a concealed carry permit even after his house was firebombed. 7 For much of American history, gun rights did not extend to Black people and gun control was often enacted to limit access to guns by people of color.

What are the implications of this racist history of gun laws on how we understand and apply the Second Amendment? This Essay considers three. First, the history of racist gun laws will complicate the emergent Second Amendment test that looks to “text, history, and tradition” to determine the scope of the Second Amendment. 8 That test seeks out historical precedents to identify whether current laws are permissible, but some of the antecedents courts will be required to consider were at least partially motivated by racism or reflected racist attitudes. Second, the history of racist gun laws might suggest that courts today should be inherently suspect of any gun laws. This argument, however, proves too much, and there are good reasons for courts to reject such skepticism. Third and finally, the history of racist guns calls for us to be attentive to the racially disproportionate impact of gun laws today. While constitutional doctrine does not empower judges to strike down laws solely for a racially disparate impact, legislators and activists should be aware of it in shaping legislation or reform to minimize the racial skew.

“History and tradition” is rising to prominence in Second Amendment jurisprudence as a way to determine the constitutionality of gun laws, but that approach is significantly complicated by the fact that many gun laws adopted over the course of American history were racially motivated.

Even as the federal circuit courts coalesced around a form of intermediate scrutiny in the immediate aftermath of District of Columbia v. Heller , 9 Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, when they were still circuit court judges, argued that courts should instead use a historically informed approach. 10 In Heller v. District of Columbia 11 ( Heller II ), for example, then-Judge Kavanaugh dissented from the D.C. Circuit’s decision upholding mandatory gun registration and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. 12 Then-Judge Kavanaugh disagreed not only with the outcome but also with the circuit court’s application of intermediate scrutiny, writing: “In my view, Heller and McDonald leave little doubt that courts are to assess gun bans and regulations based on text, history, and tradition, not by a balancing test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny.” 13 He continued on to note that the problem with balancing tests is that they allow judges to “re-calibrate the scope of the Second Amendment right based on judicial assessment of whether the law advances a sufficiently compelling or important government interest to override the individual right.” 14 Balancing tests give judges too much discretion, according to this view, allowing judges to impose their own personal views on the Constitution.

Then-Judge Kavanaugh argued that a more determinate approach is to look to the history of gun laws to determine the constitutionality of gun restrictions today. 15 Laws that have longstanding historical precedents are presumptively constitutional, whereas novel laws without a tradition behind them are more likely to be unconstitutional. This historically grounded approach asks judges to put aside their personal views and allow the patterns and practices of the American people to shape constitutional meaning. “‘[E]xamination of a variety of legal and other sources to determine the public understanding of a legal text in the period after its enactment or ratification,’” Kavanaugh argued, “is a ‘critical tool of constitutional interpretation.’” 16

There are several pitfalls with a history and tradition approach. The historical materials may be so vague or conflicting as to render a conclusive judgement about what history permits near impossible. For example, in New York State Rifle and Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen 17 , No. 20-843 (argued Nov. 3, 2021). ( NYSRPA ), the currently pending Supreme Court case on the right to carry a gun in public, advocates marshalled extensive historical evidence on both sides of the dispute. 18 A Justice inclined to believe there is no right to carry firearms in public has plenty to base their decision on, and the same can be said for a Justice inclined to view public carry as a constitutionally protected right. There is also the problem that many gun laws over the years were enacted without any consideration of the Second Amendment because the Supreme Court had not definitively established that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to bear arms until 2008. 19 As a result, legislators did not always need to deliberate carefully over the scope and meaning of the right to keep and bear arms when enacting gun laws, and therefore those laws might tell us very little about the location of Second Amendment boundaries.

The history of racist gun laws presents a special dilemma for Second Amendment history and tradition analysis. Of course, the long history of racist gun laws does not suggest that governments today can limit guns in racially discriminatory ways. The Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection prohibits racially discriminatory gun laws just as it bars other types of racially discriminatory laws. Yet there will arise situations in which even a racially discriminatory gun law of the past might provide some basis for recognizing that lawmakers have a degree of regulatory authority over guns.

For example, some scholars have argued that modern laws that deny the right to keep and bear arms to people with felony convictions are constitutional in part because the Founding generation had laws disarming people thought to be unusually dangerous or unvirtuous, such as Black people, Native Americans, and enslaved persons. 20 Although clear that legislatures no longer have the power to adopt racially discriminatory gun laws, these scholars argue that the racist gun laws nonetheless reflect a legitimate and constitutional power by legislatures to disarm people who are deemed either dangerous or lacking in virtue. That regulatory authority remains viable today, even if it can’t be used for racist purposes, and these scholars suggest that it can justify at least some bans on firearms possession by felons and domestic abusers. In this analysis, the scope of the Second Amendment is in fact influenced by undeniably racist gun laws.

This example highlights another difficulty with history and tradition analysis: What level of generality should courts use in assessing historical gun laws? Courts could demand that any gun law today find very clear historical precedents that operated in precisely the same way. A felon-possession ban, for example, would be constitutional if there was a long practice of laws specifically barring felons from having guns. Using only exact historical matches may be a plausible way to conduct a history and tradition analysis, but it would effectively disable lawmakers today from regulating guns in the way current society demands. Many laws that judges across the political spectrum approve of — including bans on the possession of firearms by domestic abusers 21 and those with mental disabilities 22 — have no precise historical precedents prior to the mid-twentieth century. These are modern-day laws and a history and tradition analysis that requires a more or less exact historical match would require striking them all down.

The alternative is to frame the gun laws of the past at a higher level of generality, but this option undermines one of the primary rationales judges like Justice Kavanaugh use to justify history and tradition analysis. Framing historical gun laws at a higher level of generality is exactly what those who see the Founding-era laws as reflecting a legislative power to disarm dangerous or unvirtuous people do. Although the laws themselves did not explicitly ban gun possession by “dangerous” or “unvirtuous” people, we can arguably view the particular laws banning Black people, Native Americans, and other minorities as manifestations of a broader category of regulatory power. Yet resorting to such a broader category invites much of the same judicial discretion that a history and tradition test is supposed to avoid. It is judges today, not lawmakers of the past, who define the broader category, such as dangerousness or lack of virtue. And judges can easily manipulate the categories to reach their preferred outcomes. One could imagine that a liberal judge who believes informal armed militias are a threat to democracy might vote to uphold a ban on members possessing firearms. Or that a conservative judge who believes that undocumented immigrants lack virtue due to their violation of immigration laws might vote to uphold a ban on their possession of weapons. In either case, judges with the authority to cast past laws at a higher level of generality will be empowered with discretion to impose their own values on the Constitution. Once the level-of-generality problem is introduced, one of the primary justifications for a history and tradition analysis is severely diminished.

This level-of-generality problem is not unique to the Second Amendment but bedevils originalism more broadly. As Judge Easterbrook recognized three decades ago, “[m]ovements in the level of constitutional generality may be used to justify almost any outcome.” 23 Originalists in the 1970s and 1980s promoted historical inquiry at a very specific level, arguing that constitutional terms should be applied to reach the same outcomes as would have been expected by the people who wrote and ratified the relevant provisions. This “original intent” version of originalism has been replaced by a newer originalism, “public meaning originalism,” that recognizes how many of the Constitution’s rights guarantees are phrased at a high level of generality — “freedom of speech,” “due process,” “equal protection” — and argues that judges should protect those rights at that more abstract level, even if it means arriving at different results from the original originalists. Yet this move up the ladder of generality “creat[es] the very problem that the old originalism was designed to address” — that is, “to prevent the unconstrained judicial creativity that can follow from seeking the original meaning . . . at a high level of generality.” 24 In the Second Amendment context, however, the problem is even worse, because instead of looking to a text to define the level of generality, judges are required to simply make up the categories, such as dangerous or unvirtuous, themselves.

A judge could eschew the level-of-generality problem by simply rejecting the historical relevance of any gun law with a racist motive or reflecting racist attitudes. This approach appears justifiable on a surface level but confronts serious dilemmas on closer inspection. First, it would likely lead judges to afford legislatures less regulatory authority than the original understanding and historical traditions of the Second Amendment would otherwise permit. Legislatures have always had a considerable sphere of authority to regulate guns. Although they employed that power to further racist motives, the basic sphere of authority to regulate — outside of racist laws in violation of equal protection — remains intact. Yet if judges ignore any law with a racist influence, the courts may not accurately identify the full scope of regulatory authority.

Second, judges determined to discount any law with a racist motive will have to decide how much racism is too much. Many, perhaps most, gun laws enacted between 1789 and 1940 were influenced at least in part by racism. The concealed carry law at issue in NYSRPA traces back to the Sullivan Law, which was at least partially influenced by anti-immigrant sentiment. 25 However, that motivation is not the entire story; there were public-safety concerns that were part of the inspiration for the law too. 26 How is a judge to weigh the competing motives? Is a little bit of racism totally disqualifying? If so, then discretionary granting of permits for concealed carry is unconstitutional. At the same time, however, similar laws were enacted in other states, like Montana and South Dakota, without any obvious racist motive — suggesting that the laws were within the historical power of states to adopt. 27 So is discretionary licensing justified by history and tradition or not? The answers are not easy, and judges trying to make sense of history and tradition in a country with a legacy of racist gun laws have little guidance in this wilderness.

One potential implication of the history of racist gun laws is that they could provide a reason for judges to be skeptical of all gun laws. Yet there are reasons, both practical and constitutional, to be skeptical of such skepticism.

Courts do sometimes treat laws skeptically because such laws have been used in the past for purposes of racial exclusion. Courts today approach laws that employ racial categories this way. Because race has so often been used by lawmakers to buttress white supremacy and oppress racial minorities, any explicit use of race today — even in laws designed to open up equal opportunities for people of color — triggers strict scrutiny. Only after applying strict scrutiny, the Supreme Court has told us, can we know whether a racial classification in a law is benign or invidious. 28

While the racism of past gun laws does and should give one pause, we might nonetheless recognize that many areas of law have historically been used to perpetuate racial discrimination but that courts don’t approach every law in those areas as inherently suspect. Property laws were used to enforce racially restrictive covenants, but that doesn’t mean that all laws regulating property should be presumptively unconstitutional. 29 Zoning laws were used to create and maintain racial segregation, but courts do not automatically review zoning laws with strict scrutiny. 30 Marriage laws were explicitly racially discriminatory, 31 as were criminal laws 32 and laws regulating voting. 33 Yet in all of these areas we still recognize that some forms of regulation are necessary and lawmakers are given wide leeway, more or less, to devise regulatory reforms absent the explicit use of race.

Skeptical judicial scrutiny of all gun laws would also appear to be in tension with the text of the Second Amendment, which recognizes the legitimacy — even necessity — of some regulation. The prefatory clause refers to a “well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.” 34 If we assume, as Heller suggested, that the “Militia” is shorthand for the common citizenry capable of bearing arms in defense of the state, 35 then the Second Amendment envisions that guns and gun owners are subject to at least some measure of government regulation. Heller also suggested that this language permits only “discipline and training,” rather than recognizing a government authority of any breadth. 36 This constrained definition, however, runs counter to other textual provisions of the Constitution adopted around the same time that use “regulate” or “regulation” to suggest broader government authority that includes controlling, directing, or prohibiting activity. 37

The Second Amendment not only imagines government regulation but also calls for states to do it qualitatively “well” — not haphazardly, poorly, or partially. This explicit embrace of governmental authority would be undermined by a standard or test that presumed the unconstitutionality of every gun law. Contrast the Second Amendment to the First Amendment, which says that “Congress shall make no law” and makes no mention of the government’s regulatory authority. 38 The Second Amendment is more like the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires probable cause for warrants. 39 The Fourth Amendment assumes that government has authority to conduct investigations and imposes certain boundaries on that power. Similarly, the Second Amendment both acknowledges and imposes a limit on the regulatory authority of the state; the militia must be well regulated but the government cannot go so far as to infringe the right of the people to have arms. It bears noting that, while strict scrutiny applies in some First Amendment cases, the courts do not use strict scrutiny in Fourth Amendment cases. 40

There is also reason to doubt the claim that gun laws enacted today are motivated by racial animus. Polling data show that minorities and communities of color are among the nation’s strongest supporters of gun control; 41 elected officials who represent them are among the most vocal about the need for more gun laws. 42 Gun violence is disproportionately felt by these communities and their support for gun control reflects not racism, but rather their desire to live in safer neighborhoods and reduce gun violence. It defies common sense and Americans’ lived experience to suggest that all or even most gun laws are enacted or maintained today because they harm racial minorities.

