Public Policy of Gun Violence in America

Studies and statistics show that guns will ignite the already tense situation at the crime scene and cause more violent or fatal consequences. The attitude of public policy generally focuses on solving the intervention of law enforcement departments and regulatory agencies. This includes intervening in the purchase of guns as a policy to prevent teenagers from buying guns with people with criminal records. Public policies such as restricting or supervising who has the right to carry concealed weapons will make it more difficult for guns to be carried to the crime scene. Many policies can also restrict the use of guns from the gun level by severely punishing those who use guns in cases or requiring guns to have certain safety functions.

Supporters of gun control often cite murders involving guns as reasons to support stricter gun control laws. These murders are relatively more than other cases. Gun law is a major topic of debate in the United States, because guns are also widely used in various entertainment and personal protection. Advocates of gun rights cite that guns can protect and prevent violent crimes from themselves, as the reason why more guns can reduce crimes. Advocates of gun rights also say that criminals are the last group to abide by gun laws, so restricting law-abiding people's access to guns will make them more vulnerable to the slaughter of armed criminals.

Criminologist Philip Cook believes that the goal of public policy is to keep guns away from violent conflicts. The solution he suggested is to limit the access of high-risk groups to guns and increase the difficulty of obtaining guns in the face of violence. Cook suggested taking various measures, such as conducting background checks on gun buyers, banning small pistols that are easy to hide, strengthening the investigation of illegally carrying guns, and imposing heavier punishment on convicted criminals who use guns.

Gun procurement

The policy goal of the United States is to defend the right of legal users to own most types of guns, while limiting the purchase of guns by high-risk groups. In the United States, it is forbidden to sell pistols to people under the age of 265,438+0, and long guns should not be under the age of 65,438+08. There are also various restrictions on selling guns to foreigners.

System. As far as the types of guns are concerned, there is an obvious trend in the ten kinds of guns involved in crimes in the United States, that is, criminals prefer to use pistols rather than long guns. According to the report of ATF before 1993, the top ten guns used in crime include Smith Wesson.38 and.357 revolvers; Raven.25 caliber pistol, Davis P-380 .38 caliber pistol, Luger.22 caliber pistol, Lorsin L-380.38 caliber pistol, Smith-Wei Sen semi-automatic pistol; Mossberg and Remington 12 caliber shotguns; And Tec DC-9 semi-automatic submachine gun. The research on 1800 felons detained before 1985 shows that criminals prefer revolvers and other non-semi-automatic guns to those purely semi-automatic guns. In Pittsburgh, criminals changed from other types of guns to pistols in the early 1990s, which coincided with the arrival of cocaine and the rise of violent gangs among teenagers. The background investigation of guns sold in California 1998-2000 showed that 1% was rejected at the beginning. The most frequently rejected gun types include short-range medium caliber semi-automatic pistol.

Among the minors trained in the training center (for example, minors under 16, 17 or 18 are different according to local laws), 86% of them will have a gun in their hands at some time, and 66% will get the first gun before they reach 14. It is also a trend that juvenile offenders have more than one gun, and 65% of them have more than three guns. Juvenile offenders most often get guns through family members, friends, drug dealers and neighborhood relationships. Teenagers in poor urban areas list "self-defense to avoid enemy attacks" as the primary reason for carrying guns. In Rochester, New York, 22% of young men used to carry guns illegally, although most of them lasted for a short time. Among teenagers, there is little overlap between legal and illegal gun possession.

Gun market

The policy of gun market supply is based on limited one-sided research, although it is an active field in current research. One of the important factors contributing to this result is that only 60-70% of gun sales transactions in the United States are conducted through gun dealers authorized by the federal government, and the rest are conducted in the so-called "secondary market". Most teenagers deal with felons in the "secondary market", and second-hand guns are transferred to unlicensed individuals. It is generally not convenient to get a gun from the "secondary market". This channel has certain risks. For example, the second pistol may have been involved in a murder case before. Selling guns at gun exhibitions and allowing undocumented individuals to legally buy guns for private collection make some people think that this is a loophole in the current law. Gundam 1998 The state laws of 24 states in the United States allow unlicensed private sellers to sell their privately owned guns at gun exhibitions or other private locations. The bill to regulate the market and limit the number of pistols in a big way by one pistol per customer per month shows that it has forced the illegal gun trade to decrease through the "secondary market" and achieved remarkable results. Heavy taxes on guns and ammunition are another weapon used by the government to influence the mainstream gun trading market.

