Firearm Via Stricter Gun Control Laws example essay topic

2,743 words
Bang! Another child dies, not because of illness or accident, but because a fellow classmate was able to obtain a gun. The gun was brought to school, fired, and death resulted. Now, a family is without their daughter, their sister, and their friend.

This scenario happens too often in the United States. America's youth is unable to cope with difficulties in their lives and subsequently they are able to acquire a firearm and shoot fellow students in schools across the country. If students were unable to obtain a firearm via stricter gun control laws, then the school shootings would seize to happen. However, in the present day United States, people seem to be able to obtain a firearm easier than obtaining their lost luggage at an airport. Handguns and other firearms carried into schools provide opportunity for disaster. Florida state criminologist Gary Keck estimates that sixteen thousand to seventeen thousand children carry guns to school daily.

Children who have admitted to bringing guns to school cite defense as the most common reason. In general, the children are trying to protect themselves from other children believed to have guns by obtaining a firearm on their own. Of the seventeen thousand children who bring guns to school, ten percent of them commit crimes with the guns, which translates into approximately sixteen hundred to seventeen hundred crimes committed each year due to the presence of guns. 1 In 1992, fifty-five children died due to a school shooting in America. 2 These deaths were premature and would have been avoidable if stricter gun control laws had been implemented and enforced. After all, the shootings that caused these deaths were all committed as a result of a student having obtained a firearm.

While, the number of school shootings fell by forty-five percent between 1992 and 1997, the number of school shootings remains unnecessarily high. 2 These children committing the shootings should not be able to locate a firearm, much less fire it. Twenty-three students were killed from school shootings in the year 1999.3 Perhaps the most publicized school shooting of the year was the devastation that occurred at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. On April 20, 1999, two boys opened fire on their high school, killing thirteen people and injuring twenty-five others. Columbine "culminated an eighteen-month period in which mass shootings by students in Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Oregon had resulted in fifteen deaths and scores of injuries". 4 Columbine is a clear example of how obliterating children can result when students are able to obtain firearms, firearms that are not necessary for any use besides the killing people.

A mere ten days after the massacre at Columbine, Charlet on Heston, president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), held a pro-gun rally in Colorado speaking for the NRA. 5 In a similar tasteless act, Heston went to Flint, Michigan, after Kayla Rolland, a six-year-old at Buell elementary, was shot and killed by a fellow classmate. Mayor Wellington Web pleaded along with many citizens for Heston not to come. Web wrote a letter that simply stated, "Don't Come Here".

5 Nonetheless, Heston turned the hostility to fuel his pro-gun rally once again. Now, the NRA is an organization that has been against almost all sensible gun control legislature. Their active roll in the government impedes the progress of passing gun control bills. The NRA does not openly approach prospective bills and view them for their benefit, but rather protests them merely because they are bills to control guns and usage.

Heston falsely claims the learning of firearms is enough to limit students and gun violence. However, obviously he is wrong in his claims, citing the number of school shootings per year as evidence to disclaim his stance. These shootings provide evidence that the NRA's "don't touch" campaign and proper teaching mission cannot prevent the devastation child killers can cause. According to Charlton Heston, the NRA spends one million dollars per year 5 implementing a very simple message developed by Eddie Eagle for children: "If you see a gun, stop! Don't Touch. Leave the Area.

Tell an Adult". 1 This message, however, is geared toward pre-school aged children. The majority of school shootings occur in middle and high schools, where simplified slogans do not persuade the students. The other approach the NRA has taken to address young Americans and guns is to give them proper training in the handling and use of firearms. Again, this method will not work to prevent future school shootings.

After all, most children assailants, including Kinkel, had proper training in the use of firearms. 2 The boys involved in the Columbine shooting used a semi-automatic carbine, semi-automatic pistol, two sawed off shotguns, and homemade bombs. 4 All of these weapons serve little purpose besides killing people. These type weapons should be out of the hands of the two kinds of people who can cause the most harm: children and criminals. While long guns are legitimately used for sport, handguns are not.