Even if gun laws today are not typically racially motivated, some of them likely have a racially disproportionate impact, and the history of racist gun laws serves as a reminder to try to avoid, eliminate, or at least minimize such discriminatory effects. People of color are far overrepresented among those convicted of federal firearms offenses. According to recent data, approximately seventy percent of all defendants convicted of federal firearms offenses were minorities, 43 even though those same communities make up only about forty percent of the population. 44 The widely popular ban on possession of firearms by felons has a distinctly racially disparate impact. Black and Latino people are disproportionately represented among those who are arrested and convicted of felonies generally, so they make up a relatively large share of the people prohibited from possessing firearms. The lifetime duration of the federal ban means the numbers quickly add up, and it has been estimated that approximately one in four Black men in the United States has a felony conviction on their record. 45 That means that one in four Black men do not enjoy the right to keep and bear arms.

Banning high-capacity magazines — a proposal popular with gun-safety advocates — might also be expected to have a racially disproportionate impact on communities of color. In cities and states that have adopted bans on the possession of high-capacity magazines, there appears to be widespread noncompliance, with little evidence of gun owners discarding their now-illegal magazines or turning them in to authorities. The law is on the books, but people still have their high-capacity magazines and there is no practical or constitutional way for the government to search people’s homes to find them. Instead, the ban will often be enforced when someone who happens to have a high-capacity magazine is stopped, searched, or arrested by the police. Due to condemnable but nonetheless highly predictable practices of over-policing in minority communities, a disproportionate percentage of those convicted of violating the ban on high-capacity magazines are likely to be people of color.

These sorts of disparate impacts are likely unavoidable because gun laws tend to be criminal laws and minorities are overrepresented in the criminal process. Absent significant reform of the criminal justice system, people of color are almost certain to make up an excessive percentage of gun law violations. That should not dissuade lawmakers from adopting needed gun reforms, but it should prompt them to consider ways to limit such racially disproportionate outcomes. To lower the burden on minorities, for example, advocates might seek to reform the lifetime ban on possession of firearms by felons similar to how voting rights advocates have sought to lift the lifetime bans on voting by felons imposed by some states. Or advocates might focus less on criminalizing disfavored gun accessories and emphasize other reforms, such as community intervention programs like Operation Ceasefire, that have a proven track record of reducing gun violence without locking up large numbers of people of color. 46

For courts, the racially disparate impact of some gun laws would not be enough — at least under current constitutional doctrine — to invalidate them. Under Washington v. Davis , 47 a law is deemed to be racially discriminatory only when there is discriminatory intent — in other words, the law was at least partially motivated by race. 48 And, as noted earlier, modern gun laws are not typically enacted or preserved because of racist motivations. One potential difference is that Washington v. Davis was an equal protection case under the Fifth Amendment (with equal application to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment), not a Second Amendment case. While it seems unlikely, there is always the possibility the Supreme Court could decide that a racially disparate impact suffices to invalidate a law under Second Amendment doctrine. The Court often devises different doctrinal rules for different constitutional rights, and perhaps the Justices might be inclined to view a disparate impact standard as appropriate for gun rights given the history of racist gun laws, even if disparate impact isn’t applicable under equal protection.

Justice Alito has been one jurist who has shown more sensitivity to racism in gun laws than to racist motivations elsewhere in the law. When the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana and Oregon laws permitting criminal convictions by nonunanimous jury verdicts in Ramos v. Louisiana , 49 in part because laws permitting the practice were rooted in white supremacy, 50 Justice Alito dissented: “To add insult to injury, the Court tars Louisiana and Oregon with the charge of racism for permitting nonunanimous verdicts.” 51 In the voting rights context, Justice Alito authored the Court’s opinion in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee , 52 making it harder for plaintiffs to show that voting laws are racially discriminatory. 53 And in Department of Commerce v. New York , 54 which prohibited the Trump Administration from including a question about citizenship in the census, 55 Justice Alito’s dissent expressed bewilderment that “the decision to place such a question on the 2020 census questionnaire is attacked as racist.” 56

In Second Amendment cases, by contrast, Justice Alito often sees racism at work. As the author of the majority opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago , 57 which held that the Second Amendment was incorporated to apply to state and local governments, Justice Alito discussed at length how racist efforts to disarm Southern Black people in the years after the Civil War helped to inspire the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. 58 In the oral argument in NYSRPA , Justice Alito pointed to the racist motives behind New York’s restrictive concealed carry permitting law: “[T]here are those who argue . . . that a major reason for the enactment of the Sullivan Law was the belief that certain disfavored groups, members of labor unions, Blacks and Italians, were carrying guns and they were dangerous people and they wanted them disarmed.” 59

Perhaps by seeing how gun laws have been tainted by racism, Justices like Justice Alito might become more willing to see how other types of facially neutral laws are similarly suspect. That might be just wishful thinking, but in this time of growing public awareness of institutional racism and implicit bias, legal developments that push judges and justices to recognize the hidden ways that racism works are likely to be a good thing. If nothing else, the history of racist gun laws may make it easier to see, and to eliminate, the racism deeply embedded in other areas of law.

As the courts increasingly look to history and tradition to determine the scope of the right to keep and bear arms, they will have to decide how to deal with the history of racist gun laws. It is tempting for jurists worried about unelected judges imposing their own values on the Constitution to seek answers in past practices, which might seem determinate and objectively verifiable. Yet the legislation of the past is hardly neutral; the racism embedded in so many gun laws reminds us that such legislation was enacted not out of a solemn attempt to police the boundaries of the Second Amendment but in an effort to abuse the law to protect racial privilege and hierarchy. That does not mean that all gun laws ought to be immediately suspect, however, due to the text of the Second Amendment and the tradition of other gun laws that promoted public safety without racist taint. Yet the history of racist gun laws also must not be forgotten, and if nothing else, it should inspire gun reform advocates and lawmakers to craft efforts to reduce gun violence without a racially disproportionate impact.

* Connell Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law.

^ On the racist history of gun laws, see generally Clayton E. Cramer, The Racist Roots of Gun Control , Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y , Winter 1995, at 17 (arguing that American gun laws were designed to disempower racial minorities); and Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond, The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration , 80 Geo. L.J . 309, 333–42 (1991) (outlining the ways in which American gun control specifically restricted Black Americans’ access to guns).

^ See Cramer, supra note 1, at 18.

^ Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond, The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration , in Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Second Amendment 403, 403 (Robert J. Cottrol ed., 1994).

^ 60 U.S. 393 (1857).

^ Id . at 417.

^ Cottrol & Diamond, supra note 1, at 344.

^ Adam Winkler, Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America 235 (2011).

^ Silvester v. Becerra, 138 S. Ct. 945, 947 (2018) (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari).

^ 554 U.S. 570 (2008). See generally Eric Ruben & Joseph Blocher, From Theory to Doctrine: An Empirical Analysis of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms After Heller, 67 Duke L.J . 1433 (2018).

^ See, e.g ., Heller v. District of Columbia ( Heller II ), 670 F.3d 1244, 1271 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting); Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437, 452 (Barrett, J., dissenting) (7th Cir. 2019). For a critical assessment of history and tradition analysis from a noted gun rights scholar, see Nelson Lund, The Proper Role of History and Tradition in Second Amendment Jurisprudence , 30 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 171 (2020).

^ 670 F.3d 1244 (D.C. Cir. 2011).

^ Id . at 1269 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting).

^ Id . at 1271.

^ Id . at 1273.

^ Id . at 1272 (quoting District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 605 (2008)).

^ Compare Brief for Petitioners at 29–39, NYSRPA , No. 20-843 (July 13, 2021), with Brief in Opposition at 21–31, NYSRPA , No. 20-843 (Feb. 22, 2021).

^ Heller , 554 U.S. at 576 (2008).

^ See, e.g ., Joseph G.S. Greenlee, The Historical Justification for Prohibiting Dangerous Persons from Possessing Arms , 20 Wyo. L. Rev . 249, 281–83 (2020); Don B. Kates, Jr., Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment , 82 Mich. L. Rev . 204, 266 (1983).

^ The federal ban on firearms possession by a person subject to a domestic-violence restraining order was first enacted in 1994, and the first federal ban on possession by people convicted of a domestic-violence misdemeanor was enacted in 1997. See Natalie Nanasi, Disarming Domestic Abusers , 14 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev . 559, 566, 568 (2020).

^ Federal law only began to prohibit people with diagnosed mental illness from possessing firearms in 1968. See Joseph R. Simpson, Bad Risk? An Overview of Laws Prohibiting Possession of Firearms by Individuals with a History of Treatment for Mental Illness , 35 J. Am. Acad. Psychiatry & L . 330, 331 (2007).

^ Frank H. Easterbrook, Exchange, Abstraction and Authority , 59 U. Chi. L. Rev . 349, 358 (1992).

^ Peter J. Smith, Originalism and Level of Generality , 51 Ga. L. Rev . 485, 493 (2017).

^ See generally Amici Curiae Brief of Italo-American Jurists and Attorneys in Support of Petitioners, NYSRPA , No. 20-843 (July 15, 2021).

^ See Winkler , supra note 7, at 206.

^ Id . at 209.

^ See City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 493 (1989).

^ See, e.g ., Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 21–23 (1948) (holding racially restrictive covenants unenforceable).

^ See Andrew H. Whittemore, The Role of Racial Bias in Exclusionary Zoning: The Case of Durham, North Carolina, 1945–2014 , 50 Env’t & Plan. A: Econ. & Space 826, 829 (2018).

^ See, e.g ., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 11–12 (1967) (invalidating a ban on interracial marriage).

^ See generally Heather Ann Thompson, The Racial History of Criminal Justice in America , 16 Du Bois Rev . 221 (2019).

^ See Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States 54–59 (2000).

^ U.S. Const . amend. II.

^ See District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 595–97 (2008).

^ Id . at 597.

^ See, e.g ., U.S. Const . art. I, § 8 (“The Congress shall have Power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes,” id . art. I, § 8, cl. 3, and “To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,” id . art. I, § 8, cl. 14.); id . art. IV, § 3, cl. 2 (“The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.”).

^ Id . amend. I.

^ Id . amend. IV.

^ See, e.g ., Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 652–53 (1995); Adam Winkler, Fundamentally Wrong About Fundamental Rights , 23 Const. Comment . 227, 229–30 (2006).

^ See Pew Rsch. Ctr ., Amid a Series of Mass Shootings in the U.S., Gun Policy Remains Deeply Divisive 10 (2021), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/04/20/amid-a-series-of-mass-shootings-in-the-u-s-gun-policy-remains-deeply-divisive [ https://perma.cc/YRQ2-QEB6 ] (showing majorities of Black, Hispanic, and Asian respondents say gun laws “should be stricter,” compared to only a minority of White respondents).

^ See, e.g ., David M. Herszenhorn, Black Caucus Demands Congress Hold Gun Vote After Shootings , N.Y. Times (July 8, 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/politics/black-caucus-demands-congress-tighten-gun-laws-after-shootings.html [ https://perma.cc/D83W-T2Z6 ].

^ Emily Tiry et al., Urb. Inst., Prosecution of Federal Firearms Offenses, 2000–16 , at 19 (2021), https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/254520.pdf [ https://perma.cc/W4Y9-M8M3 ].

^ See QuickFacts , U.S. Census Bureau , https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI225219 [ https://perma.cc/U7GB-ZS48 ] (showing about forty percent of people are not White).

^ Sarah K.S. Shannon et al., The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People with Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010 , 54 Demography 1795, 1807 (2017).

^ See Adam Winkler, Opinion, If the New Supreme Court Stymies Gun Safety Laws, What Comes Next? , N.Y. Times (Nov. 1, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/opinion/supreme-court-gun-control.html [ https://perma.cc/M6DY-6DTQ ] (proposing refocusing gun-safety-reform agenda to, among other things, community intervention programs).

^ 426 U.S. 229 (1976).

^ Id . at 242 (“Disproportionate impact is not irrelevant, but . . . [s]tanding alone, it does not trigger the rule . . . that racial classifications are to be subjected to the strictest scrutiny . . . .”).

^ 140 S. Ct. 1390 (2020).

^ Id . at 1394 (“Why do Louisiana and Oregon allow nonunanimous convictions? . . . [T]heir origins are clear. . . . According to one committee chairman, the avowed purpose of that convention was to ‘establish the supremacy of the white race’ . . . .”).

^ Id . at 1425 (Alito, J., dissenting).

^ 141 S. Ct. 2321 (2021).

^ See id . at 2343–48.

^ 139 S. Ct. 2551 (2019).

^ Id . at 2573–76 (“[T]he District Court was warranted in remanding to the agency, and we affirm that disposition. . . . Reasoned decisionmaking . . . calls for an explanation for agency action. What was provided here was more of a distraction.” Id . at 2576.).

^ Id . at 2596 (Alito, J., dissenting).

^ 561 U.S. 742 (2010).

^ See id . at 745.