In the mainstream market of brand-new or second-hand guns, dealers authorized by the federal government are mainly regulated by ATF. Gun manufacturers must engrave serial numbers on their new guns. The serial number allows ATF to track the transfer of ownership of criminal guns to the last FFL (Federal Gun License) registration, although

We can't find the first gun deal involving private individuals. A report published by ATF in 1999 found that during 1996 and 1997, federally authorized dealers accounted for 0.4% of all gun sales, half of which were used for criminal purposes. This is sometimes done through "purchasing". State laws that limit the number of guns you can buy in a month, such as those in Virginia and California, may encourage such "buying" behavior. It is estimated that about 500 thousand guns are stolen every year, which makes guns fall into the hands of users prohibited by law. The Youth Crime Gun Interception Initiative (YCGII) under ATF is responsible for expanding the tracing of guns recovered by law enforcement agencies. The agency found that in 1998, only 18% of all recovered guns were returned to the original gun owners. Guns recovered by the police in criminal investigations are often sold to legitimate buyers by legal retail stores, and then transferred to criminal purposes in just a few months to several years, which makes these guns more common in law enforcement departments than in the general circulation field. federal law

The first federal legislation related to guns was the second amendment to the US Constitution, which was passed on 179 1. In the later years of 143, it was the only federal law related to guns. The later federal gun law was the national gun law of 1934. The enactment of this law regulates the sale of guns.

Sales, how to pay sales tax, and the registration of certain types of guns, such as machine guns. After the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, 1968 gun control law came into effect. The law regulates gun trading, restricts mail order sales, and only allows listed gun dealers to deliver goods. The bill also prohibits felony prisoners, as well as indicted persons, fugitives, illegal immigrants, drug addicts, individuals dishonorably discharged from the military and mental patients from owning guns. The law also cracked down on the import of cheap goods and other types of guns on Saturday night, and restricted the sale of switch kits for automatic weapons and semi-automatic weapons.

The Gun Owners Protection Act, also known as the McCullough-workman Act, was passed in 1986. It made some changes to the restrictions in Act 1968; It allows federally licensed gun dealers and individual unlicensed private sellers to sell at gun exhibitions, while continuing to require licensed gun dealers to conduct background checks on buyers. 1986 also restricts repeated investigations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Weapons and Explosives, reduces the number of transaction records that gun dealers need to keep, reduces the types of evidence needed to prosecute criminals who violate gun laws, and modifies the gun restrictions for convicted felons.

In the years after the gun control law of 1968 was passed, people had to identify themselves when buying guns and sign a statement to confirm that they were not in the category of guns prohibited by law. Many states have enacted background check laws that exceed federal requirements. The Brady Pistol Violence Prevention Act passed by the U.S. Congress 1993 requires a mandatory waiting period before buying a pistol to conduct a background check. The Brady Act also requires the establishment of a national system to provide immediate criminal background checks, which must be completed by gun dealers. Brady law only applies to buying guns from licensed dealers, but most criminals buy guns from the black market. These restrictions, such as the waiting period, are opposed by many people. They believe that this law has brought costs and troubles to legitimate gun buyers such as hunters.

1994 The violent crime control and law enforcement act, including the federal ban on assault weapons, was enacted to arouse public attention to mass shootings. This ban stipulates that it is forbidden to assemble some imitation military specifications.

Manufacture and import accessories, such as folding stock, stock, flash suppressor and semi-automatic weapons with bullets exceeding 10. The additional grandfather clause is an exception for guns manufactured before 1994. A short-term assessment by criminologists Christopher S. Koper and Jeffrey A. Roth of the University of Pennsylvania found that the legislation had no obvious impact on gun violence. However, koppel and Ross pointed out that the grandfather clause and the criminal use of these guns manufactured before 1994 should be regarded as factors limiting the effectiveness of the ban, which makes the effectiveness negligible. Because the research time given by the short review is quite short, the National Academy of Sciences of the United States also suggests a cautious conclusion. In September 2004, the assault weapons ban expired with the sunset clause. The gun ban for domestic violence criminals in the United States, also known as the Lautenberg Amendment, prohibits anyone convicted of a misdemeanor of domestic violence from owning a gun. The ban also prohibits individuals convicted of misdemeanor or felony domestic violence from transporting, transporting, possessing and using firearms and ammunition. The law also considers it illegal for these people to sell or give away guns or ammunition. The gun ban against domestic violence criminals was passed in 1996 and came into effect in 1997. Some opponents believe that this law conflicts with the right of citizens to hold guns guaranteed by Article 2 of the US Constitution Amendment, and this law turns the most basic protection of citizens in Article 2 of the Amendment into a revocable right. This is why opponents of the law often deride it as the "Latin Fort Amendment"-similar to the "American Constitution Amendment". The law applies to everyone, including police and soldiers. Moreover, if these two types of professionals have been convicted of civil misdemeanors in the past, and if the law prohibits them from carrying guns, it will be difficult for them to perform their duties.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans, the police and the National Guard confiscated guns from private hands in an attempt to stop the violence. In response, the US Congress passed the Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006 in the form of the 2007 amendment to the appropriation law of the US Department of Homeland Security. Article 706 of the Act prohibits employees of the federal government and institutions receiving federal funding from confiscating legally owned guns in disasters.

