Gun politics in the United States

Gun politics is a controversial issue in American politics. For the last several decades, the debate regarding the availability of firearms within the United States has been characterized by concerns about a right to bear arms found in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the responsibility of government to prevent crime and deaths. Supporters of stricter gun control argue that broad gun rights inhibit the government from fulfilling that responsibility.

Gun rights supporters promote firearms for self-defense, hunting, and sporting activities. A further motivation is defense from tyranny.

Gun control advocates say that keeping guns out of the hands of criminals results in safer communities, while gun rights advocates say that firearm ownership by law-abiding citizens reduces crime. Meanwhile, there is an unresolved debate regarding the relationship between guns and violence. For example, a 2003 study by the Centers for Disease Control called for further study, because there was "insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes".

Gun politics in the United States is constrained by judicial interpretations of the Constitution. In 1789, the United States adopted the Second Amendment, and in 1868 adopted the Fourteenth Amendment. The effect of those two amendments on gun politics was the subject of landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2008 and 2010 respectively, which upheld the right for individuals to possess guns for self-defense.

Gun culture

In his article, "America as a Gun Culture," historian Richard Hofstadter popularized the phrase "gun culture" to describe the long-held affections for firearms within U.S., many citizens embracing and celebrating the association of guns and America's heritage. The right to own a gun and defend oneself is considered by some, especially those in the West and South, as a central tenet of the American identity. This stems in part from the nation's frontier history, where guns were integral to westward expansion, enabling settlers to guard themselves from Native Americans, animals and foreign armies, frontier citizens often assuming responsibility for self-protection. The importance of guns also derives from the role of hunting in American culture, which remains popular as a sport in the country today.

The viewpoint that firearms were an integral part of the settling of the United States has the lowest level of support in urban and industrialized regions, where a cultural tradition of conflating violence and associating gun ownership with the "redneck" stereotype has played a part in promoting the support of gun regulation.

In 1995, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms estimated that the number of firearms available in the US was 223 million. In 2005, almost 18% of U.S. households possessed handguns, compared to almost 3% of households in Canada that possessed handguns. In 2011, the number was increased to 34% of adults in the United States who personally owned a gun; 46% of adult men, and 23% of adult women. In 2011, 47% of the adult U.S. population lived in households with guns. Guns are prominent in contemporary U.S. popular culture as well, appearing frequently in movies, television, music, books, and magazines.

Origins

The origins of American controversy over ownership and carrying of arms can be traced back to the American Revolutionary War, hunting/sporting ethos and the militia/frontier ethos that draw from the country's early history, and even further to the rights of freemen under the English Common Law and long-standing rights of the citizens of a republic as described as far back as Plato and Aristotle.

Plato, speaking as Socrates in The Republic, "provided a comprehensive analysis of the social and political consequences of individual ownership of arms versus a state monopoly of arms... individual possession of weapons by sane individuals was ethically acceptable to Socrates." Aristotle's concept of polity included a large middle class in which each citizen fulfillied all three functions of self-legislation, arms bearing, and working." Aristotle criticized the monopolization of arms bearing by a single class in the "Best State" writings of Hippodamus, arguing it would lead to oppression of the "farmers" and the "workers" by the arms-bearing class.

Early English monarchs required that subjects be armed for the defense of the realm. Later kings, especially those best known "for arbitrary absolutism sought to deprive the lower economic classes, various religious groups, and colonized peoples of weapons so as to perpetuate and enhance the economic and political power of the dominant classes." Common law construction came to establish the right of freeman to be armed, both before and after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and were further enshrined in the 1689 Bill of Rights, and through long-standing judicial construction. Despite Parliamentary legislation that routinely attempted to disarm the Irish and Scots throughout the eighteenth century, many Americans believed they were guaranteed the common-law right to keep and carry arms.

Americans who participated in the American Revolution were strongly influenced by the philosophical classics from Greece to Rome to Renaissance writers, and were vigorous in asserting the importance of their common-law rights to both keep and bear arms for individual self-defense, and "to combine into independent militias for defense against the official colonial standing army and militias."