^ Transcript of Oral Argument at 103–04, NYSRPA , No. 20-843 (Nov. 3, 2021), https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/20-843_f2q3.pdf [ https://perma.cc/3FFL-CYNE ].

• Constitutional Law
• Federal Courts
• Racial Justice
• Second Amendment

June 21, 2022

Should More Gun Control Laws Be Enacted?

History of Gun Control Laws

Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to  Catholics , enslaved people, indentured servants, and  Native Americans ; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned.

Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the  American Revolutionary War . Several colonies’ gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. Read more history…

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1 The Second Amendment is not an unlimited or individual right to own guns. In the June 26, 2008, District of Columbia et al. v. Heller U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited… nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” [ 3 ] On June 9, 2016 the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 7-4 that “[t]he right of the general public to carry a concealed firearm in public is not, and never has been, protected by the Second Amendment,” thus upholding a law requiring a permitting process and “good cause” for concealed carry licenses in California. [ 145 ] [ 146 ] A 2018 study found that 91% of the 1,153 court cases with claims stating a government action or law violate the Second Amendment between the 2008 D.C. v. Heller decision and Feb. 1, 2016 failed. [ 157 ] Further, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of militias to own guns, not the right of individuals to own guns. Former Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissenting opinion for District of Columbia et al. v. Heller , wrote, “the Framer’s single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee ‘to keep and bear arms’ was on military use of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias,” hence the inclusion of the phrase “well regulated militia.” [ 3 ] Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, stated there is nothing about an individual right to bear arms in the notes about the Second Amendment when it was being drafted, discussed, or ratified; the US Supreme Court declined to rule in favor of the individual right four times between 1876 and 1939; and all law articles on the Second Amendment from 1888 to 1959 stated that an individual right was not guaranteed. [ 47 ] Read More

Pro 2 More gun control laws would reduce gun deaths. There were 572,537 total gun deaths between 1999 and 2016: 336,579 suicides (58.8% of total gun deaths); 213,175 homicides (37.2%); and 11,428 unintentional deaths (2.0%). Guns were the leading cause of death by homicide (67.7% of all homicides) and by suicide (51.8% of all suicides). Firearms were the second leading cause of deaths for children, responsible for 15% of child deaths compared to 20% in motor vehicle crashes. [ 30 ] [ 162 ] Female first-time firearm owners were 35 times more likely to commit suicide within 12 years of buying the gun compared to women who did not own guns; male first-time firearm owners were about eight times more likely to do so. [ 171 ] [ 172 ] Approximately 50% of unintentional fatal shootings were self-inflicted; and most unintentional firearm deaths were caused by friends or family members. [ 4 ] [ 18 ] Five women are murdered with guns every day in the United States. A woman’s risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 5,364 US soldiers were killed in action between Oct. 7, 2001 and Jan. 28, 2015; between 2001 and 2012 6,410 women were killed with a gun by an intimate partner in the United States. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] [ 12 ] A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that “legal purchase of a handgun appears to be associated with a long-lasting increased risk of violent death” [ 6 ] Researchers found that a “general barrier to firearm access created through state regulation can have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide rates in the United States. Permit requirements and bans on sales to minors were the most effective of the regulations analyzed.” [ 32 ] According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, implementing federal universal background checks could reduce firearm deaths by a projected 56.9%; background checks for ammunition purchases could reduce deaths by a projected 80.7%; and gun identification requirements could reduce deaths by a projected 82.5%. [ 148 ] Gun licensing laws were associated with a 14% decrease in firearm homicides, while increases in firearm homicides were seen in places with right-to-carry and stand-your ground-laws. [ 158 ] [ 160 ] More gun control leads to fewer suicides. When US gun ownership goes down, overall suicide rates drop; meanwhile, each 10 percentage-point increase in gun ownership is linked to a 26.9% increase in the youth suicide rate. In Indiana and Connecticut, after “red flag” laws to remove guns from people who may pose a threat were enacted, gun suicides decreased by 7.5% and 13.7% respectively, while suicides by other means did not decrease during the same time. A person who wants to kill him/herself is unlikely to commit suicide with poison or a knife when a gun is unavailable. [ 31 ] [ 33 ] [ 158 ] [ 159 ] [ 164 ] The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 31% of total accidental shooting deaths could have been prevented by installing safety devices on guns: 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks; and 23% of accidental shooting deaths by adolescents and adults per year could be prevented by loading indicators showing when a bullet was in the chamber ready to be fired. [ 35 ] Marjorie Sanfilippo, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Eckerd College who has researched children’s behavior around guns, stated, “We put gates around swimming pools to keep children from drowning. We put safety caps on medications to keep children from poisoning themselves…. [B]ecause children are naturally curious and impulsive, and because we have shown time and again that we cannot ‘gun-proof’ them with education, we have a responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of children.” [ 36 ] Read More

Pro 3 The presence of a gun makes a conflict more likely to become violent. The FBI found that arguments (such as romantic triangles, brawls fueled by alcohol or drugs, and arguments over money) resulted in 1,962 gun deaths (59.9% of the total). [ 37 ] An editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health noted, “gun-inflicted deaths [often] ensue from impromptu arguments and fights; in the US, two-thirds of the 7,900 deaths in 1981 involving arguments and brawls were caused by guns.” A study published in the same journal found that “the weapons used [in altercations]… were those closest at hand.” And thus, according to another study, “[r]ather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.” [ 38 ] [ 39 ] [ 40 ] Statistics show that guns are rarely used in self-defense. Of the 29,618,300 violent crimes committed between 2007 and 2011, 0.79% of victims (235,700) protected themselves with a threat of use or use of a firearm, the least-employed protective behavior. In 2010 there were 230 “justifiable homicides” in which a private citizen used a firearm to kill a felon, compared to 8,275 criminal gun homicides (or, 36 criminal homicides for every “justifiable homicide”). Of the 84,495,500 property crimes committed between 2007 and 2011, 0.12% of victims (103,000) protected themselves with a threat of use or use of a firearm. [ 16 ] [ 17 ] Further, armed civilians are unlikely to stop crimes and are more likely to make dangerous situations, including mass shootings, more deadly. None of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012 were stopped by an armed civilian. Jeffrey Voccola, Assistant Professor of Writing at Kutztown University, notes, “The average gun owner, no matter how responsible, is not trained in law enforcement or on how to handle life-threatening situations, so in most cases, if a threat occurs, increasing the number of guns only creates a more volatile and dangerous situation.” [ 41 ] [ 43 ] Common sense gun control laws can decrease the likelihood of a violent situation turning deadly. President Ronald Reagan and others did not think the AR-15 military rifle (also called M16s by the Air Force) should be owned by civilians and, when the AR-15 was included in the assault weapons ban of 1994 (which expired on Sep. 13, 2004), the NRA supported the legislation. A Mother Jones investigation found that high-capacity magazines were used in at least 50% of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012.When high-capacity magazines were used in mass shootings, the death rate rose 63% and the injury rate rose 156%. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 48 ] The Second Amendment was written at a time when the most common arms were long rifles that had to be reloaded after every shot. Civilians today have access to folding, detaching, or telescoping stocks that make the guns more easily concealed and carried; silencers to muffle gunshot sounds; flash suppressors to fire in low-light conditions without being blinded by the flash and to conceal the shooter’s location; or grenade launcher attachments. Jonathan Lowy, Director of Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, states, “These are weapons that will shred your venison before you eat it, or go through the walls of your apartment when you’re trying to defend yourself… [they are] made for mass killing, but not useful for law-abiding citizens.” [ 49 ] [ 50 ] Read More

Pro 4 A majority of adults, including gun owners, support common sense gun control such as background checks, bans on assault weapons, and bans on high-capacity magazines. According to a Feb. 20, 2018 Quinnipiac Poll, 97% of American voters and 97% of gun owners support universal background checks. 67% support a nationwide ban on assault weapons, and 83% support mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases. [ 155 ] As much as 40% of all gun sales are undocumented private party gun sales that do not require a background check (aka the “gun show loophole”). [ 28 ] 53% of all adults surveyed approve of high-capacity magazine bans. 89% of adults with a gun in the home approve of laws to prevent the purchase of guns by the mentally ill, and 82% approve of banning gun sales to people on no-fly lists. [ 27 ] 77% of Americans support requiring a license to purchase a gun. [ 165 ] Don Macalady, member of Hunters against Gun Violence, stated, “As a hunter and someone who has owned guns since I was a young boy, I believe that commonsense gun legislation makes us all safer. Background checks prevent criminals and other dangerous people from getting guns.” [ 29 ] Many would like to see the U.S. enact more laws like other countries, citing the fact that countries with restrictive gun control laws have lower gun homicide and suicide rates than the United States. Both Switzerland and Finland require gun owners to acquire licenses and pass background checks that include mental and criminal records, among other restrictions and requirements. In 2007 Switzerland ranked number 3 in international gun ownership rates with 45.7 guns per 100 people (about 3,400,000 guns total). In 2009 Switzerland had 24 gun homicides (0.31 deaths per 100,000 people) and 253 gun suicides (3.29 deaths per 100,000 people). Finland ranked fourth in international gun ownership rates with 45.3 guns per 100 people (about 2,400,000 guns total). In 2007 Finland had 23 (0.43 deaths per 100,000 people) gun homicides and 172 gun suicides (4.19 deaths per 100,000 people). [ 44 ] [ 45 ] Read More

Con 1 The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects individual gun ownership. The Second Amendment of the US Constitution reads, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Gun ownership is an American tradition older than the country itself and is protected by the Second Amendment; more gun control laws would infringe upon the right to bear arms. Justice Antonin Scalia in the June 26, 2008, District of Columbia et al. v. Heller U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion syllabus stated, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” [ 3 ] The McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) ruling also stated that the Second Amendment is an individual right. [ 51 ] Lawrence Hunter, Chairman of Revolution PAC, stated, “The Founders understood that the right to own and bear laws is as fundamental and as essential to maintaining liberty as are the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and the other protections against government encroachments on liberty delineated in the Bill of Rights.” [ 52 ] The Second Amendment was intended to protect gun ownership of all able-bodied men so that they could participate in the militia to keep the peace and defend the country if needed. According to the United States Code, a “militia” is composed of all “able-bodied males at least 17 years of age… under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.” Therefore, the militia mentioned in the Second Amendment would have been composed of almost all adult men and, in turn, that most adult men should not have their right to own firearms infringed. [ 99 ] [ 100 ] Read More

Con 2 Gun control laws are discriminatory and infringe on citizens’ rights Current gun control laws are frequently aimed at inner city, poor, black communities who are perceived as more dangerous than white gun owners. Charles Gallagher, Chair of Sociology at LaSalle University, stated that some gun control laws are still founded on racial fears: “Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1.” [ 94 ] [ 95 ] [ 96 ] In the late 1960s, gun control laws were enacted in reaction to the militant, gun-carrying Black Panthers. Adam Winkler, UCLA Constitutional Law Professor, stated “The KKK began as a gun-control organization. Before the Civil War, blacks were never allowed to own guns” so, after the Civil War, there was “constant pressure among white racists to keep guns out of the hands of African Americans because they would rise up and revolt.” For example, in Virginia, in response to Nat Turner’s Rebellion (also called the Southampton Rebellion, in which enslaved people killed 55 to 65 people in the most fatal slave uprising in the United States) in 1831, a law was passed that prohibited free black people “to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead and all laws allowing free black people to possess firearms were repealed. [ 97 ] [ 98 ] Background checks and micro-stamping are an invasion of privacy. Background checks require government databases that keep personal individual information on gun owners, including name, addresses, mental health history, criminal records, and more. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worried that Senator Harry Reid’s 2013 proposed background check legislation (the bill failed 54-46) would have allowed the government to keep databases of gun purchases indefinitely, creating a “worry that you’re going to see searches of the databases and an expansion for purposes that were not intended when the information was collected.” Micro-stamping similarly requires a database of gun owners and the codes their personal guns would stamp on cartridge cases. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote that they would oppose any legislation that infringes “on the American people’s constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance.” [ 77 ] [ 78 ] [ 79 ] [ 80 ] Gun control laws infringe upon the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety. The police cannot protect everyone all of the time. 61% of men and 56% of women surveyed by Pew Research said that stricter gun laws would “make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families.” Nelson Lund, Professor at George Mason University School of Law, stated, “The right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself is a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life” and “many [gun control laws] interfere with the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals.” A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, a gun control advocate, carried a concealed gun when her life was threatened and her home attacked by the New World Liberation Front in the 1970s. [ 58 ] [ 59 ] [ 64 ] Gun control laws, especially those that try to ban “assault weapons,” infringe upon the right to own guns for hunting and sport. In 2011, there were 13.7 million hunters 16 years old or older in the United States, High-powered semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are used to hunt and in target shooting tournaments each year. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, “So-called ‘Assault weapons’ are more often than not less powerful than other hunting rifles. The term ‘assault weapon’ was conjured up by anti-gun legislators to scare voters into thinking these firearms are something out of a horror movie… [T]he Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, both labeled ‘assault weapons,’ are the rifles most used for marksmanship competitions in the United States. And their cartridges are standard hunting calibers, useful for game up to and including deer.” According to a Feb. 2013 Pew Research report, 32% of gun owners owned guns for hunting and 7% owned guns for target or sport shooting. [ 55 ] [ 65 ] [ 66 ] [ 67 ] [ 68 ] Read More