The only sport handguns can be used in is target shooting, which supports the belief that they should be confined to shooting and gentlemen clubs and banned elsewhere. 3 By confining guns, the youth of America would face obstacles in attempting to gain access to them. These obstacles may deter many would-be student murderers. In addition to the very publicized crimes at Columbine and Buell, just as tragic shootings have taken place throughout the recent past of the United States, events which were avoidable.

Seth T rickey, a seventh grader, was known for having several toy guns at his home prior to his taking a real 9 mm handgun to school and injuring five children. 3 Kip Kinkel, fifteen years old, fired fifty-one shots from a. 22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic rifle in his school's cafeteria in Springfield, Oregon. He killed two people and injured twenty-two others. 2 On March 24, 1998, Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11 killed four girls, a teacher, and injured ten others at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. That following May a fifteen-year-old freshman from Springfield opened fire at his school the day after he was expelled for having a gun and killed two students while injuring twenty-three others.

6 All of these cases are examples of children killing other children with firearms. Without firearms being accessible to such a high degree, many of these young people may still be alive. Oklahoma governor Frank Keating compared the then recent school shootings of 1999 to a disease, claiming the tragedies "point to a very real sickness, and it is time for us to start finding a cure and not simply tending to symptoms". 3 Indeed, an epidemic of school shootings has caused the public to stop and spend time trying to develop a way in which to prevent future tragedies. A high proportion of firearm related juvenile violent crimes occur right after school on school days and in school yards.

7 A poll of citizens has expressed their number one concern about education is the safety in public schools, not the learning environment or education quality. America faces a sad time when schools are no longer viewed as a safe place for students to learn, but rather as a scary place where paranoia takes priority over learning quality. 2 Innocence should be brought back into schools by eradicating the accessibility of guns and focusing on the future of young adults. Firearms are the number one choice murder weapons for the youth in America. Between the middle 1980's and 1993 (the peak of murders), juvenile homicide rose sixty-five percent.

The entire rise was credited to the increase of firearm-related murders. Likewise, the decrease from 1994 to 1997 was also caused by the amount of firearms used in peer homicides. Shay Bilchic, administrator of the Federal Juvenile Justice Office, explains how the statistics of school shootings and firearm related youth murders show "the devastating impact that the availability of guns has had on the lives and well-being of America's youth". Bilchic went on to explain that "the recent decline in firearm-related juvenile homicides and suicide is encouraging and reinforces the need to remain vigilant in keeping handguns and other weapons out of the hands of children". 7 Clearly with better gun control laws and better enforcing of these laws, less shootings among adolescence would result. However, when the availability of handguns to minors is examined, an overwhelming and revolting accessibility is discovered.

The availability of guns to minors is easy and vast. Forty-one percent of students expressed how they could obtain a gun "with no trouble at all". 6 Seventy percent of juvenile criminals, however, described how they were able to obtain a gun in the Washington DC area, an area in which handgun sales are illegal and handgun possession is "almost entirely outlawed". 1 This percentage demonstrates current laws must be more greatly enforced as well as implementing stricter laws. According to the 1999 National Report Series administered by the Department of Justice and Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, between 1980 and 1997, three out of four juveniles over the age of twelve who were murdered were killed by a firearm. One in five arrested juveniles throughout the United States carried a gun all or a majority of the time.

7 Even though the 1968 Gun Control Act prohibits sales of firearms to minors, children and teenagers still use handguns. 6 As a result, A federal crime bill passed in 1994 prohibits all transfers of handguns to minors. 1 Nonetheless, two characteristics that all of the high school and junior high shooters have had in common are that they were all white male and they all "had ready access to guns". 2 The mere act of passing a bill is not enough to help save the lives of children in schools. Bills must be passed as well as strictly enforced in order for students to not be faced with a gun to their head in schools.

As pointed out by Robert J. Spitzer, "Society controls or restricts children's access to many products from alcohol to automobiles, precisely because of the inherent dangers attendant on their use and the resulting need for adult adjustment". Therefore, firearms should not fall under any different mindset. They should be restricted due to the "inherent dangers" they bring about as well as other products in American society. Although stricter gun control laws may not limit school violence completely, school shootings would be nonexistent and other crimes committed in the schoolyards would be extremely more difficult to commit if the laws were stricter. 2 As of present day, America's schools have enforced many gun controlling rules, all with varying degree of success. These rules attempt to enforce a minimal amount of gun control throughout the school year.