Holding right law

The gun ownership law was expanded with the increase of gun violent homicide rate in the United States in the199 1990' s, mainly in response to events such as the1Texas rupee massacre. This case directly led to the passage of the Carry hidden weapons (CCW) Act in Texas 1995. Rorie Sherman, a reporter from National Law magazine, wrote in an article published on April 1994 and April 18: "This is an unprecedented moment when people feel desperate about criminal behavior. However, their mentality is undoubtedly' I will protect myself' and' Don't let crime enter my life'. "

Therefore, 1998, in 22 states, state laws stipulate that individuals are allowed to hold guns openly (that is, what Americans call holding guns openly) often without any license. State laws allow individuals to carry concealed pistols, sometimes called concealed pistol licenses (CHL；; Or concealed pistol license (CPL), by 2004, CPL had replaced CCW in gun management measures in 34 States in the United States. Since then, the number of states with CCW state laws has increased; By the end of 2006, 48 countries had registered at least some form of CCW.

John Lott, an economist, believes that the possession law creates a cognition that more potential victims of crime may carry guns, which acts as a deterrent to crime. Lott's research was rated as not fully testing other factors, including other state laws (such as Florida law) that require background checks on pistol buyers and set waiting times. When Lott's data were reanalyzed by other researchers, the statistically significant results of these data with hidden weapons only found that state laws would increase the incidence of atrocities, and another study by Jens Ludwig had similar results. Since carrying concealed weapons is only granted to adults, Philip Cook suggested that the analysis should focus on the incidence of adult gun-holding incidents, not on minors. He found that the law of carrying concealed weapons had a slight positive impact on the incidence of adult murders, but he also mentioned that there was no significant difference in its effect. The National Academy of Sciences has found no evidence that gun rights laws, whether good or bad, have any impact on the incidence of violent crimes. They suggested that the impact of new analytical methods and data on gun rights laws at the county or local level should be fully evaluated.

Child access prevention act

At present, many states have enacted the Child Contact Prevention Act (CAP), which requires parents to store guns safely, so as to minimize the possibility of children's contact with guns without damaging the convenience of adults to hold guns. CAP Mana gun owners should be responsible for children's acquisition of improperly collected guns. In most States in the United States, violating CAP laws will be considered a misdemeanor. Florida CAP Act, promulgated at 1989, allows criminals to be prosecuted as felonies. The research shows that CAP method is related to the reduction of unintentional gun fatality rate by 23% and the reduction of gun suicide cases by 65,438+065,438+0% between the ages of 65,438+04 and 65,438+07. Lott's research did not detect the relationship between CAP method and accidental deaths or suicides below 1979 and 1996, which were all related to guns. The National Bureau of Economic Research also found that CAP-related laws are related to a 30-40% reduction in the incidence of nonfatal gunshot wounds in children and adults. The study also shows that in those states where criminals are convicted of felony, CAP law has the highest relevance in reducing non-fatal gunshot wounds, while in those states where criminals are convicted of misdemeanor, the influence of CAP law is not so obvious statistically. All these studies are related, and other potential influencing factors are not included. According to the calculation of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2000 to 2005, until the last year for which data are available, an average of about three children died in gun accidents every day.

Local ban

In some parts of the United States, state laws enacted by state legislatures are stricter than federal laws, such as the gun control regulations in Washington, DC 1975. The law prohibits residents from owning pistols and requires licensed guns to be removed and locked with triggers. On March 9, 2007, the US Court of Appeals for the Circuit ruled that the handgun ban in Washington, D.C. was unconstitutional. (For more information about this case, see Parker v. District of Columbia. )

New york is also famous for its strict gun control laws. Despite the strict enforcement of local laws, guns are still being transported to the city from other parts of the United States, especially the southern States. According to the investigation of ATF youth crime gun blockade initiative, the percentage of imported guns involved in crime is the same as that of local strict gun control law.