Con 3 Gun control laws simply do not work. Gun control efforts have proved ineffective. According to David Lampo, Publications Director of the Cato Institute, “there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates.” Banning high-capacity magazines will not necessarily deter crime because even small gun magazines can be changed in seconds.The “gun show loophole” is virtually nonexistent because commercial dealers, who sell the majority of guns at shows and elsewhere, are bound by strict federal laws. According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, most state-level gun control laws do not reduce firearm death rates, and, of 25 state laws, nine were associated with higher gun death rates. [ 102 ] [ 148 ] Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people). The country has only one legal gun store (the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales), compared to at least 63,709 legal gun stores and pawn shops in the United States as of Feb. 10, 2014. Mexico’s gun store is on a secure military base and customers must present a valid ID, go through a metal detector, and turn over cellphones and cameras to guards. To actually buy a gun, customers have to show proof of honest income, provide references, pass a criminal background check, prove any military duties were completed with honor, and be fingerprinted and photographed. If allowed to purchase a gun, the customer may buy only one gun (choosing from only .38 caliber pistols or lower) and one box of bullets. Between 2006 and 2010, Mexico’s one gun shop sold 6,490 guns, yet as of 2012, Mexicans own about 15,000,000 guns, or about 13.5 guns per 100 people. [ 44 ] [ 88 ] [ 89 ] [ 90 ] [ 91 ] [ 92 ] [ 93 ] The main reason gun control doesn’t work is because laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws. Of 62 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012, 49 of the shooters used legally obtained guns. Collectively, 143 guns were possessed by the killers with about 75% obtained legally. A Secret Service analysis found that of 24 mass shootings in 2019 at least 10 (42%) involved illegally possessed guns. [ 69 ] [ 176 ] The logical conclusion is that gun control laws do not deter crime; gun ownership deters crime. A study in Applied Economics Letters found that “assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level” and “states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murders.” While gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, the murder rate decreased. Journalist John Stossel explained, “Criminals don’t obey the law… Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these [illegal] weapons now have a much easier job… As the saying goes, ‘If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.’” [ 53 ] [ 56 ] [ 103 ] More gun control is not needed; education about guns and gun safety is needed to prevent accidental gun deaths. 95% of all US gun owners believe that children should learn about gun safety. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute, Inc (SAAMI), stated, “Whether in the field, at the range or in the home, a responsible and knowledgeable gun owner is rarely involved in a firearms accident of any kind.” According to Kyle Wintersteen, Managing Editor of Guns and Ammo , studies show that “children taught about firearms and their legitimate uses by family members have much lower rates of delinquency than children in households without guns” and “children introduced to guns associate them with freedom, security, and recreation—not violence.” [82] [85] [154] [ 82 ] [ 85 ] [ 154 ] Read More

Con 4 Gun control laws give too much power to the government and may result in government tyranny and the government taking away all guns from citizens. 57% of people surveyed by Pew Research in Feb. 2013 said that gun control laws would “give too much power to the government over the people.” [ 58 ] The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre stated, “if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it [the Second Amendment] there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny.” [ 75 ] Concurring, Alex Jones, radio host, stated, “The Second Amendment isn’t there for duck hunting, it’s there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs… 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!” [ 76 ] The Libertarian Party stated, “A responsible, well-armed and trained citizenry is the best protection against domestic crime and the threat of foreign invasion.” Counsel for the NRA explains, “It is evident that the framers of the Constitution did not intend to limit the right to keep and bear arms to a formal military body or organized militia, but intended to provide for an ‘unorganized’ armed citizenry prepared to assist in the common defense against a foreign invader or a domestic tyrant.” [ 86 ] [ 87 ] Marco Rubio (R-FL), US Senator, speaking about gun control laws during his 2016 presidential campaign, stated, “If God forbid, ISIS visits our life, our neighborhood, our school, any part of us, the last thing standing, the last line of defense could very well be our ability to protect ourselves.” [ 149 ] Read More

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Supreme Court upholds federal ban on guns for domestic abusers

Nina Totenberg

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in a major gun-rights case. Al Drago/Getty Images hide caption

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the federal law making it a crime for anyone subject to a domestic violence court order to possess a gun. The 8-to-1 decision was the first since the court in 2022 broke sharply with the way gun laws had previously been evaluated by the courts.

Back then the court’s conservative supermajority, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, declared for the first time that for a gun law to be constitutional, it had to be analogous to a law that existed at the nation’s founding in the late 1700s.

But on Friday, over Thomas’ lone dissent, the court seemed to draw that line more flexibly. Writing for the eight justice court majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “We have no trouble” concluding that the federal law banning firearms for domestic abusers, subject to court order, is constitutional. Not only does the accused abuser have a right to be heard before there is any court order, he said, but that order is temporary, not open-ended.

Roberts said that a gun restriction need not be a “dead ringer” or a “historical twin” of gun restrictions that harken back to the time of the nation’s founding.

Some courts, he said, “have misunderstood the methodology of our recent decisions,” adding that were the court to adopt an approach that required such a close match, it’s rule would apply “only to muskets and sabers.” The court, he said, did not mean to suggest “a law trapped in amber.”

“This is a major win for gun safety reform advocates,” said UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, who has written extensively about guns and gun rights.

“Because of the very imperfect fit between history and tradition of gun laws and this particular prohibition, we’re likely to see lower courts use this ruling to justify upholding a wide range of gun law,” he said.

But Joseph Blocher, co-director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, disagreed. “I think what we got here is a slight revision. This is about the narrowest possible win I think the gov’t could have gotten.”

As Blocher noted, the case before the court was, by everyone’s reckoning an “easy case.”

The defendant, Zackey Rahimi, assaulted his girlfriend in a parking lot, threatened to shoot her if she told anyone, and fired a gun at a witness. The girlfriend went to court and a judge, after finding that Rahimi posed a credible threat of future violence, issued a court order banning him for two years from contact with the girlfriend or her family. Rahimi repeatedly violated the court order, , threatened another woman with a gun, and fired a gun in five different locations in a period of one month—incidents that ranged from shooting a gun repeatedly at another driver after a collision, to firing multiple shots in the air after a restaurant declined a friend’s credit card.

When police finally searched his residence, they found a pistol, a rifle, ammunition, and a copy of the restraining order. Rahimi pleaded guilty to charges of violating the federal gun law and was sentenced to six years in prison. But he continued to press his legal challenge, and ultimately the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law unconstitutional because there was no law like it in the late 1700s. On Friday the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision.

Easy case or not, Friday’s ruling involved well over 100 pages of writing, only 18 pages of which were the Chief Justice’s majority opinion. Three of the court’s conservatives—Justices Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh, who joined Roberts’ opinion, still spilled over 40 pages of ink explaining their views of originalism, the doctrine that they all adhere to, based upon the notion that constitutional questions should be resolved based on the constitution’s meaning at the time the nation was founded.

“This case highlights that even justices claiming to do originalism are products of the generation they come from,” observed UCLA’s Winkler. Although, “Americans in the 17 and 1800s didn’t regularly disarm people who were thought to be dangerous,” he said, conservative originalist justices still “recognize that we have to ban dangerous people from possessing firearms today and so they jump through hoops to try to say this is still originalism.”

UCLA’s Eugene Volokh, has a different view. “It may be a difficult approach at times, but it’s the right approach,” he said.

Just how the court will rule in future cases is unclear. Volokh and other gun law experts note there are lots of gun issues headed for the Supreme Court—everything from gun bans for convicted felons to laws banning guns for people with a mental health history, gun bans for 18-to-20 year olds, and bans on certain types of ammunition and weapons. And that just scratches the surface.

But for now groups that work with the victims of domestic violence are thrilled. “These protection orders exist for a reason,” observes Melina Melazzo, of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. “Because we know, for survivors of domestic violence, when a male abuser has access to a firearm, the risk that he will choose to shoot and kill a female intimate partner increases by one thousand percent."

Other supporters of the ban on guns for domestic abusers noted that women aren’t the only victims in these cases. Domestic violence with a gun is a leading cause of death for children. More than half of all mass shootings are perpetrated by people with a record of domestic violence. And domestic violence calls result in the highest number of police fatalities, almost all of them involving guns.

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The Supreme Court Walks Back Clarence Thomas’ Guns Extremism

This is part of  Opinionpalooza , Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court this June. Alongside  Amicus , we kicked things off this year by explaining  How Originalism Ate the Law . The best way to support our work is by joining  Slate Plus . (If you are already a member, consider a  donation  or  merch !)

The Supreme Court upheld a federal law disarming domestic abusers on Friday, significantly narrowing a radical 2022 precedent in the process. Its 8–1 ruling in U.S. v. Rahimi is a major victory for gun safety laws, a much-needed reprieve after two years of unceasing hostility from the federal judiciary. Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion walked back maximalist rhetoric—recklessly injected into the law by Justice Clarence Thomas—that had imperiled virtually every modern regulation limiting access to firearms. Thomas was the lone dissenter, signifying the rest of the court’s mad dash away from his extremist position on the Second Amendment.

Rahimi involves a violent criminal, Zackey Rahimi, who beat his girlfriend, then fired shots at either her or a witness as she fled his abuse. His girlfriend subsequently obtained a restraining order from a state court that found that he posed “a credible threat” to her “physical safety.” Rahimi, however, continued harassing her, threatened a different woman with a firearm, and was identified as the suspect in at least five additional shootings. When the police searched his apartment, they found a pistol, a rifle, ammunition, and a copy of the restraining order.

Rahimi was indicted under a federal law that bars individuals from possessing firearms while subject to a restraining order for domestic violence. He argued that this statute violated his Second Amendment rights, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5 th Circuit agreed . The court rested its analysis on New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen , the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision establishing a constitutional right to carry firearms in public. Thomas’ opinion in Bruen , though, went much further than that specific holding, declaring that all restrictions on the right to bear arms are presumptively unconstitutional unless they have a sufficient set of “historical analogues” from the distant past. (He didn’t bother to clarify the precise era, but it seemed to be sometime between 1791 and 1868.)

That approach posed two fundamental problems, which the lower courts quickly encountered when trying to apply Bruen : First, judges are not historians and cannot parse the complex, often incomplete record in this area with any consistency or reliability; and second, modern problems require modern solutions , especially when past bigotry prevented lawmakers from perceiving those problems in the first place. Rahimi is Exhibit A: Men were generally permitted to abuse their wives in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, with courts hesitant to interfere with what they deemed a private “familial affair.” Countless other examples have arisen in the lower courts since Bruen , with judges creating new rights to scratch the serial number off guns and own firearms while using illegal substances .

Roberts attempted to put a stop to this chaos on Friday. His Rahimi opinion cut back Bruen at every turn. “Some courts,” the chief justice wrote, “have misunderstood the methodology of our recent Second Amendment cases. These precedents were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.” Rather than hunt for perfect historical analogs, courts should ask “whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition.” If old laws regulated guns to “address particular problems, that will be a strong indicator that contemporary laws imposing similar restrictions for similar reasons fall within a permissible category of regulations.” Today’s regulations should generally avoid imposing restrictions “beyond what was done at the founding,” but the modern law need not “precisely match its historical precursors.” Roberts’ test significantly broadens (or perhaps loosens) the constitutional inquiry beyond what Bruen allowed. It instructs courts to look at principles , at a fairly high level of generality, rather than demanding a near-perfect match from centuries past.

The difference between Rahimi and Bruen is perfectly captured by Roberts’ majority opinion and the lone dissent written by Bruen ’s own author, Thomas. The chief justice asserted, “The government offers ample evidence that the Second Amendment permits the disarmament of individuals who pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others.” He breezily walked through a smattering of history allowing for the seizure of arms to preserve “public order.” For proof, Roberts cited surety laws, legislation that required an individual “suspected of future misbehavior” to post a bond, which he would forfeit if he engaged in misconduct. Domestic abusers could, in theory, be subject to the surety system, as could individuals who misused firearms—and that was good enough for Roberts. To him, this evidence established a historical practice of “preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms.” And disarming abusers “fits comfortably within this tradition.”