Calamity Jane, notable pioneer frontierswoman and scout, at age 43. Photo by H.R. Locke.

The American hunting/sporting passion comes from a time when the United States was an agrarian, subsistence nation where hunting was a profession for some, an auxiliary source of food for some settlers, and also a deterrence to animal predators. A connection between shooting skills and survival among rural American men was in many cases a necessity and a 'rite of passage' for those entering manhood. Today, hunting survives as a central sentimental component of a gun culture as a way to control animal populations across the country, regardless of modern trends away from subsistence hunting and rural living.

The militia/frontiersman spirit derives from an early American dependence on arms to protect themselves from foreign armies and hostile Native Americans. Survival depended upon everyone being capable of using a weapon. Prior to the American Revolution there was neither budget nor manpower nor government desire to maintain a full-time army. Therefore, the armed citizen-soldier carried the responsibility. Service in militia, including providing one's own ammunition and weapons, was mandatory for all men—just as registering for military service upon turning eighteen is today. Yet, as early as the 1790s, the mandatory universal militia duty gave way to voluntary militia units and a reliance on a regular army. Throughout the 19th century the institution of the civilian militia began to decline.

Closely related to the militia tradition was the frontier tradition with the need for a means of self-protection closely associated with the nineteenth century westward expansion and the American frontier. There remains a powerful central elevation of the gun associated with the hunting/sporting and militia/frontier ethos among the American Gun Culture. Though it has not been a necessary part of daily survival for over a century, generations of Americans have continued to embrace and glorify it as a living inheritance—a permanent element of the nation's style and culture.

Popular culture

The gun has long been a symbol of power and masculinity. In popular literature, frontier adventure was most famously told by James Fenimore Cooper, who is credited by Petri Liukkonen with creating the archetype of an 18th-century frontiersman through such novels as "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826) and "The Deerslayer" (1840).

A handbill for Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World

In the late 19th century, cowboy and "Wild West" imagery entered the collective imagination. The first American female superstar, Annie Oakley, was a sharpshooter who toured the country starting in 1885, performing in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. The cowboy archetype of individualist hero was established largely by Owen Wister in stories and novels, most notably The Virginian (1902), following close on the heels of Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning of the West (1889–1895), a history of the early frontier. Cowboys were also popularized in turn of the 20th century cinema, notably through such early classics as The Great Train Robbery (1903) and A California Hold Up (1906) -- the most commercially successful film of the pre-nickelodeon era.

Gangster films began appearing as early as 1910, but became popular only with the advent of sound in film in the 1930s. The genre was boosted by the events of the prohibition era, such as bootlegging and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, the existence of real-life gangsters (e.g., Al Capone) and the rise of contemporary organized crime and escalation of urban violence. These movies flaunted the archetypal exploits of "swaggering, cruel, wily, tough, and law-defying bootleggers and urban gangsters."

With the arrival of World War II, Hollywood produced many morale boosting movies, patriotic rallying cries that affirmed a sense of national purpose. The image of the lone cowboy was replaced in these combat films by stories that emphasized group efforts and the value of individual sacrifices for a larger cause, often featuring a group of men from diverse ethnic backgrounds who were thrown together, tested on the battlefield, and molded into a dedicated fighting unit.

Guns frequently accompanied famous heroes and villains in late 20th-century American films, from the outlaws of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Godfather (1972), to the fictitious law and order avengers like Dirty Harry (1971) and RoboCop (1987). In the 1970s, films portrayed fictitious and exaggerated characters, madmen ostensibly produced by the Vietnam War in films like Taxi Driver (1976) and Apocalypse Now (1979), while other films told stories of fictitious veterans who were supposedly victims of the war and in need of rehabilitation (Coming Home and The Deer Hunter, both 1978). Many action films continue to celebrate the gun toting hero in fantastical settings. At the same time, the negative role of the gun in fictionalized modern urban violence has been explored in films like Boyz n the Hood (1991) and Menace 2 Society (1993).