Many schools enforce a zero tolerance policy which gives an automatic suspension or expulsion to any student who brings a weapon into school. 1 However, Paul King ery said a mere one percent of children who bring a gun to school are caught and expelled. 3 While the theory of zero tolerance is wonderful, the application is less than successful. Schools have also invested money in monitors, patrols, and metal detectors.

The use of metal detectors decreased the rate of children bringing guns to school from 15.2% to 7.7%. 1 The schools are headed in the right direction as far as putting a control on the possession of guns, but a broader control must be placed for a truly effective result. A "Buy-Back program" involves the government and other programs buying back guns from citizens who are willing to turn them in to prevent an accident. 1 Also, "Gun-Free School Zones" prohibit guns and other weapons within a designated radius of the school. The radius is generally one thousand feet. Problems with the zones are mainly due to the area around a school.

For instance, it would become illegal for a kitchen knife to remain in the homes of people whose houses are within the specified radius of the school. 1 Such problems limit the feats of gun controlling laws and fuel the arguments of people against gun control. These attempts are merely band-aids placed upon a much greater wound. While America's schools are trying to work on ways to prevent or limit future deaths and injuries due to school shootings, the American government should as well. Technology has helped people in every form of life from cooking and cleaning to traveling and watching television. The government should be obliged to start a program to develop new technology for handguns preventing anyone except their licensed owner from using them.

A device known as a "smart gun" is built into the handle of a gun and prohibits anyone except the owner from firing a shot. The device works because it is registered to a particular person's palm print. If that print is not on the censors, the gun will not fire. 4 By requiring all guns to have a "smart gun" handle, children would not be able to obtain a gun either from their parents or from the black market and be able to do harm with it. The technology is similar to the thumb print lock a person can buy for their hand-held computer or that is used by indoor tanning companies to insure clients do not use the tanning time of someone besides themselves. The time has come when America should ask itself what is more important, the lives of children, or unused minutes at a tanning spa.

4 Another option for the United States government would be to put a cap on the number of handguns produced each year. 4 Comparable to the way in which Americans view diamonds, if the availability of handguns became less, the rarity would cause the price (whether monetary or else wise) to rise. The formerly inexpensive firearm would become too much for a child or young adult to afford. The more valuable a handgun becomes, the less likely people will be careless with the firearm or willing to lose track of it allowing a child to acquire it. 4 Perhaps if the gun control issue were any other issue, an organization would not be so apposed to finding solutions, as the NRA is when gun control is concerned.

If fifty-five children were killed a year due to daffodil injuries inflicted by their peers, and daffodils were neither aesthetically pleasing nor smelled as they do, America would probably not allow them to be around. After all, one death due to a child falling into a bulk pickle jar and drowning resulted in major packaging changes for the pickle spears. However, when the issue is changed to handguns, the unnecessary devastation that results seems to be overlooked. How accessible handguns are to children and juvenile criminals is a demonstration of how the current gun control system in America is not working as well as it could be.

The laws must continue to limit the availability of guns resulting in less school shootings and subsequently less crime. 1 K opel, David E. Guns: Who Should Have Them? New York: Prometheus Books, 1995.2 Spitzer, Robert J. The Politics of Gun Control. 2nd ed. Chappaqua, New York: Seven Bridges Press, 1998.3 Angie Vega, "Boy, 13, Arrested in OK school shooting that left 5 injured", USA Today, Dec 6, 1999.4 V izzard, William J. Shots in the Dark: The Policy, Politics, and Symbolism of Gun Control.

Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000.5 Bowling for Columbine. dir. Michael Moore. United Artists and Alliance Atlantis. 2002.6 Derrick Shepard, "Kids and Guns... Cries Finally Heard", Black Diaspora, July / Aug 2000: 44-45.7 Juvenile Justice Department Bulletin. 2000.