To Thomas, by contrast, surety laws “are worlds—not degrees—apart” from the law in question, because they were civil (not criminal) measures that did not actually disarm people but merely threatened them with a fine. These laws “did not alter an individual’s right to keep and bear arms,” Thomas protested, and they therefore failed to establish a relevant “history and tradition.” Indeed, “the government does not identify even a single regulation with an analogous burden and justification,” he complained in dissent. In 1791 a man like Zackey Rahimi could be disarmed only after a conviction for a violent crime. And so, Thomas wrote, that must remain the rule today.

Bruen was a 6–3 decision. Yet every justice who joined Thomas’ opinion in Bruen in 2022 signed on to Roberts’ walk back of Bruen on Friday. What happened? Aside from Justice Samuel Alito, every remaining member of the court expressed their views by writing or joining separate concurrences in Rahimi . Justice Brett Kavanaugh tried to defend his beloved “history and tradition” test, as opposed to “a balancing test that churns out the judge’s own policy beliefs,” while creating more room for “precedent” (or “the accumulated wisdom of jurists”). Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that Bruen “demands a wider lens” than the 5 th Circuit deployed, explaining that “historical regulations reveal a principle, not a mold,” and do not forever lock us into “late-18 th -century policy choices.” Justice Neil Gorsuch tried to split the difference, marshaling a defense of Bruen while subtly reworking it to limit sweeping legal attacks on gun regulations.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, celebrated the majority’s focus on “principles” instead of perfect analogs. “History has a role to play in Second Amendment analysis,” she wrote, “but a rigid adherence to history, (particularly history predating the inclusion of women and people of color as full members of the polity), impoverishes constitutional interpretation and hamstrings our democracy.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joined the court soon after Bruen came down, warned that Rahimi will not end the “increasingly erratic and unprincipled body of law” that Bruen inspired. “The blame” for the lower courts’ struggles “may lie with us,” she noted, “not with them.” All three liberals sound ready and willing to overturn Bruen altogether if they get the chance—but will, for now, settle for Rahimi ’s compromise.

What next? The Supreme Court will have to vacate a spate of lower court decisions that used Bruen to strike down seemingly sensible gun safety laws, ordering a do-over in light of Rahimi . Some courts will gladly accept the message. Others, like the lawless 5 th Circuit , will probably interpret Thomas’ dissent on Friday as the law and refuse to change their tune. Such defiance will test the majority’s commitment to a more workable and balanced Second Amendment jurisprudence—and likely fracture the court once more. By replacing Thomas’ hard-line views with a more malleable standard, SCOTUS has ended one battle over guns. But by remaining in this area, where it has no right to be in the first place, the court has invited a thousand more.

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Orlando Cepeda dies

The Supreme Court upholds a gun control law intended to protect domestic violence victims

The Supreme Court has upheld a federal gun control law that’s intended to protect domestic violence victims. The justices ruled 8-1 Friday in favor of a 1994 ban on firearms for people under restraining orders to stay away from their spouses or partners. The Associated Press’ Mark Sherman explains.

Supreme Court Police officers stand on duty outside of the Supreme Court building on Thursday, June 13, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

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The Supreme Court is seen on Thursday, June 13, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

The U.S Supreme Court is seen on Friday, June 14, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.

In their first Second Amendment case since they expanded gun rights in 2022, the justices ruled 8-1 in favor of a 1994 ban on firearms for people under restraining orders to stay away from their spouses or partners. The justices reversed a ruling from the federal appeals court in New Orleans that had struck down the law.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the law uses “common sense” and applies only “after a judge determines that an individual poses a credible threat” of physical violence.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the author of the major 2022 Bruen ruling in a New York case, dissented.

President Joe Biden, who has been critical of previous high-court rulings on guns, abortion and other hot-button issues, praised the outcome.

“No one who has been abused should have to worry about their abuser getting a gun,” Biden said in a statement. “As a result of today’s ruling, survivors of domestic violence and their families will still be able to count on critical protections, just as they have for the past three decades.”

Last week, the court overturned a Trump-era ban on bump stocks , the rapid-fire gun accessories used in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The court ruled that the Justice Department exceeded its authority in imposing that ban.

Friday’s case stemmed directly from the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June 2022. A Texas man, Zackey Rahimi, was accused of hitting his girlfriend during an argument in a parking lot and later threatening to shoot her.

At arguments in November, some justices voiced concern that a ruling for Rahimi could also jeopardize the background check system that the Biden administration said has stopped more than 75,000 gun sales in the past 25 years based on domestic violence protective orders.

The case also had been closely watched for its potential to affect cases in which other gun ownership laws have been called into question, including in the high-profile prosecution of Hunter Biden . Biden’s son was convicted of lying on a form to buy a firearm while he was addicted to drugs. His lawyers have signaled they will appeal.

A decision to strike down the domestic violence gun law might have signaled the court’s skepticism of the other laws as well. But Friday’s decision did not suggest that the court would necessarily uphold those law either.

AP AUDIO: The Supreme Court upholds a gun control law intended to protect domestic violence victims

AP correspondent Haya Panjwani reports on a Supreme Court ruling on gun violence.

The justices could weigh in soon in one or more of those other cases.

Many of the gun law cases grow out of the Bruen decision. That high court ruling not only expanded Americans’ gun rights under the Constitution but also changed the way courts are supposed to evaluate restrictions on firearms.

Roberts turned to history in his opinion. “Since the founding, our nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,” he wrote.

Some courts have gone too far, Roberts wrote, in applying Bruen and other gun rights cases. “These precedents were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber,” he wrote.

In dissent, Thomas wrote, the law “strips an individual of his ability to possess firearms and ammunition without any due process.”

The government “failed to produce any evidence” that the law is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, he wrote.

“Not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue,” Thomas wrote.

Seven of the nine justices wrote opinions in the guns case spanning 94 pages, mainly focused on the proper use of history in evaluating gun restrictions and other limitations on constitutional rights.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that Roberts’ opinion “permits a historical inquiry calibrated to reveal something useful and transferable to the present day, while the dissent would make the historical inquiry so exacting as to be useless.” She was among the three liberal justices who dissented in the Bruen case.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the Bruen majority, noted that the court probably will have many more cases about the reach of gun rights because “Second Amendment jurisprudence is in its early innings.” It was only in 2008 that the court declared for the first time that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

Rahimi’s case reached the Supreme Court after prosecutors appealed a ruling that threw out his conviction for possessing guns while subject to a restraining order.

Rahimi was involved in five shootings over two months in and around Arlington, Texas, U.S. Circuit Judge Cory Wilson noted. When police identified Rahimi as a suspect in the shootings and showed up at his home with a search warrant, he admitted having guns in the house and being subject to a domestic violence restraining order that prohibited gun possession, Wilson wrote.

But even though Rahimi was hardly “a model citizen,” Wilson wrote, the law at issue could not be justified by looking to history. That’s the test Justice Thomas laid out in his opinion for the court in Bruen.

The appeals court initially upheld the conviction under a balancing test that included whether the restriction enhances public safety. But the panel reversed course after Bruen. At least one district court has upheld the law since the Bruen decision.

After the ruling, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department “will continue to enforce this important statute, which for nearly 30 years has helped to protect victims and survivors of domestic violence from their abusers.”

“As the Justice Department argued, and as the Court reaffirmed today, that commonsense prohibition is entirely consistent with the Court’s precedent and the text and history of the Second Amendment,” Garland said in a statement.

Advocates for domestic violence victims and gun control groups had called on the court to uphold the law.

Firearms are the most common weapon used in homicides of spouses, intimate partners, children or relatives in recent years, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Guns were used in more than half, 57%, of those killings in 2020, a year that saw an overall increase in domestic violence during the coronavirus pandemic.

Seventy women a month, on average, are shot and killed by intimate partners, according to the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Gun rights groups backed Rahimi, arguing that the appeals court got it right when it looked at American history and found no restriction close enough to justify the gun ban.

Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein, Alanna Durkin Richer and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court .

US surgeon-general declares gun violence a public health emergency amid outbreak of mass shootings

United States Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy has declared gun violence a public health emergency, as the country continues to grapple with a spate of mass shootings.

The nation's top doctor made the declaration in an advisory called Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America , issued on Tuesday, local time.

It came after the second straight weekend of an outbreak of shootings across the country, which left dozens of people dead or wounded.

"People want to be able to walk through their neighbourhoods and be safe," Dr Murthy told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

"America should be a place where all of us can go to school, go to work, go to the supermarket, go to our house of worship, without having to worry that that's going to put our life at risk."

The surgeon-general said the fast-growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country warranted the declaration of gun violence as a public health crisis.

To drive down gun-related deaths, he called on the US government to ban automatic rifles, introduce universal background checks for purchasing guns, regulate the industry, pass laws that would restrict their use in public spaces and penalise people who failed to safely store their weapons.

None of those suggestions can be implemented nationwide without legislation passed by Congress, which typically recoils at gun control measures .

Some state legislatures, however, have enacted or may consider some of the surgeon-general's proposals.

Dr Murthy said there was "broad agreement" of gun violence being a problem, citing a poll last year that found most Americans worried at least sometimes that a loved one might be injured by a firearm.

In 2022 alone, more than 48,000 Americans died from gun injuries.

There have already been 4,138 deaths linked to gun violence across the United States in 2024, according to independent research organisation the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).

Taking gun violence 'out of politics'

The advisory has been welcomed by health professionals, however, it promises to incense the gun lobby and Republican politicians, most of whom had opposed the surgeon general's confirmation to the job over his view on gun violence.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) promptly labelled Tuesday's declaration the Democrats' "war on law-abiding gun owners".

Dr Murthy has long been an advocate for gun control, but became more subdued on the issue after almost having his confirmation as surgeon-general derailed by the NRA and Republicans in 2014 over his views on firearms.

He ended up promising the Senate that he did "not intend to use my office as surgeon-general as a bully pulpit on gun control."

Then-president Donald Trump dismissed him in 2017, but President Joe Biden nominated him again for the position in 2021.

Dr Murthy has published warnings about troubling health trends in American life, including loneliness and social media use.

A 1964 surgeon-general's report that raised awareness about the dangers of smoking is largely credited with reducing tobacco use and precipitating regulations on the industry.

Dr Murthy is confident the same can be achieved with gun violence, arguing it is time to take the issue "out of the realm of politics and put it in the realm of public health".

Child gun deaths in the US the highest globally

Gun reform in the US has been at the forefront of public discourse for decades, but has only begun to make incremental progress in recent years.

In 2022, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which enhanced background checks for firearms.

A White House report obtained by The Associated Press says more thorough background checks have stopped roughly 800 sales of firearms to people under age 21.

Additionally, more than 500 people, including some linked to transnational cartels and organised crime rings, have been charged with gun trafficking and other crimes under the landmark gun safety legislation.

Research gathered by Dr Murthy shows children and younger Americans bear the brunt of gun violence.

Suicide by gun rates have increased by nearly 70 per cent for those between the ages of 10 and 14, and children in the US are far more likely to die from gun wounds than children in other countries.

Even when children are not direct victims of a gun shooting, they may suffer from mental health blowback of gun violence, the report says.

About half of teens in the US worry about a school shooting, and in areas that have been exposed to a fatal shooting at a school, youth antidepressant use jumps by more than 20 per cent.

In addition to new regulations, Dr Murthy calls for an increase in gun violence research and for the health system to promote and educate patients about gun safety and proper storage during doctor consultations.

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• Government and Politics
• United States

Gun Law in America

A broader take on the subject, this essay encompasses the entirety of America’s gun laws. From constitutional provisions to specific state laws, it paints a comprehensive picture of the U.S’s unique relationship with firearms. At PapersOwl too, you can discover numerous free essay illustrations related to America topic.

How it works

Gun Control is something that has been discussed for many years throughout the United States. After numerous mass shootings, leaving multiple wounded and dead, there has many controversial debates and protests. The complexity of gun control and the long history of gun control is what made this topic such an issue. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm to use for lawful purposes including self-defense in the home. In today’s gun control rights, America supports the Second Amendment with some modifications, eliminations and replacements yet people with a gun license, over the age of 21 are still able to purchase a gun.

Gun control was initially created for the government to regulate the purchasing and usage of guns and firearms in the U.S. The different Presidents and politicians, as well as the National Rifle Association has made it difficult to agree on the laws of gun control.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 is a federal law that was made to regulate the use of firearms and make gun dealers not able to sell to prohibited persons. This law was one of the biggest steps into changing gun control laws for the better. This bill was introduced to the House of Representatives and signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1791, the bill of rights was created and included in this was the second amendment; the right to bear arms. This reads A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. (Ginsberg, 109) A debate then began about whether or not this amendment was necessary. Some people argued that the right to bear arms should only be for certain organized groups such as for the military or the national guards. But then others believed that all citizens should all be able to protect themselves which could mean owning a gun. Then in 1934, President Roosevelt took action in order to prevent shootings from continuing to happen. The National Firearms Act was the first gun-control law in the United States. All gun sales had to be recorded plus a $200 tax to the manufacture or sale of machine guns. (Gray) This was the original NFA which is similar to the current NFA but slightly different back then. The law also made every gun registration go through the Secretary of the Treasury. Franklin Roosevelt’s goal in passing this was to stop the gangland crimes during this time. With the National Rifle Association continuously arguing over this law, it had to be revised and modified multiple different times.

