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Essays on mass shootings cause and effect
Essays on mass shootings cause and effect
Disadvantages of owning a gun in the united states
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Imagine it’s a bright and sunny day outside. Later that day, you’re going to visit your 7 year old daughter at her elementary school. You’re even taking off the day at work too. As you’re driving to the school, you see police cars and vans zooming past you, and you wonder what’s going on. You arrive closer to the school, and realize there’s been a shooting. You rush in to check if your daughter is safe. When all the commotion ends, you see her. Lying on the ground and covered in blood. You can see her with a bullet wound in her chest, and all you can do is just sit there, all helpless. People with mental illness should not have guns. And this was an example of why. Guns kill over 30,000 people every year. About ⅔ of those deaths are suicides.
Specific Purpose: To persuade the audience that any attempt by the government to control guns should not be supported
Over the past years media has been overwhelmed with news about mass shootings happening around America and if mental illness is the primary cause of the violent act. On February 2014, Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish published their article “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms” in the American Journal of Public Health that addresses the issue that mental illness has very little to do mass shootings which is commonly used on the aftermath of the shooting
“Guns don’t kill people, people do.” This is a well known statement that is oftentimes considered true. However, it is not completely true. Someone who is mentally ill may be unable to make logical decisions and the perception they receive of reality may be tainted by the illness. Gun laws pertaining to those suffering mental illnesses should be more restrictive. Weapons such as guns make committing an act of violence, especially when there are multiple victims, much easier. It is difficult to assess the probability of a person to commit a violent act that harms anyone including himself/herself. Therefore, gun laws need be monitored very closely and made more consistent throughout each state in order to prevent violence that could occur in the future. To make any system effective, every state must have the same laws and regulations, as it is easy for a person to travel to a state more lenient on gun control and purchase a gun from a store that will sell firearms more openly.
The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, but only in cases of self-defense and hunting for food. However, the use of guns has drastically changed since 1791 when the amendment was implemented. Today, guns are not solely used in their intended ways. Since 2010, over eighty-seven school shootings have occurred within American grade schools, high schools, and universities, resulting in approximately 107 injuries and 109 murders of innocent students. The two most deadly shootings in the world occurred in the United States: the Virginia Tech University Massacre which left thirty-two dead and Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting which left twenty-eight dead. Each new shooting prompts a debate about gun control laws and leaves citizens wondering about the accessibility of guns; any United States citizen over the age of twenty-one that does not have any previous felonies is able to easily receive a gun license. Forty-nine out of the sixty-one school shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 legally obtained firearms. The statistics become even more outstanding: seventy nine percent of all shooters have been diagnosed with a mental illness or disability, including the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shooters, Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza. Cho and Lanza were diagnosed with mental illnesses and disabilities, depression and autism, respectively. Even so, they were still able to acquire the guns they needed because extensive mental health background checks did not and still do not exist; Cho purchased his own weapon and Lanza stole his mother’s guns. Although the case studies of Lanza and Cho are only two out of the many school shootings, they should be considered prime examples to illustrate the necessity to add stri...
Imagine, a person is sitting in their classroom in college. He or she is focused on listening to the teacher, because he or she needs to pass the final exam in order to graduate. All of a sudden, an intruder charges through the door. The intruder pulls out a gun and starts blasting bullets throughout the classroom. There is nowhere to run and there is no way to fight back. Everyone is hit and on the floor, bleeding. This person is so close to graduating and starting a new life. Now his life has been cut short, because there was someone who illegally brought a gun to a school. Because the school had a symbol of “no guns allowed”. Because the intruder knew there was no one else could shoot back. Now imagine if that student, dying on the floor,
U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head. This happened in Arizona, a state where guns are allowed in open carry, meaning everyone has the option to carry a gun as long as it is not concealed. When this congresswoman was shot, the shooter became enraged. After shooting 3 more people, his gun got jammed, this is when a civilian jumped him and stopped his irrational behavior. This brings up many different opinions on whether guns should be allowed or taken away.
The second amendment grants all Americans the right to bear arms. The ability to hold a firearm at any time as long as the firearm is registered. In the United states, all it takes to hold a firearm is a background check and a safety class. In a short reading from the “American Now” book a short article By Christina Tenuta called Responsible gun ownership saves lives she asks “do Americans really need guns?”, but are the guns really the problem? Although the second amendment requires some decent documents , the qualifications to obtain a firearm needs to be revised to a mental check, a family history check , and also to make it a priority for reinforcement to check on the registered firearm every six to twelve months.
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizen to bear arms is just one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible. -Hubert Humphrey, 1960 My background is probably atypical for a somewhat high-profile supporter of the right to keep and bear arms. I am black and grew up in Manhattan’s East Harlem, far removed from the great American gun culture of rural, white America.
have shown the firearm homicide and suicide rates in the US are several times higher than that of any other industrialized country” (Towers 2). The automatic reaction people have to mass shooting is talking about gun control and mental illness policies. Every time a mass shooting occurs both the people and the government go crazy trying to find a solution yet there is no solution. The United States needs to set up mental illness awareness programs to decrease the number of mass shootings.
On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza, a 20 year old with asperger’s syndrome, shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut . According to the final report by the states attorney’s office he got in the school at 9:30 AM in the morning and shot the principal and the school’s psychologist that went out to the hallway to check loud bangs they heard. He then moved on to class rooms where innocent children were learning and started shooting and by 9:40 AM, just ten minutes later, he took the lives of twenty six people, including twenty children age twelve and below and six adults, before taking his own life (State Report on Sandy Hook Elementary shooting).
“How many have to die before we will give up these dangerous toys?” (Stephen King). Firearms have been out of control over the past decade and has been the cause of most deaths in massacre shootings. The controversy about gun control has escalated throughout the years. Gun control laws will affect people for the better. I will be giving you a different understanding that has the potential to change the tone of the national debate. The government should pass gun laws because guns do not provide protection, they only harm people. Guns are harmful to society overall.
Guns are always represented as a sigh of terror, violence and insecurity due to which, gun control is always being a significant and controversial issue from both political and self defense point of view. Guns and humans had a shared part of the past history, during that period guns were used for hunting and protection from the invaders. The second amendment of the U. S. constitution even made the guns/arms more debatable on the basis of keeping guns as their right. Their is a no harm keeping a gun for self protection under a proper law and order, which will be regulated by different background, physical check and the awareness of proper use of the guns. These checks will help lower down the statistical data of misuse of firearms and reduce
Gun control is a serious topic in the United States at this moment. Record number of Americas are purchasing firearms for either protection or recreational use. The increase in guns across the country has led to a substantial increase in the number homicides and public shootings. Although the second amendment to the United States Constitution allows American citizens the right to bear arms, what can the federal government and citizens do better for protection from gun violence? Currently, many states and cities have certain regulations on gun possession; however, there has yet to be a federal stance on how to control and curb gun violence. Also, there are numerous countries that have strict laws that either limit or restrict access to guns. These countries usually tend to have lower rates of gun related injuries or crimes.
Eighty-nine people die from gun violence in the United States every day according to the Brady Campaign , from school children to victims of domestic violence to people going about their daily lives. As we mourn the lives of those killed in incidents of gun violence across the country, we need to take action. We should all do everything in our power to keep tragedies like this from happening again. When it comes to addressing mass shootings, we need new answers
Specific Purpose Statement: To persuade my audience that each individual must take responsibility for his or her own actions. The must not blame guns for problems caused by people. .