Introduction
In recent months, discussions of gun control or the limited availability of gun control laws and regulations have dominated public discourse and have pervaded policy-making circles. This is largely due to an emerging interest in reducing the devastating impacts gun violence has on American society. Indeed, by early 2018, approximately 2,000 children had experienced injuries related to gun violence in the USA. The impacts of gun ownership and gun use are complex, far-reaching, and cross disciplines—from anthropology to psychiatry to economics and law. Gun violence, and the study of it, represent an interdisciplinary endeavor that has sparked interest from academics to clinicians to policy-makers. Children, youth, and adults have experienced not only “bullet wounds” but also the long-standing impacts of “bullet wound presentations,” including lengthy hospital stays, how to access social supports, psychological counseling and management, and longitudinal care for their physical injuries and mental health struggles. This complex relationship between gun ownership and violence has spurred intense debates among stakeholders, including political candidates and public health professionals, who question the ethics of owning firearms. Indeed, research has suggested that when gun violence occurs, the media exhibit a dramatic shift in the manner by which such incidents are portrayed. Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, the frequency of mass shootings in the USA has dramatically increased, with an average of 20 such incidents per year. This has dominated the headlines, and the psychology behind these shootings remains the subject of heated debate. The Sandy Hook Elementary School, Pulse Nightclub, and Aurora theater massacres received massive media attention due to the senseless, violent nature of these events, each of which was perpetrated over the past 5 years.
Gun Control in the USA
This essay tries to provide a coherent picture of the vast legacy of legal regulations and political debates over gun control in the USA over the last 200 years. Throughout 200 years of its history, US gun laws reflected American culture, society, economy, and politics. The path that took Americans from an overtly gun-possessing society with poor gun control laws to a shaken society with relatively stringent gun laws still to be enacted is an incredible synthesis of drastic socioeconomic, legal, political, and cultural changes, and is still wrapped with numerous discrepancies of popular interpretations. The result of, at the same time parallel and interdependent, historical paths of gun technology, political decisions, public administration, and public opinion is an unprecedented level and character of violence, including gun violence, in the USA.
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Assuming this long-term history as the context of a modern US-like society, full of inequalities and various conflicts, it is no surprise that US society records a high homicide rate. Equally though, no US citizen is unfamiliar with the penalties that are incurred in the event of inadequate self-defense or unwarranted initiation of physical conflict. These social and political aspects explain the extreme reactions that even the discussion of gun control provokes in US society. Given the long history of guns in the USA, many of the attitudes, laws, and political frameworks of today not only have much deeper roots but have been shaped and even reformulated repeatedly in the USA.
Current Laws and Regulations
While the right to purchase and carry guns and firearms is legally regulated in the United States, the laws and regulations concerning certain types of weapons and ammunition vary from state to state. At the federal level, certain acts are used against unauthorized acquisition of firearms, but their successes or failures are discussed controversially.
Most American legal restrictions on gun ownership and possession are established by the states. These often concern background checks and the duration until a person is allowed to possess a weapon or firearm, although waiting period laws were partially motivated to cool down heated situations immediately following high-profile assassinations. Nevertheless, some additional federal weapons laws are required to be enforced by local offices. These laws serve as a minimum standard and require no further implementation, so they should prevent the extension of jurisdictional loopholes. In several American states, it is permitted to open carry handguns, either loaded or unloaded. A number of states also allow a person without a permit to carry a concealed weapon into public places. Being licensed might not always include a background check. Some states still have requirements that guns be registered and/or owners be licensed. Some states may set more restrictive laws. In addition, state regulations may not cover some weapons such as machine guns. Only the application of amelioration laws is obligated at the state level, but they are not necessary.
Impact of Gun Violence on Society
Gun violence in any society has repercussions for its populace, its infrastructure, and its norms. For those directly affected, experiences of gun injury and loss of life are highly traumatic, enduring, and can leave lasting physical and psychological impacts. From a public health perspective, the direct effects of gunshot wounds lead to trauma and injury in target communities and affect the health infrastructure. Medical treatment alone forms a multibillion-dollar economic relay that is felt in healthcare, insurance, and government systems. Economic losses, specifically due to injury care costs and productivity loss, as well as the indirect costs of trauma and loss of life, make the total costs of firearm-related incidents in youth under the age of 17 years very high. Therefore, investments in reducing gun violence can have an important return on investment.
On a psychological plane, gun violence casts a wide net. It creates secondary victims from the family members of the primary victim to larger communities living in constant fear and anxiety. In both intimate partner and non-partner violence incidents, there can be profound impacts on the families of victims. They may include physical illness, mental health symptoms, economic hardships, perpetration of violence in return, and divorce and separation. In terms of the United States, mass shootings, in particular, have led to a massively altered zeitgeist where people cannot gather in public spaces without a lingering thought of fear, leading to the popularization of school and workplace shooting drills. Meanwhile, gun-related deaths and injuries place special burdens on Black and Native American populations and persons with lower economic status. Firearm violence is a leading cause of death in the American child and adolescent populations, who are uniquely impacted by gun violence. While across the nation, the chance of a shooting on any specific college campus is low, rates of gun violence and systemic inequities can vary greatly based on the population density and racial composition of a place. Due to such leading statistics, there was an urgent need for this paper to discuss the changes in gun control legislation proposed and implemented in the United States.
Debates and Controversies
In 1966, Charles Whitman killed 16 people with a scoped rifle and a sawed-off shotgun, climbing to the top of a clock tower on the University of Texas campus. Fifty years later, in 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people with an automatic rifle in a packed nightclub in Orlando. Sporadic, but deadly, high-profile acts of gun violence continue in the United States despite the enactment of laws to prevent them.
The debate about guns in America is one of the mysteries of this age. This is the final section. The goal is to summarize the main points presented up to this point and to communicate that turning to policies and their effects is the next question. This chapter explores the changing legal landscape of guns in the United States, obviously a hot-button and contentious issue. It aims to provide an overview of the topic in ways that can help policymakers, journalists, and members of the general public boost their understanding of the complex relationship between guns and their legal controls. In these discussions, it will come as no surprise that many facts are in dispute. Further, misguided perceptions of the scope of gun violence frequently appear. As such, it is especially important to distinguish between fact and fiction, in addition to reflecting varying viewpoints and interpretations, as a service to those seeking clearer understanding about this topic.
In any discussion about guns, attention to mental health should be highlighted. As will become clear, the idea that mental illness is a strong predictive risk factor for gun violence is actually a misconception. Since Columbine, there have been 12 mass shootings resulting in policies beyond flagging violence or putting armed police in schools. Political responses to gun violence extremes have little to do with policy evidence and change over time. However, the public's response is not as sensitive to a policy proposal's sudden disappearance as it is to horrific mass shootings. Even those with constitutional and philosophical objections to gun control are willing to see evidence that shows the policy addressing those mass shootings will be effective and are willing to address institutional concerns regarding the issue. The public generally lacks an opposed view of gun control, while there is a weakly opposed view among legislators. All right hands, all opponents, and everyone in between select evidence enhancing their position. Anticipated beliefs about deterrence theory, gun theory, constitutional law, federalism jurisprudence, microeconomic theory, independent covariate causal analyses, and other booming and failing policies of gun control. The discussion that includes this chapter provides additional resources related to gun control proposals and prospects for future proposals and campaigns.
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