In 1938, the Federal Firearms Act was passed. This made it so gun dealers had to have a federal firearms license. Gun manufacturers, dealers, and importers all had to keep track of the guns they were selling and they all had to have a license in order to do so. Gun dealers were also not able to sell to certain people such as convicted felons or someone with a disability. This class of people become referred to as prohibited persons. By 1968, there had been so many assassinations involving presidents, political activists, etc. that President Lyndon B. Johnson was really pushing for the Gun Control Act of 1968 to pass. This was going to replace the Federal Firearms Act. All of these people had been killed and then there is the assassinators. Lee Harvey Oswald had bought is assault rifle through mail and did not even use his name to purchase it, he used an alias. Other assassinators had bought the guns illegally, or else stole them in order to kill these political activists and presidents. (Vizzard) This was absurd that so many people had been shot since there was not enough restrictions on purchasing a firearm. It was not until now that the destructive devices had been talked about being banned; such as bombs, grenades, etc. They were started to reconsider what qualified as a machine gun. This bill required you to need a reasonable purpose for purchasing the gun, such as for a sporting purpose like hunting animals. The law also put an age restriction on purchasing a gun. You now had to be 21 years old, and a convicted felon or someone who was mentally ill prohibited persons were still not able to purchase a gun. Lastly, federal law needed to be able to track every person who owned a gun. So every individual gun had an individual serial number with it so they could be tracked if something were to happen with that gun, and of course if someone were to use it illegally and shot somebody then they could track whoever was the owner of the gun. A downside to this though was that if you already owned a gun, you did not have to get it registered to have a serial number. Multiple guns had already been bought by this time, which still made this a disadvantage but would hopefully help with future gun purchases. Another unfortunate downside to this was that if a gun registration was bought before or during the passing of this Act it could not be used for evidence in a court case.

The Firearm Owners Protection Act had been passed by Congress is 1986. This was a bit of a step back after working so hard for the Gun Control Act. This revised multiple provisions, and essentially protected people who owned guns. Gun dealers no longer had to keep a database of all the guns that they sold, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were only able to do an inspection once a year, and gun dealers were able to sell guns at gun shows. In 1993, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was passed. This law came into play when someone tried to kill President Ronald Reagan with a gun, and actually ended up injuring James Brady who was a White House press secretary. This permanently disabled Brady and he eventually died in 2014 but for other reasons. Brady pushed and pushed for this to be made into a law, after being in a wheelchair and very unfortunately not able to do his job. The law made it so there was a five-day waiting period to purchase a handgun until 1998, and then then federally licensed gun deals would need to have a National Instant Criminal Background Check System from the FBI before they were able to buy any type of firearm. (Kim) The National Rifle Association tried to do everything they could do stop this law from being passed but President Bill Clinton put this law into effect on February 28, 1994.

Once 1994 came around the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was written by Senator Joe Biden, and signed by President Clinton. After the 101 California shooting, and the Waco shooting, there was too much crime and shootings going on and it didn’t seem like it was going to stop anytime son. Biden said enough is enough for Biden and he proposed this law to Congress, and eventually to Clinton. This made penalties and laws much more serious and larger in many ways. There was a 10-year ban on manufactured and assault weapons. This included 19 different weapons. The death penalty was now expanded tremendously, and there were new classes for firearms. The bill also established a three strikes law. This meant that life in prison for a third serious violent-felony conviction that follows another serious violet or drug conviction. 60 new federal crimes were also created that gave an immediate death penalty punishment. Now, this law was very controversial for the people in America, especially liberal’s vs conservatives. It allocated billions of dollars in order to hire more police, and then expand the federal prison systems. But it also was increasing crime prevention programs, which costed money as well but for a good cause. (Winterton). Conservatives wanted the more violent criminals to serve longer sentences, and liked the increase money for prison building. Liberals wanted the money to go towards social programs that would just help stopping this behavior and all the crimes rather than the shootings continuing and more and more people going to prison and/or receiving the death penalty. During this time, the White House and the Congress was controlled by the same party, which of course would look more toward the liberal side of things but Clinton, although liberal, wanted to take a conservative approach to this law as well. Social programs were one of the top priorities, presumably since the President was liberal. President Clinton thought that this was the smartest bill in the history of the United States, and the money and law really caught up with the US 10 years later when the Republicans won the Congress in 1995.

U.S. Representative Todd Tiahrt created the Tiahrt Amendment in 2003. This was made to prohibit the AFT (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) from publicly releasing any data on firearms from someone who had committed a crime. They could tell law enforcement, but then they were not able to tell anyone or publicize their findings. This made it so the gun records could not be used for an investigation. The FBI had to destroy any gun purchase records which had been approved within 24 hours. This made it very hard for the AFT to get the firearms from people who illegally had the gun or were one of the prohibited persons. Lastly, the AFT was not allowed to force any gun dealers to give their inventory to law enforcement. Guns were being stolen or lost, and a huge amount of guns were being unaccounted for. Once 2004 hit the ten-year ban had ended and was not renewed by Congress. This led several states to either ban guns or completely regulate them. Shortly after this in 2005, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was signed by President George W. Bush. This was to help protect gun manufacturers from being named publicly when there was a lawsuit in court having to do with their guns. Ultimately saying that you could sell a gun to someone, hopefully legally, and stay completely out of any trouble if someone had used one of your guns for a crime. This was even for gun distributors, dealers, and importers. Obviously this made purchasing guns much easier since the people selling them didn’t care about who they were selling them to since they weren’t going to get into trouble.

In 2008, this law had been slightly loosened and the AFT were now able to use firearms registration and trace data for national intelligence purposes. (Gifford) President George W. Bush signed the National Instant Criminal Background Check Improvement Act. This was supported by opponents and advocates of gun control, since ultimately it is a fair thing to do to keep our Country safe. Everyone who purchased a gun had to have a background check no matter what. People with mental illness really had to ability to purchase any type of firearm. A few months later, the decision was made for the District of Columbia vs. Heller case. The U.S. Supreme Court had finally answered if the right to bear arms is an individual right or a collective right. (Rose) They ruled that the Second Amendment protect an individual’s right to own a gun for a lawful use, for instance self-defense. This ruling then overturned a 32-year old ban on the possession of handguns in the District of Columbia. (Longley)

While Barak Obama was president in 2010, a federal law was signed by him saying that licensed gun owners were able to bring their firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges if the state law allows it. Some people including Paul Helmke, who was the president of the Brady Law, believed that national parks were the safest place for people to go until now. Obama also signed a pro-gun law which allowed licensed gun owners to bring their guns in the checked baggage on an Amtrak train. This had been banned after 9/11, but Obama had reversed it. This was a surprise for everyone since Obama was a liberal and supported gun control, and wanted the safest for the United States.

In 2015, the Fix Gun Control Act was made in order to try and close the gun show loophole. (Longley) This was made to ensure that all all individuals who are to be prohibited from buying a firearm are listed for their background check from the national instant background check system and need a background check for each firearm purchased.

After all of these laws interchanging over the years, there has still been multiple mass shootings. In 2016, a gay night club in Florida had a shooting, which killed 49 people. In 2017, there was a deadly mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas that killed 59 people and wounded more than 500 people since the gun shots were mistaken for fireworks. Not even a week after the Las Vegas shooting, Dianne Feinstein, a U.S. Senator introduced something called the Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act. This act would ban the sales and possession of semiautomatic weapons that were about to turn into fully-automatic weapons. The bill states that it is unlawful for any person to sell, manufacture, transfer or possess a trigger crank, or bump-fire device that is designed to function as a semiautomatic rifle into essentially a machine gun. (Longely)

Another mass shooting then takes place in Florida in 2018. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, located in Parkland, Florida. This young man killed 17 people, and wounded another 17. The assassinator was sought to be mentally ill. He had many issues with his home life and was actually living with a friend and his parents. Whoever he bought his gun from obviously did not see these mental issues or else he should have never been able to purchase any type of weapon. President Donald Trump had his press secretary Sarah Sanders say that he supports working to raise the current minimum age for buying weapons such as the AR-15 that the assassinator had used from age 18 to 21.

As far as current gun control laws; there are a few states left that allow you to carry a concealed gun. Including; Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. You must have a background check in order to purchase a gun, and gun dealers are also not able to sell a gun to the mentally ill, or a convicted felon.

The debate on gun control has always had many different opinions and struggles. Going back to when gun control bills began, the National Rifle Association would argue that every household should have a gun for protection and for sporting uses. It is always an issue between conservative vs liberal in politics since conservatives are usually part of the NRA and are the ones arguing for less gun control laws. President Lyndon B. Johnson had absolutely no issue when it came to the 1968 Gun Control Act. He wanted this to pass more than anyone. It had been a discussion with Congress for many years after John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for this policy to pass since so many people even after that had died from getting shot. 1968 was the biggest change in our history of gun control in America. During this time our country was having many crimes, and riots. Then it increased so significant where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy got shot and killed. This was the final thrust that drove congress to bring back this law, and eventually pass it. Although the NRA was not pleased with this, the leader of the group said that they are able to live with it and believe that is reasonable. (Waxman 1)

Overall, gun control laws have continuously changed throughout the years. With all of the different laws expiring, and the different Presidents in the White House adding or replacing new laws. With the Second Amendment, the citizens of America are able to have guns to be able to protect their family. Some believe that this will keep their families and themselves safe where others believe guns cause more crimes and violent actions. Through the multiple laws and bills following the Second Amendment, especially the Gun Control Act of 1968 the government has done what they believe is going to help shootings in America. These laws and bills have produced many arguments and beliefs with people and will hopefully one day be resolved. Guns are a huge part of American culture, but should part of our culture be costing humans lives? Gun control laws are going to continue to be a controversial issue and is always going to be something that going to be discussed and modified through politicians and civilians. The issues and debate on gun control laws is not going to be over anytime soon.

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Gun Control Argumentative Essay – Sample Essay

Published by gudwriter on October 21, 2017 October 21, 2017

A Break Down of my Gun Control Argumentative Essay

Styling Format: APA, 6th Edition

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Title: Stricter Gun Control Laws Should Be Adopted

Introduction

I have tried to design the introduction in such a way that it attracts the attention of the reader and gives him an idea of the essay’s focus. My first sentence comprises of some startling information: The pervasive gun culture in the United States of America is a creation of the country’s frontier expansion, revolutionary roots, colonial history, and the Second Amendment. It is not totally new information to the readers. In fact, it is a pertinent fact that explicitly illustrates the point that I wish to make. It is followed by a sentence of elaboration. In addition, I have tried to ground the reader with some information that is relevant to understand my thesis. Lastly, I have finished my paragraph with a thesis statement for my argumentative essay.

To get your essay on gun control written for a cheap price, connect with a professional research paper writer for help on this platform where we have a pool of experts to choose from, making it easy for you to get matched fast. You can also use our essay generator to get a quality and plagiarism free paper.

The body of my gun control essay contains reasons + evidence to support my thesis. Each body paragraph begins with a topic sentence that identifies the main idea of that paragraph. If you have read the essay, you can see that my explanations try to answer a simple question: how does this evidence support my thesis?

I have tried to sum up my points and provide a final perspective on gun control in an effort to bring closure to the reader. I have reviewed my main points, trying not restate them exactly, and tried to briefly describe my feelings concerning the topic. I was unable to find a good anecdote that would have ended my essay in a useful way.

References:

Though, I won’t recommend it, I have used some news articles from CNBC and NYTimes as part of my references. I would advise you to go for more credible sources such as peer reviewed articles and journals.

Argumentative Essay on Gun Control

Gun control is a controversial subject in the United States of America. In the wake of so many tragic mass shootings, like the recent Las Vegas Shooting, the conversation  tends to pull in two directions : Those who believe gun laws should be less strict and those pushing for more restrictions.

When you are writing a gun control argumentative essay, you are free to take any side you want, unless your instructor specifically tells you to take a certain side. What matters is that whichever position you choose, ensure you have good points and supporting facts.

In this gun control essay, I have decided to take a pro gun control approach:  strict regulation up to and including an outright ban on firearms. In fact, my thesis statement for this for argumentative essay is  stricter gun control laws should be enacted and implemented if the United States is to solve the problem of mass shootings and reduce crime within its borders.

My essay is divided into three basic parts, the introduction, the body and the conclusion.

Here is my gun control argumentative essay. Enjoy!