History

Revolutionary War

Gun politics as a political issue dates to the earliest days of the United States. (Lexington Minuteman representing militia minuteman John Parker. Statue is by Henry Hudson Kitson and it stands at the town green of Lexington, Massachusetts.)

In the years prior to the Revolutionary War, the British, in response to the colonists' unhappiness over increasingly direct control and taxation of the colonies, imposed a powder embargo on the colonies in an attempt to lessen the ability of the colonists to resist British encroachments into what the colonies regarded as local matters. Two direct attempts to disarm the colonial militias fanned what had been a smoldering resentment of British interference into the fires of war.

These two incidents were the attempt to confiscate the cannon of the Concord and Lexington militias, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord of April 19, 1775, and the attempt, on April 20, to confiscate militia powder stores in the armory of Williamsburg, Virginia, which led to the Gunpowder Incident and a face off between Patrick Henry and hundreds of militia members on one side and the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, and British seamen on the other. The Gunpowder Incident was eventually settled by paying the colonists for the powder.

Minutemen were members of teams of select men from the American colonial militia during the American Revolutionary War who vowed to be ready for battle against the British within one minute of receiving notice. On the night of April 18/April 19, 1775, minuteman Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott spread the news that "the Regulars are coming out!" Paul Revere was captured before completing his mission when the British marched towards the armory in Lexington and Concord to seize the Massachusetts militia's gunpowder magazine which had been hidden there. Only Dr. Prescott was able to complete the journey to Concord. The right to a militia was thus an issue in the United States from the very beginning.

Jacksonian era

States passed some of the first gun control laws. There was opposition and, as a result, the Individual Right interpretation of the Second Amendment began and grew in direct response to these early gun control laws, in keeping with this new "pervasive spirit of individualism." As noted by Cornell, "Ironically, the first gun control movement helped give birth to the first self-conscious gun rights ideology built around a constitutional right of individual self-defense."

The Individual Right interpretation of the Second Amendment first arose in Bliss v. Commonwealth (1822, KY), which evaluated the right to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state pursuant to Section 28 of the Second Constitution of Kentucky (1799). The right to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state was interpreted as an individual right, for the case of a concealed sword cane. This case has been described as about "a statute prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons [that] was violative of the Second Amendment".

The first relevant state court decision was Bliss v. Commonwealth. The Kentucky court held that "the right of citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State must be preserved entire.... This holding was unique because it stated that the right to bear arms is absolute and unqualified."

Also during the Jacksonian Era, the first Collective Right interpretation of the Second Amendment arose. In State v. Buzzard (1842, Ark), the Arkansas high court adopted a militia-based, political right, reading of the right to bear arms under state law, and upheld the 21st section of the second article of the Arkansas Constitution that declared, "that the free white men of this State shall have a right to keep and bear arms for their common defense", while rejecting a challenge to a statute prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons.

The Arkansas high court declared "That the words 'a well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State', and the words 'common defense' clearly show the true intent and meaning of these Constitutions [i.e., Arkansas and U.S.] and prove that it is a political and not an individual right, and, of course, that the State, in her legislative capacity, has the right to regulate and control it: This being the case, then the people, neither individually nor collectively, have the right to keep and bear arms." Joel Prentiss Bishop's influential Commentaries on the Law of Statutory Crimes (1873) took Buzzard's militia-based interpretation, a view that Bishop characterized as the "Arkansas doctrine", as the orthodox view of the right to bear arms in American law.

The two early state court cases, Bliss and Buzzard, set the fundamental dichotomy in interpreting the Second Amendment, i.e., whether it secured an Individual Right versus a Collective Right. A debate about how to interpret the Second Amendment evolved through the decades and remained unresolved until the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Antebellum era

The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was one of the polarizing decisions that led to the civil war. One minor issue was whether blacks had the citizenship right to bear arms. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856) the Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote for the majority: "It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union... the full liberty... to keep and carry arms wherever they went."

