Why There Should be Gun Control in the United States

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Why There Should be Gun Control in the United States

On the 20th of April, 1999, in a little town called Lilleton in the U.S, two students from the Columbine High School committed a massacre. During a period of three hours, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve students and one teacher, and injured dozens of others. Finally, they shot themselves in the head. Later the police detected over 900 bullet holes in the school (Bowling for Columbine).

Apart from this horrible crime, the macabre fact is that all of the involved guns which had killed these innocent people were legally purchased, and the huge amount of bullets was bought at the K-Mart down the street (Bowling for Columbine). It is true, nobody will ever know if this disaster could have been prevented by a general gun control at that time, but one thing is for sure: it would have been a lot more difficult to purchase the used firearms and bullets if a general gun control would have been enacted before. Although, a comparison between the USA and the UK, where gunposession was prohibited in 1997, shows that after enacting the law, the crime rate surprisingly went up instead of down, still more than 10.000 humans die because of guns in the States every year. That number represents the highest death rate in developed countries and can only be reduced by a stricter enforcement of gun control. As a result, the crime rate would get lower and the public would be safer place.
In his article “What gun controllers don’t want you to know”
, Howard Nemerov, who not only graduated from Harvard and won the National Book Award, but also got the Pulitzer Price, is presenting a vivid example that the inaction of gun control can end in a failure by analyzing official crime rates of the United States from 1992 till 2004. Coeval, Nemerov lists the same period of crime rates of the United Kingdom, where 1997 had been a strict gun ban, prohibiting civilians of possessing any kind of handgun and compares them to the US.
The crime rate was expected to drop, but in fact it went in the completely opposite direction, as the following statistics show. In 1992, the UK had a “burglary with entrance” rate of 2.5%, and the U.S had a rate of 3.5%, one percent higher than the UK. If compared to the statistics of the year 2000, the burglary rate in the UK went up to 2.8%, and that was after the prohibition of guns in 1997. In contrast, the percentage in the U.S. went down to 1.8%. In addition to “burglary with entry” he also compared the statistics of “sexual assault of women”, “robbery” and “assault with force”. In all three of these indices the outcome is similar; the percentage in the U.K. rose, whereas in the U.S. it sank. Furthermore he presents the fact that in that period, where guns were prohibited in the U.K. over 70 million guns were sold in the States. He summarizes that “[...], a reasonable person is forced to conclude that availability of firearms to the general public is not a contributing factor to any increase in crime”. He continues with another fact stated by the Home Office of Britain: during 1997 and 2001 homicide rates rose 19% in the UK while falling 12% in the USA.
His comparison shows, that a general prohibition of gun possession does not already mean that crime rates will go down. However, the annually average death rate through guns in the UK is 163 times is lower than in the US. The exact number of shot people in the UK in 2001 was 63 and in the US – amazing - 11 127 (Bowling for Columbine). In addition to the fact that the US has the highest death rate through the use of guns, also accidents while using guns with no criminal intentions rise the death statistics. In 1996 140 children were killed after being accidentally shot and about 1500 children are hurt by guns every year.
Since it is a fact that the US has the highest shooting death rate of 11 127 humans annually compared to other developed countries, 91% of American citizens are for at least minor restrictions on gun ownership. In addition to that, 57%, more than half of the Americans, even vote for a gun ban or major restrictions.

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It is a fact that some foreign countries have low rate of crimes despite they have less restrictions than the US. For example, Switzerland and Japan have gun policy which is completely different form those in the US; nevertheless, the crimes rates of these countries are quite low in comparison with the US ones.

One more example: the Swiss are issued fully-automatic rifles to keep at home, yet "abuse of military weapons is rare." The Swiss own two million firearms, including handguns and semi-automatic rifles, they shoot about 60 million rounds of ammunition per year, and "the rate of violent ...

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