Stricter Gun Control Laws Should Be Adopted

The pervasive gun culture in the United States of America is a creation of the country’s frontier expansion, revolutionary roots, colonial history, and the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment stipulates, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” (“Second Amendment,” 2020). The argument fronted by proponents of stricter gun control laws is that the amendment targeted militias and not the common citizen. They are of the view that gun control restrictions have always been there and that they serve to enhance the security of the country and the various states. The opponents however argue that through the provisions of the Second Amendment, individuals have the right to own guns. Their view is that individuals need guns for self-defense and that gun ownership thwarts criminal activities. This paper argues that stricter gun control laws should be enacted and implemented if the United States is to solve the problem of mass shootings and reduce crime within its borders (my argumentative essay thesis statement ).

On 1st October, 2017, the U.S. witnessed one of the worst mass shooting incidences in its history, probably the worst. The shooting, as observed by Swift (2017), was conducted by a common U.S. citizen who was a gun owner. Following the incidence, there has been rage and confusion all over the country as to whether the gun control debate is still relevant. A whopping 59 people died in the incidence with 500 others sustaining serious injuries (Swift, 2017). This incidence alone, the Second Amendment notwithstanding, tells why the country is in dire need of very strict gun control laws. Nothing can compensate for human life and it is even worse when life is lost at the hands of another human being. It becomes more serious when one person decides to kill, without stopping to think, as many people as time and other factors would allow them to! The latest gun incidence is a clear sign that the threat of lives being lost due to misuse of personal guns is more real than the threat of one losing their life due to lack of self-defense.

Given the latest mass shooting incidence, together with such other past incidences, it could be safely argued that the Second Amendment is being misinterpreted to mean what the framers of the Constitution never intended nor meant. It is high time the three branches of the federal government, together with the states, sought a clear reinterpretation of “well-regulated militia”. It cannot be that those who effected this amendment “authorized” what was recently witnessed in Las Vegas. As pointed out by Insana (2017), “The Founding Fathers, who lived before the invention of the Gatling gun, could not have envisioned civilians commanding the right to hunt turkeys, or humans, with modern ferocity”. The Second Amendment is surely not a leeway for citizens to have unlimited rights to own guns. A well-regulated militia should imply that a state, or the country, adequately serves its law enforcement agencies with the right ammunition and weaponry so as to ensure security. This has however unfortunately been misinterpreted to mean anyone can own a gun.

Stricter gun control laws would reduce deaths resulting from individually owned guns. Street (2016) reports that between 1999 and 2013, the number of gun deaths totaled 464,033. Out of this, 270,237 were gun suicide cases, 9,983 were unintentional deaths, and 174,773 homicides. It is thus crystal clear that mass shooting is not the only way in which guns are being used for the wrong purposes. It is emerging that giving an American citizen the right to own a gun is akin to giving them a shorter way of executing their evil plan of killing themselves, if they had it that is. If a gun is meant for self-defense and crime prevention, isn’t gun suicide the exact opposite of this? As a matter of fact, one would be safer from their own selves without a gun than with a gun. This is why it should be made tremendously difficult for people to acquire guns.

Opponents of gun control laws argue that introduction of such laws would deny people a sense of safety by infringing upon their right to self-defense. This argument is oblivious of the fact that weak gun control laws compromise even the safety of the gun holder himself or herself (Purcell, 2013). Moreover, it is the role of the federal government to ensure that every American citizen is always safe irrespective of the part of the country they find themselves. Building and maintaining strong security agencies is enough to ensure this. On the same note, the “right to self-defense” argument would lose its meaning if an individual cannot first of all defend themselves against themselves. When a person knowingly or unknowingly harms themselves using a gun they own, it means they lack the very self-defense they acquired the gun for.

To take their argument even further, the opponents would contend that the Second Amendment gives every American the right to possess personal guns. They often cite the phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” (Burke, 2017), with more emphasis on the “shall not be infringed” part. They forget that the same clause contains some “well regulated militia” part which should be equally given as much weight as the other parts. While it is true that this right should not be infringed, according to the Constitution, it should not culminate in anybody being allowed to own guns. If the right is as absolute as opponents suggest, firearms would be owned by children and even mentally ill felons, a situation one can never wish for. It is thus a farfetched and unnecessary argument.

The enactment and implementation of very strict gun control laws by the United States is long overdue. People cannot continue butchering innocent citizens in the name of enjoying the provisions of the Second Amendment. If it is the Second Amendment that is creating all this loss of life and lawlessness, it should be thoroughly reinterpreted so that it works in the best interest of all Americans. Nobody has the right to take their own life and that of others. It is sad that gun ownership perpetuates this phenomenon. This discussion reveals that gun ownership is neither promoting self-defense nor deterring crime but promoting the same.

Burke, D. E. (2017). “Why the arguments against gun control are wrong”.   Huffpost . Retrieved July 11, 2020 from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-the-arguments-against-gun-control-are-wrong_us_59d6405ce4b0666ad0c3cb34. Accessed 29 June 2020

Insana, R. (2017). “The time for polite debate on gun control is over”. CNBC . Retrieved October 20, 2017 from https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/05/the-time-for-polite-debate-on-gun-control-is-over.html

Purcell, T. (2013). Shotgun republic: the gun control debate . North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Second Amendment. (2020). In Cornell Law School . Retrieved July 11, 2020 from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment

Street, C. (2016). Gun control: guns in America, the full debate, more guns less problems? no guns no problems? . North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Swift, H. (2017). “Gunman’s girlfriend arrives in U.S. and is expected to be questioned”. The New York Times . Retrieved October 20, 2017 from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/us/las-vegas-shooting-live-updates.html

Sample 2: Gun Control Essay Outline

Thesis:  Gun control is important for solving mass shooting problems and crime reduction.

Paragraph 1:

Stricter gun control laws are needed for addressing the persistent mass shooting problem in the U.S.

• The gun control debate might have been made irrelevant by probably the worst mass shooting in the U.S. history that occurred on October 1, 2017 in Las Vegas.
• The shooting claimed 59 lives and left 500 people with serious injuries.
• The Second Amendment does not allow for such heinous acts in the name of owning a gun.
• Innocent lives should not be lost at the hands of one person who judges it right to terminate human lives.

Paragraph 2:

Gun control would help address misinterpretation of the Second Amendment by individual gun owners.

• It is apparent that people are misinterpreting the amendment to mean what was not intended by framers of the constitution.
• A clear reinterpretation of a “well-regulated militia” should be sought.
• Those who debated over and passed the amendment could not have authorized mass shootings of innocent citizens.

Paragraph 3:

Deaths resulting from individually-owned guns would decrease if stricter gun laws were adopted.

• Between 1999 and 2013, there were 464,033 gun deaths out of which 174,773 resulted from homicides, 9,983 from gun accidents, and 270,237 from suicide.
• Thus, individual gun owners are using guns in more destructive ways than just mass shootings.
• Gun suicide is the exact opposite of self-defense and crime prevention, the reasons for which gun ownership was allowed.

Paragraph 4: 

The quantity of guns in a society determines the rate of gun violence in the society.

• A good case example to prove this is Japan.
• The country has made it very difficult for its citizens to acquire guns.

Paragraph 5:

Opponents of gun control argue that gun control laws would infringe into people’s right to self-defense and thus deny them a sense of safety.

• This argument fails to recognize that even the safety of the gun holder herself or himself is compromised by weak gun control laws.
• Moreover, the safety of all American citizens wherever they may be is the responsibility of the federal government.
• It would be enough to guarantee this safety by building and maintaining strong security agencies and policies.

Paragraph 6:

Opponents argue that gun control laws give too much power to the government and that this may make the government tyrannical.

• This argument is wrong because the United States is a country founded on strong Constitutional provisions that clearly spell out the rights of citizens and indicate that the country is democratic.
• There is no room for government tyranny.

The U.S. should enact and implement very strict gun ownership laws if it is to solve mass shooting problems and reduce gun-related crime. People cannot purport to be enjoying the provisions of the Second Amendment while continuing to butcher innocent citizens.

Sample Essay 2: Gun Control Essay

The United States continues to experience a pervasive gun culture owing to its colonial history, revolutionary roots, frontier expansion, and the Second Amendment. According to the Second Amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” (Cornell Law School, 2017). Proponents of gun control argue that the amendment did not target the common citizen but militias. However, the opponents argue that the amendment guarantees express rights for individual gun ownership. This paper argues that gun control is important for solving mass shooting problems and crime reduction.

Stricter gun control laws are needed for addressing the persistent mass shooting problem in the U.S. The gun control debate might have been made irrelevant by probably the worst mass shooting in the U.S. history that occurred on October 1, 2017 in Las Vegas. The shooting, conducted by a common citizen possessing a gun, claimed 59 lives and left 500 people with serious injuries (Swift, 2017). The Second Amendment does not allow for such heinous acts in the name of owning a gun. So many innocent lives should not be lost at the hands of one person who judges it right, out of their personal reasons, to terminate human lives. The mass shooting incidences clearly indicate that there is more threat of lives being lost through misuse of guns than the threat of people losing their lives due to lack of self-defense.

Gun control would also help address misinterpretation of the Second Amendment by individual gun owners. It is apparent that people are misinterpreting the amendment to mean what was not intended by framers of the constitution given the past shooting incidences. A clear reinterpretation of a “well-regulated militia” should be sought by the three federal government braches in collaboration with the state governments. It is definite that those who debated over and passed the amendment could not have authorized the October 1, 2017 Las Vegas shooting incidence and such other incidences. Moreover, “The Founding Fathers, who lived before the invention of the Gatling gun, could not have envisioned civilians commanding the right to hunt turkeys, or humans, with modern ferocity” (Insana, 2017). The amendment was meant for protection of lives, not as a threat to lives.

Additionally, deaths resulting from individually-owned guns would decrease if stricter gun laws were adopted. Between 1999 and 2013, there were 464,033 gun deaths out of which 174,773 resulted from homicides, 9,983 from gun accidents, and 270,237 from suicide (Street, 2016). It is thus crystal clear that individual gun owners are using guns in more destructive ways than just mass shootings. It is apparent that letting an American citizen own a personal gun provides them with a quicker way of committing suicide if they had the plans to. Noteworthy, gun suicide is the exact opposite of self-defense and crime prevention, the reasons for which gun ownership was allowed. Acquiring guns should thus be made very difficult for people since it would make them safer from their own selves.

Another general observation is that the quantity of guns in a society determines the rate of gun violence in the society. A good case example to prove this is Japan. Research notes that the country has made it very difficult for its citizens to acquire guns. Even upon being allowed to acquire one, it would only be an air rifle or shotgun but not handguns (Low, 2017). Low (2017) goes on to cite the executive director of Action on Armed Violence, Iain Overton, who argues that a civilian society does not need guns for whatever reason. Overton adds that gun violence will inevitably be there in a society once the society has guns. According to journalist Anthony Berteaux, violence should never be used to quell violence hence the less need for guns.

Opponents of gun control argue that gun control laws would infringe into people’s right to self-defense and thus deny them a sense of safety. This argument fails to recognize that even the safety of the gun holder herself or himself is compromised by weak gun control laws (Purcell, 2013). Moreover, the safety of all American citizens wherever they may be is the responsibility of the federal government. It would be enough to guarantee this safety by building and maintaining strong security agencies and policies. Besides, if an individual cannot first of all defend themselves against themselves, the “right to self-defense” argument loses its meaning. When a person uses their own gun to cause self-harm either knowingly or unknowingly, it means they lack the very self-defense the gun is meant for.

Opponents may also argue that gun control laws give too much power to the government and that this may make the government tyrannical. In their view, the government may end up taking away guns from all citizens. This argument is wrong first because the United States is a country founded on strong Constitutional provisions that clearly spell out the rights of citizens and indicate that the country is democratic (Kopel, 2013). There is thus no room for government tyranny, not even through gun control. Second, stricter gun laws would only make difficult the process of acquiring guns but not take away all guns from citizens.

The U.S. should enact and implement very strict gun ownership laws if it is to solve mass shooting problems and reduce gun-related crime. People cannot purport to be enjoying the provisions of the Second Amendment while continuing to butcher innocent citizens. The amendment should be reinterpreted so that it serves all citizens in the best manner possible if it is what is creating all this loss of life and lawlessness. The Constitution does not provide for the “right” of taking one’s own life or that of others. It is thus sad that this phenomenon is being perpetuated by gun ownership.

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Cornell Law School. (2017). “Second amendment”.  Cornell Law School . Retrieved May 20, 2018 from  https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment

Insana, R. (2017). “The time for polite debate on gun control is over”.  CNBC . Retrieved May 20, 2018 from  https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/05/the-time-for-polite-debate-on-gun-control-is-over.html

Kopel, D. B. (2013).  The truth about gun control . New York, NY: Encounter Books.