Reconstruction era

See also: Reconstruction era

With the Civil War ending, the question of the rights of freed slaves to carry arms and to belong to militia came to the attention of the federal courts. In response to the problems freed slaves faced in the Southern states, the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted.

Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio, principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment

When the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted, Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio used the Court's own phrase "privileges and immunities of citizens" to include the first Eight Amendments of the Bill of Rights under its protection and guard these rights against state legislation.

The debate in the Congress on the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War also concentrated on what the Southern States were doing to harm the newly freed slaves. One particular concern was the disarming of former slaves.

The Second Amendment attracted serious judicial attention with the Reconstruction era case of United States v. Cruikshank which ruled that the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not cause the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, to limit the powers of the State governments, stating that the Second Amendment "has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government."

Akhil Reed Amar notes in the Yale Law Journal, the basis of Common Law for the first ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which would include the Second Amendment, "following John Randolph Tucker's famous oral argument in the 1887 Chicago anarchist Haymarket Riot case, Spies v. Illinois":

Though originally the first ten Amendments were adopted as limitations on Federal power, yet in so far as they secure and recognize fundamental rights—common law rights—of the man, they make them privileges and immunities of the man as citizen of the United States...

20th century

See also: Crime in the United States and Gun control policy of the Clinton Administration

A famous and widely publicized case where fully automatic weapons were used in crime in the United States was during the Saint Valentine's Day massacre during the winter of 1929; this Prohibition-era gangster sub-machine gun mass murder led directly to the National Firearms Act of 1934, which was passed over a year after Prohibition had ended. Since 1934, fully automatic weapons fall under the regulation and jurisdiction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Other crimes involving fully automatic weapons in the United States have not been as widely publicized. However, the lesser known 1997 North Hollywood shootout involved two men carrying semi-automatic rifles that were illegally modified to fire in a fully automatic fashion.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Gun Control Act of 1968 into law

A milestone in gun control legislation was the Gun Control Act of 1968, the first post World War II federal firearms related law passed by Congress. In the latter decades of the 20th Century, groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Gun Owners of America (GOA) organized voters and campaign volunteers to focus citizen communication and interest when firearm legislation was under consideration, both at federal and state levels.

The United States was generally seen as having the least stringent gun control laws in the developed world, with the possible exception of Switzerland, in part due to the strength of the gun lobby, particularly the NRA. The NRA has traditionally supported gun laws intended to prevent criminals from obtaining firearms, while opposing new restrictions that affected law-abiding citizens.

Main article: National_Rifle_Association § Political_advocacy

An important electoral showdown over gun control came in 1970, when Senator Joseph Tydings (D, MD), who had highlighted crime in the District of Columbia and sponsored the Firearms Registration and Licensing Act, was defeated for reelection.

The GOA organization originated from dissatisfaction with the NRA. The group has historically rejected any gun laws that infringed the rights of law-abiding citizens, putting it at odds with the NRA on many legislative issues.

Besides the GOA, other national gun rights groups often took a stronger stance than the NRA. These groups criticize the NRA's history of support for some gun control legislation, such as the Gun Control Act of 1968. Some of these groups are the Second Amendment Sisters, Second Amendment Foundation, and Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. These groups, like the GOA, believe any compromise leads to incrementally greater restrictions.

File:Reagan assassination attempt 3.jpg

Chaos outside the Washington Hilton Hotel after the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan. James Brady and police officer Thomas Delahanty lie wounded on the ground.

Handgun Control Inc. (HCI), founded in 1974 by businessman Pete Shields, formed a partnership with the National Coalition to Ban Handguns (NCBH), also founded in 1974. Soon parting ways, the NCBH was renamed the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence in 1990, and while smaller than HCI, generally took a tougher stand on gun regulation than HCI.

