It is December, cold as ever, and the guns are as loud as ever. A few days ago, several shootings took place one by one in Chicago, Baltimore, and Minnesota. Across these states, at least 28 people were shot. Some of them are dead, some are wounded. However, those gunmen are still at large...
The United States has the largest number of privately-owned guns in the world, and the number is continuously increasing.
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In 2000, there were 259 million guns in private hands in the United States. By now, the number of privately-owned guns has already exceeded the number of residents. According to a Gallup survey conducted in 2011, 47 percent of US adults reported that they had guns, and in the southern United States, 54 percent of adults had guns. On the one hand, concerns about the threat of violence have led many people to buy guns for self-protection. On the other hand, the proliferation of guns has increasingly been an important reason for violent crime. Since a large number of guns are privately held across the country, the United States has seen frequent shooting cases and an alarming number of shooting casualties. According to the 2014 report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), because of the widespread school bullying phenomena, around 200,000 to 250,000 middle school students in the United States carried weapons to school, and according to statistics, 8.6 percent of the students who had been bullied before took weapons to school, and 4.6 percent of the students who had never been bullied also took weapons to school.
The United States is the country with the most gun violence in the world. In 2018, a total of 57,103 gun cases occurred in the United States, resulting in 14,717 deaths and 28,172 injuries, including 3,502 deaths and injuries of minors. The Huffington Post website reported on December 6, 2018, that an analysis of official data on gun deaths from 2000 to 2016 in the United States found that gun violence caused the average life expectancy of people in the US to drop nearly 2.5 years, with African-Americans decreasing by 4.14 years. Recurrent shooting cases have caused a large number of casualties in the United States, and deadly mass shootings have already become a major threat to public safety. Gun violence has severely violated human rights, especially the people’s right to life.
The road to stop gun violence is quite hard, but it still needs to be persevered.
'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.' —An 'outdated' manner, which origins from the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Now is the 21st century, a relatively peace and stable century. There is no need for the US people to launch a military campaign against British colonial rule at any time. Besides, with the increasing power of guns and the increase in population density caused by urbanization, the negative effects of privately-owned guns are becoming increasingly apparent. It is widely acknowledged by different countries in the world that privately owned guns are not conducive to public safety. Just as the data listed above, it’s obvious that the right to hold guns under the US Constitution does not accord with the needs of modern society. Because the proliferation of guns in private hands is directly related to gun violence, which has caused even will still cause a large number of casualties and an increase in violent crime.
Except for institutional reasons, the intense opposition between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, as well as interest groups, are the biggest resistance to gun control efforts in the United States. NRA, apparently, is a nonprofit organization that promotes firearm competency, safety, and ownership, as well as police training, marksmanship, hunting, and self-defense training in the United States. However, in fact, it is an absolute “arms dealer” who just cares about extravagant profits and political power, including 5 million members. And in order to strive for its political donations and voters during election years, the Republican Party keeps supporting gun rights.
Although there are still facing many difficulties to solve the gun issue in the United States, some existing efforts can bring hope. For instance, the opposite of the NRA—Brady Campaign， is one of the leaders of the American gun control movement. Although its power is weaker than NRA, it also has nearly 600,000 members, and its influence cannot be underestimated. A lot of influential gun control legislation and massive demonstrations against gun violence all thanks to the Brady campaign.
'No matter how many guns we remove from the streets, people are still at risk of death', RuQuan Brown, a high school football captain and advocate against gun violence from Washington, said in CNN. According to his words, his stepfather and his closest football teammate both died from a fatal gunshot in the last two years. And those painful memories turned into the impetus for him to take action to fight against gun violence. He launched Love1, a merchandising business that advocates against guns and aims to raise public awareness to end such violence. Afterward, his company donates 20% of proceeds to One Gun Gone, an anti-gun violence art project in Rhode Island. From proceeds raised, One Gun Gone offers a gun buyback program and makes art from them.
As John Whitley said, 'Guns have one intended purpose: to kill. Sanctuary is intended to afford protection, especially from gun violence, and not to afford safe haven to protect these instruments of death. 'What we really need to worry about now is not how to resist the government tyranny that we don't know the specific time, but the individuals who hold guns at all times. As we always have such a 'lucky' chance to meet each other at any time and anywhere. Just hoping that in the following tomorrow, an exploding balloon will be neither a cause of panic for our citizens nor a tool to test their shooting skills.
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