Low, H. (2017). “How Japan has almost eradicated gun crime”.  BBC News . Retrieved July 4, 2020 from  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38365729

Purcell, T. (2013).  Shotgun republic: the gun control debate . North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Street, C. (2016).  Gun control: guns in America, the full debate, more guns less problems? No guns no problems? . North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Swift, H. (2017). “Gunman’s girlfriend arrives in U.S. and is expected to be questioned”.  New York Times . Retrieved May 20, 2018 from  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/us/las-vegas-shooting-live-updates.html

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Human Rights — Gun Control

Argumentative Essays on Gun Control

Gun control essay topics.

Choosing a topic that aligns with your interests and creativity is crucial for crafting a compelling and thoughtful essay. We aim to inspire and guide you through various essay types, offering examples that span technology, society, personal growth, and academic interests.

Below, you'll find a selection of essay types and related topics on gun control, each designed to stimulate critical thinking and personal expression.

Argumentative Essays

• The effectiveness of gun control laws in reducing crime rates.
• Comparing international gun control policies: Lessons for the U.S.
• The Second Amendment and modern interpretations: A critical analysis.
• The role of gun control in preventing mass shootings.
• Should there be a ban on assault weapons?
• Balancing gun rights with public safety: A legal perspective.
• The impact of gun control on self-defense rights.
• Gun control and its effects on black market firearms trade.
• Do gun-free zones reduce violence or make targets vulnerable?
• Evaluating the effectiveness of background checks in gun control.

Compare and Contrast Essays

• Gun control versus mental health initiatives: Addressing the roots of violence.
• The impact of gun control on hunting and sport shooting cultures.
• Gun control laws in urban versus rural areas: A comparative study.
• Comparing gun control policies in the U.S. and Canada.
• The NRA versus gun control advocacy groups: Strategies and influence.
• Firearms regulations in democratic versus authoritarian regimes.
• Gun control policies in high-crime versus low-crime countries.
• The effectiveness of gun buyback programs in different countries.
• Gun control debates: Liberal versus conservative perspectives.
• Comparing historical and contemporary gun control measures.

Descriptive Essays

• The evolution of gun control legislation in the United States.
• Describing the societal effects of mass shootings on public policy.
• A day in the life of a gun control lobbyist.
• The historical development of the Second Amendment.
• The process of obtaining a firearm legally in different states.
• The impact of gun violence on community safety and cohesion.
• The role of technology in modern firearms and gun control.
• The psychological effects of gun ownership and control.
• The economic impact of gun control laws on the firearms industry.
• The influence of media on public perceptions of gun control.

Persuasive Essays

• Why stricter gun control laws are necessary for public safety.
• Challenging the myths surrounding gun ownership and safety.
• How gun control can prevent domestic violence.
• Why universal background checks are essential.
• The case for banning high-capacity magazines.
• The moral obligation to implement gun control measures.
• How gun control can reduce suicide rates.
• The benefits of mandatory gun safety training.
• Why guns should be restricted in educational institutions.
• Convincing arguments for a national gun registry.

Narrative Essays

• A personal story of how gun violence has impacted my community.
• The journey of a gun control activist: Challenges and victories.
• My experience at a gun control rally.
• Living in a neighborhood with high gun violence: A personal account.
• How a gun control policy changed my life.
• A day in the life of a police officer dealing with gun violence.
• Witnessing a mass shooting: My personal story.
• Growing up in a household with firearms: Lessons learned.
• The first time I handled a gun: Reflections and thoughts.
• A visit to a country with strict gun control laws: Observations and insights.

Introduction Paragraph Examples

We provide an example of an engaging introduction paragraph to set the stage for your essay.

Argumentative Essay on The Effectiveness of Gun Control Laws

"In recent years, the debate over gun control laws has intensified following a series of tragic mass shootings. This essay examines the effectiveness of these laws in reducing crime rates across the United States, with a particular focus on statistical evidence and comparative analyses. Thesis Statement: While gun control laws aim to reduce firearm-related violence, their effectiveness varies significantly across different states, necessitating a closer examination of their implementation and outcomes. "

Conclusion Paragraph Examples

Here are conclusion paragraph example that summarize key points and reinforce the thesis, offering reflection or a call to action.

Persuasive Essay on Why Stricter Gun Control Laws Are Necessary

"In conclusion, the evidence presented underscores the urgent need for stricter gun control laws to ensure public safety. By examining the correlation between gun legislation and reduced crime rates, it becomes clear that effective measures can significantly mitigate gun-related violence. Reflecting on the arguments presented, it is imperative for policymakers to adopt more comprehensive gun control regulations to protect citizens and prevent future tragedies. "

Your essay is an opportunity to express your unique perspective and critical thinking. We encourage you to explore your interests in gun control topics deeply and to articulate your findings and views in a structured, engaging manner.

Through writing essays on gun control, you will develop a range of skills from analytical thinking to persuasive writing. Each essay type offers a different way to explore the issue, enabling you to engage with the topic critically and creatively.

Top Creative Titles for Gun Control Essays

• Locked and Loaded: The Debate Over Gun Control
• Trigger Points: Examining the Impact of Gun Legislation
• Armed with Facts: Understanding Gun Control
• Bullet Points: Key Arguments in the Gun Control Debate
• Silencing the Violence: The Case for Gun Control
• Aiming for Change: The Future of Gun Legislation
• Targeting Safety: How Gun Control Can Protect Lives
• Weapons of Debate: Perspectives on Gun Control
• Breaking the Cycle: Gun Control and Public Safety
• Locked In: The Cultural Battle Over Gun Rights
• Behind the Trigger: The Human Stories of Gun Control
• Disarming Controversy: Exploring Gun Control Measures
• Shot Through the Heart: Emotional Appeals for Gun Reform
• Arms and the Law: Navigating Gun Control Policies
• Reloading the Debate: New Perspectives on Gun Control
• Under the Gun: Society's Struggle with Firearm Regulation
• Firearms and Freedom: Balancing Rights and Regulation
• The Last Shot: Can Gun Control End Mass Shootings?
• Defensive Measures: How Gun Control Saves Lives
• Guns and Responsibility: Crafting Sensible Gun Laws

Gun Control Hooks for Essays

• Statistic Hook: "Did you know that in countries with strict gun control laws, gun-related deaths are significantly lower? In Japan, where firearms are highly regulated, there are less than 10 gun-related deaths per year, compared to over 30,000 in the United States."
• Anecdotal Hook: "At the age of 16, Sarah lost her best friend to a school shooting. This tragic event not only shattered her world but ignited her lifelong crusade for stronger gun control laws."
• Question Hook: "What if your child's school could become the next target of gun violence? How far are you willing to go to ensure their safety? The debate on gun control isn't just political—it's personal."
• Quote Hook: "As former President Barack Obama once said, 'We are the only developed nation on earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months. It’s time we say enough.' The urgency for gun control is more pressing than ever."
• Shocking Fact Hook: "Every day, 100 Americans are killed with guns, and hundreds more are shot and injured. These staggering statistics highlight the dire need for effective gun control measures to prevent further loss of life."

Imperative Gun Control: Reducing Violence and Enhancing Safety

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Should People Have Guns?

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The Discussion on Gun Control in America

Discussion on whether america should repeal the 2nd amendment, my opinion and pros and cons of gun control, gun control and school shooting issue, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

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American Gun Ownership: a Look at Its Positive Impact

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Gun control refers to the regulation of the manufacture, sale, possession, and use of firearms.

• Japan has strict gun control laws and one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world.
• The US has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world.
• Australia implemented strict gun control measures after a mass shooting in 1996, resulting in a significant decrease in gun-related deaths.
• Switzerland has a high rate of gun ownership but also strict regulations on gun usage.
• Gun control measures vary widely across different countries, with some having very lax laws while others have strict regulations.

The history of gun control spans centuries with varying approaches globally. In the U.S., the Second Amendment of 1791 enshrined the right to bear arms. Over time, regulations evolved, including the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968, which introduced restrictions in response to societal changes and high-profile assassinations. Recent mass shootings have intensified debates, leading to calls for stricter regulations like background checks and waiting periods.

• Sarah Brady: Sarah Brady is an influential advocate for gun control measures in the United States. Following the attempted assassination of her husband, then-Press Secretary James Brady, during the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Sarah Brady became a prominent voice for stricter gun regulations. She founded the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and played a key role in advocating for the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which mandated background checks for firearm purchases from licensed dealers.
• The Columbine High School massacre: The massacre that took place in 1999 in Colorado, USA. This tragic incident, in which two students carried out a mass shooting, sparked a renewed national conversation on gun control and school safety.
• March for Our Lives Movement: In response to the devastating school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, a group of student survivors organized the March for Our Lives movement. This youth-led movement advocates for stronger gun control measures and has gained national attention, highlighting the voices of young people affected by gun violence and sparking conversations about policy changes.

Public opinion on gun control varies widely and is influenced by personal experiences, cultural values, political affiliations, and exposure to gun incidents. Some advocate for stricter measures to enhance safety, reduce violence, and prevent mass shootings, supporting comprehensive background checks and restrictions on certain firearms. Others argue for less restrictive policies, emphasizing the Second Amendment rights, responsible gun ownership, and focusing on mental health and law enforcement efforts to prevent violence.

• Public safety.
• Reducing gun violence.
• Preventing accidental shootings.
• Addressing domestic violence.
• International examples.
• Protection of individual rights.
• Self-defense.
• Criminals will find a way.
• Government overreach.
• Cultural factors.

Gun control is an important topic because it directly impacts public safety and the prevention of gun violence. With the increasing occurrences of mass shootings and gun-related crimes, there is a pressing need for effective gun control measures to ensure the safety of individuals and communities. Additionally, addressing this issue can help reduce the availability of firearms to individuals who may pose a threat to themselves or others.

1. LaFollette, H. (2000). Gun control. Ethics, 110(2), 263-281. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/233269?journalCode=et) 2. Kleck, G., & Patterson, E. B. (1993). The impact of gun control and gun ownership levels on violence rates. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 249-287. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23365752) 3. Spitzer, R. J. (2020). The politics of gun control. Routledge. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003049371/politics-gun-control-robert-spitzer) 4. Blendon, R. J., Young, J. T., & Hemenway, D. (1996). The American public and the gun control debate. JAMA, 275(22), 1719-1722. (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/403362) 5. Chemerinsky, E. (2004). Putting the gun control debate in social perspective. Fordham L. Rev., 73, 477. (https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/flr73&div=26&id=&page=) 6. Benton, A., Hancock, B., Coppersmith, G., Ayers, J. W., & Dredze, M. (2016). After Sandy Hook Elementary: A year in the gun control debate on Twitter. arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.02060. (https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02060) 7. Jones, M. A., & Stone, G. W. (2015). The US gun-control paradox: Gun buyer response to congressional gun-control initiatives. Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER), 13(4), 167-174. (https://www.clutejournals.com/index.php/JBER/article/view/9449) 8. Wasike, B. (2017). Persuasion in 140 characters: Testing issue framing, persuasion and credibility via Twitter and online news articles in the gun control debate. Computers in human behavior, 66, 179-190. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563216306720)

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California Today

Four New California Laws Going Into Effect on July 1

Subjects include safety at work and in bars, and the cost of renting a home or buying a gun.

By Soumya Karlamangla

A wide-ranging collection of new state laws will take effect in California on Monday, including a ban on hidden hotel and concert fees , a shift in how school students are disciplined and a requirement making it easier for people to repair their electronic devices.

Gov. Gavin Newsom approved 890 new laws last year. Most of them went into effect at the beginning of the calendar year, but a few have July 1 start dates. Today I'll walk you through four of the most important ones.

Bars must stock drug testing kits

Assembly Bill 1013 requires that bars and nightclubs offer their patrons the means to test their drinks for the presence of common date-rape drugs, known as “roofies.” The 2,400 establishments affected by the new law must either provide test kits to customers at no charge or sell them at a low price. And they must display a sign in a prominent location reading: “Don’t get roofied! Drink spiking drug test kits available here. Ask a staff member for details.”

Higher gun taxes

Anyone who buys firearms or ammunition in California will now pay an 11 percent tax, with the proceeds to be used for school safety and violence prevention programs. The tax, created by A.B. 28 , is expected to generate $160 million annually.

Capping security deposits

Until now, landlords have been allowed to require a security deposit equal to as much as three months’ rent. Under A.B. 12 , most landlords will be limited to requiring no more than the equivalent of one month’s rent for a security deposit, a change intended to make housing more accessible and affordable for people without much savings. Small landlords will be exempt from the limit if they own no more than two properties that collectively have no more than four units for rent.

Responding to workplace violence

To make workplaces safer, Senate Bill 553 will require all employers in the state to create and implement workplace violence prevention plans. Every violent incident at work will have to be logged, and employees will have to be trained in how to respond to violence.

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