Gun Violence and Gun Literature Review Chapter

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Gun Violence in the United States

According to the Gun Violence Archive, which keeps track of gun-related violence in the United States, 2016 has had 53,602 known incidents, resulting in 13,854 deaths and 28,505 injuries. There have been 363 mass shooting incidents in 2016. In 2015, there were 372 mass shootings killing a total of 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker ("Guns in the U.S.: The statistics behind the violence" 2016). Defensive use accounts for 1683 of all gun-related incidents in 2016, and 1,988 gun incidents in 2016 were classified as being accidental (Gun Violence Archive, 2016).

In 2015 alone, there were 64 school shootings. Some of those incidents did not involve casualties, but the numbers still prove alarming, revealing the extent of the problem ("Guns in the U.S.: The statistics behind the violence" 2016). Even more mass shootings take place in ordinary businesses -- about 45.5% of "active" shooting incidents happened at businesses (Simon & Sanchez, 2015). An "active" shooting refers to a public event, in which "both law enforcement and citizens have the potential to affect the outcome of the event based upon their responses," (Simon & Sanchez, 2015). In those events, the shootings end up escalating because not only police but also civilians also have guns.

Between 1968 and 2011, there were 1.4 million firearm-related deaths in the United States, more than the deaths that resulted from every military conflict since the War of Independence ("Guns in the U.S.: The statistics behind the violence" 2016). Guns are also proliferating. With every mass shooting, gun ownership surges (Simon & Sanchez, 2015). The gun lobby backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) believes arming people with more guns would prevent gun violence, which is like saying that eating more fast food will prevent a heart attack. Yet the NRA continues to cling to its stance, and continues to raise and spend vast amounts of money on ensuring that gun laws remain sacrosanct.

Raw data on gun violence exists, for the most part. There is still, however, "an official mystery in the United States as to the number of people who are killed by the police," (Kodjak, 2015). The Gun Violence Archive is a non-profit organization, not an officially recognized tracking system. However, according to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 1,754 officer-involved incidents in which the suspect was shot or killed with a gun, and 307 incidents where the officer was shot or killed with a gun in 2016. However, there is still no causal research that public health officials can use to design sensible gun policy. The reason for the lack of causal research is that gun fanatics have infiltrated the government to a dangerous degree. Gun fanatics are protecting the Second Amendment to the point where it is interfering with civil liberties, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the right to information. The Republican approach has been "lock up the science for 20 years and try to proceed by yelling," (Barzilay and Mahoney, 2016, p. 1).

The United States has a gun proliferation problem that is embarrassing as well as it is dangerous. For example, the United States ranks "number one in firearms per capita" and also has "the highest homicide-by-firearm rate among the world's most developed nations," (Masters, 2016). School shootings like Columbine have also drawn attention to the extent of the problem: guns are not being used to defend poor little old ladies from home invaders. These weapons are falling into the wrong hands. Whether those hands are using the guns to commit suicide or homicide does not matter. What does matter is that too many people have guns that are using them violently, neither to protect their families nor to form a militia in case Donald Trump gets out of control.

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As Barry (2015) points out, Americans are slow on the pickup. Americans have failed to draw a connection between mass shootings and gun homicides, instead framing the gun rights issue as a matter of principle that transcends ethics or human rights. Central to the issue is also the language and discourse. The term "gun control" is one that is reflexively hated by gun advocacy groups, even those that might be amenable to some forms of gun regulations (Barry, Mcginty, Vernick & Webster, 2015). To come to a reasonable solution regarding gun regulations that still preserve the inherent right of all Americans, gun control advocates need to rebrand themselves as gun rights advocates. Framing the gun issue as a rights-based issue would remove the value-laden language of gun "control," which raises the hairs on the necks of government-fearing folk.

Why the CDC cannot research gun violence

In 1996, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had been investigating gun violence but when NRA "accused the agency of promoting gun control," Congress actually "threatened to strip the agency's funding," going so far as to pass a tack-on bill called the Dickey Amendment (Frankel, 2015, p. 1). Therefore, the CDC technically can research gun violence; but it hasn't because it would face devastating funding cuts and receive no additional funding for gun research. The same is true for other research agencies. "Young academics were warned that joining the field was a good way to kill their careers. And the odd gun study that got published went through linguistic gymnastics to hide any connection to firearms," (Frankel, 2015, p. 1). The self-imposed ban on gun research is barely legal, deeply corrupt, and sinister enough to sound like a conspiracy theory.

Moreover, funding for gun research is much less than it is for guns or the NRA, which has a nefarious stranglehold on the American government. In 2012, after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama issued an executive order freeing the CDC from its previous research ban but the CDC still has not been able to attract the funding. When Obama set aside $10 million for the research, Congressional Republicans said no. One million members of a coalition of public health organizations, medical groups, and research universities have clamored for a more legal, sensible, and ethical framework. Recently, 141 medical groups sent a collective letter to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, but it is unlikely to go anywhere (Masters, 2016). The CDC maintains the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System -- All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP), with only $50,000 per year (Barzilay and Mahoney, 2016, p. 1). The collection of raw data is insufficient for creating public policy, which is the way the NRA wants it. Without empirical data, it will be impossible to pass gun control laws. The NRA has opposed gun research so vehemently because it knows what the research will reveal, and it is actively suppressing the facts. The facts do not constitute a political agenda, as the NRA suggests; the facts are just the facts. If the NRA believes that "guns don't kill people, people kill people," then they should actually bear the burden of proof and use CDC data to substantiate their claims.

The NRA (2016) has become an organization that reflexively opposes any type of gun control or gun regulation, not an organization that necessarily defends anyone's constitutional rights. Their hard-lined stance, coupled with deep pockets, is infringing on the rights of Americans to have access to credible data related to gun violence. Moreover, the NRA opposes research by presuming that the CDC has a political agenda. A research hypothesis is not a political agenda. Generally, the position.....

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