HCI saw an increase of interest and fund raising in the wake of the 1980 murder of John Lennon. By 1981 membership exceeded 100,000. Measured in dollars contributed to congressional campaigns, HCI contributed $75,000. Following the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan, and the resultant injury of James Brady, Sarah Brady joined the board of HCI in 1985. HCI was renamed in 2001 to Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

In the 1990s, gun politics took a turn to the right in response to two high profile ATF incidents, Ruby Ridge and Waco, that led to mobilization of modern militia groups. These incidents combined with the passage of the Brady Act in 1993 and the Assault Weapons Ban a year later increased the fears of those who felt the federal government would confiscate their firearms. The Brady Bill, passed in 1994, requires dealers to conduct background checks and thus provides an enforcement mechanism for restricting purchases by prohibited persons.The Militia Movement expanded throughout the 1990s.

21st century

One of the first major victories for gun rights advocates at the federal level came in 2004, when the Assault Weapons Ban was scheduled to expire by its own terms. Efforts by gun control advocates to extend the ban at the federal level failed; two later attempts to reestablish the ban also failed.

The NRA opposed bans on handguns in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, while also supporting the 2007 The School Safety And Law Enforcement Improvement Act (known as the NICS Improvement Amendments Act (H.R. 2640)), which strengthened requirements for background checks for firearm purchases.

The GOA especially took issue with the NRA over a portion of the 2007 School Safety and Law Enforcement Improvement Act, which they termed the "Veterans' Disarmament Act."

Besides the GOA, other national gun rights groups continue to take a stronger stance than the NRA. Including groups such as The Second Amendment Sisters, Second Amendment Foundation, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, and the Pink Pistols. New groups have also arisen, such as the Students for Concealed Carry, which grew largely out of safety-issues resulting from the creation of 'Gun-free' zones that were legislatively mandated amidst a response to widely publicized school shootings. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pitched in, with an extensive study on gun control which found "Evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of these laws." A similar survey of firearms research by the United States National Academy of Sciences arrived at nearly identical conclusions in 2004.

In District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, the United States Supreme Court held that Americans have an individual right described in the Second Amendment to possess firearms "for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home." That case was an appeal from Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007), a decision in which the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit became the first federal appeals court in the United States to rule that a firearm ban infringes the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the second to expressly interpret the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to possess firearms for private use. The first federal case that interpreted the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right was United States v. Emerson, 270 F.3d 203 (5th Cir. 2001).

However, in delivering his 2008 ruling in Heller, Justice Antonin Scalia made clear that the right is not absolute, writing:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics gun rights advocates outspent gun control advocates by approximately $17 million to $1.7 million for records going back to 1989. On gun rights the top donor is the National Rifle Association while for gun control the top donor is the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

An open source group emerged in the US in 2012 that is attempting to design a firearm that may be downloaded from the internet and "printed" on a 3-D printer. Calling itself Defense Distributed, the group wants to facilitate "a working plastic gun that could be downloaded and reproduced by anybody with a 3D printer."

Proposals by Obama Administration

On January 16, 2013, in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and other national tragedies, President Barack Obama announced a plan for imposing stricter gun control in the United States, and providing greater access to mental health services. The plan included proposals for new laws to be passed by Congress, and a series of executive actions not requiring Congressional approval.

The proposed congressional actions included:

• Require background checks for all gun sales, including those by private individuals
• Pass a new ban on assault weapons
• Limit magazines to 10 rounds
• Ban the possession of armor-piercing bullets.
• Provide financing for improved mental health coverage, particularly for young people
• Provide funding for schools to develop emergency response plans

The executive actions included:

• Improve the data used for the background check system for gun sales
• Direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research gun violence
• Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers
• Give law enforcement additional tools to prevent and prosecute gun crime

On January 31, 2013, the Newtown school board voted unanimously to ask for police officer presence in all of its elementary schools; previously other schools in the district had such protection, but Sandy Hook had not been one of those.

2013 United Nations Arms Treaty

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is a multilateral treaty that regulates the international trade in conventional weapons, which has not entered into force. Work on the treaty commenced in 2006 with negotiations for its content conducted at a global conference under the auspices of the United Nations from July 2–27, 2012, in New York. As it was not possible to reach an agreement on a final text at that time, a new meeting for the conference was scheduled for March 18–28, 2013. On 2 April 2013, the UN General Assembly adopted the ATT. The treaty was opened for signing on June 3, 2013 and has been signed by 115 states and ratified or acceded to by 8. It will enter into force after it has been ratified or acceded to by 50 states.

On September 25th, 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry signed the ATT on behalf of the Obama administration. This was a reversal of the position of the Bush administration which had chosen not to participate in the treaty negotiations. Then in October a bipartisan group of fifty Senators and 181 Representatives released concurrent letters to President Obama pledging their opposition to ratification of the ATT. The group is led by Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) and Representatives Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania) and Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota). Following these two letters, four Democrat Senators sent a separate letter to the President stating that "because of unaddressed concerns that this Treaty’s obligations could undermine our nation’s sovereignty and the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans [they] would oppose the Treaty if it were to come before the U.S. Senate." The four Senators are Jon Tester (D-Montana), Max Baucus (D-Montana), Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota), and Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana).

Supporters of the treaty claim that the treaty is needed to help protect millions around the globe in danger of human rights abuses. Frank Jannuzi of Amnesty International USA states, "This treaty says that nations must not export arms and ammunition where there is an 'overriding risk' that they will be used to commit serious human rights violations. It will help keep arms out of the hands of the wrong people: those responsible for upwards of 1,500 deaths worldwide every day." Secretary Kerry was quoted as saying that his signature would "help deter the transfer of conventional weapons used to carry out the world's worst crimes." As of December 2013, the U.S. has not ratified or acceded to the treaty.

Public opinion

Polls

March on Washington for Gun Control in January 2013

Huffington Post reported in September 2013 that 48% of Americans said gun laws should be made more strict, while 16% said they should be made less strict and 29% said there should be no change. Similarly, a Gallup poll found that support for stricter gun laws has fallen from 58% after the Newtown shooting, to 49% in September 2013. Both the Huffington Post poll and the Gallup poll were conducted after the Navy Yard shooting. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post poll found that 40% of Americans believe stricter gun laws would prevent future mass shootings, while 52% said changing things would not make a difference. The same poll also found that 57% of Americans think better mental health care is more likely to prevent future mass shootings than stricter gun laws, while 29% said the opposite.

Gallup poll

The Gallup organization regularly polls Americans on their views on guns. As of October 2013:

• 27% personally own a gun
• 37% say they have a gun in their home, 57% no gun anywhere on their property
• 49% say gun-sale laws should be more strict, 37% say "keep as now", and 13% say less strict.
• 74% oppose civilian handgun bans
• 60% of gun owners have guns for personal safety/protection, 36% for hunting, 13% for recreation/sport, 8% for target shooting, 5% for Second Amendment right
• 48% think failure of the mental health system to identify persons who are a danger to others is to blame for mass shootings
• 40% think easy access to guns is to blame for mass shootings
• 65% supported expanding background checks.
• 65% wanted focus on school security and the mental health system to prevent school shootings, while 30% supported focusing on gun and ammunition laws
• 56% supported a ban on assault weapons.
• 51% would limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds or less.
• 79% would increase spending on mental health programs for youth.
• 79% would increase spending for training for first responders.

National Rifle Association

A poll conducted for the NRA of 1,000 of its members between January 13 and January 14, 2013 found:

• 90.7% of members favor "Reforming our mental health laws to help keep firearms out of the hands of people with mental illness." (A majority of 86.4% believe that strengthening laws this way would be more effective at preventing mass murders than banning semi-automatic rifles.)
• 92.2% of NRA members oppose gun confiscation via mandatory buy-back laws.
• 88.5% oppose banning semi-automatic firearms, firearms that shoot one bullet per trigger pull.
• 92.6% oppose a law requiring gun owners to register with the federal government.
• 92.0% oppose a federal law banning the sale of firearms between private citizens.
• 82.3% of members are in favor of a program that would place armed security professionals in every school.

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) gun research and gun control

In 1996, Congress added language to the relevant appropriations bill which required "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control." This language was added to prevent the funding of research by the CDC that gun rights supporters considered politically motivated and intended to bring about further gun control legislation. In particular, the NRA and other gun rights proponents objected to work supported by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, then run by Mark Rosenberg, including research authored by Arthur Kellermann.

The language has been carried forward and appears in the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bill, and also in the draft for the fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill. However, the Obama administration's legal analysis, "concludes such research is not prohibited by any appropriations language."

Though gun control is not strictly a partisan issue, there is generally more support for gun control legislation in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party. The Libertarian Party, whose campaign platforms favor limited government, is outspokenly against gun control.

Types of firearms

Political scientist Earl Kruschke has described how, in the gun control debate, firearms have been viewed in only three general classes by gun control advocates: 1) long guns 2) hand guns and 3) automatic and semi-automatic weapons. The first category has generally been associated with sporting and hunting uses; the second category, handguns, describe weapons which can be held with one hand such as pistols and revolvers; and the third general category has been most commonly associated in public political perception with military uses. Notably the AR-15 and AK-47 style firearms have contributed to this perception.

If sometimes confused in public debate, the two firearm types in the third general category are functionally and legally distinct. Fully automatic firearms of any kind (including military assault rifles) have been subject to requirements for registration by owners and licensing of dealers since the passage of the National Firearms Act in 1934. Further import restrictions were part of the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the transfer of newly manufactured machine-guns to private citizens was banned with passage of the Firearm Owners Protection Act in 1986.

New machine-guns in the US are still legal for purchase by the military and by governmental agencies, including civilian law enforcement; pre-1986 registered machine-guns are available to private citizens with federal registration (where permitted by state law), and have reached high market prices, eagerly sought by collectors because of their relative scarcity. An expansion has occurred in the number of states where such automatic weapons may legally be owned; for example, automatic-weapons were legalized in Kansas in 2008, subject to federal NFA regulations.

Many semi-automatic versions of fully automatic military assault rifles—and the larger 20- or 30-round magazines they typically use—ceased to be prohibited for purchase by private citizens by US federal law after the "sunsetting" of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban on September 14, 2004. Some continue to be banned due to a 1989 amendment of the Gun Control Act which made importing of some foreign-made firearms illegal, but similar US-made firearms are not forbidden.

In general terms, gun control advocates have paid little concern to the long guns used for sporting purpose as long guns are generally not viewed as associated with violent crime or suicide. For example, in 2011, 72% of the 8,583 homicides committed using firearms in the United States were committed using handguns, compared to 4% with rifles, 4% with shotguns, 1% with other guns, and 18% with type of firearm not specified. Non-criminal (i.e., acts of self-defense) and criminal homicides were not distinguished.

Kruschke describes incidents where public political perceptions have been shaped by a few high profile violent crimes associated with automatic and semi-automatic weapons, resulting in a relatively small percentage of the crime in absolute numbers, nonetheless have brought public focus on that type of weapon.

Kruschke states, however, regarding the fully automatic firearms owned by private citizens in the United States, that "approximately 175,000 automatic firearms have been licensed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (the federal agency responsible for administration of the law) and evidence suggests that none of these licensed weapons has ever been used to commit a violent crime."

Likewise, Kruschke states that automatic weapons are different than common semi-automatic hunting weapons, as the "most common examples [of automatic weapons] are machine guns, submachine guns, and certain types of military and police rifles." This recognizes that there are semi-automatic household guns that are in widespread use like the .22 caliber Marlin Model 60 hunting rifle. Similarly, although Kruschke claims long guns are not being used in suicide, there are in fact instances of long guns that are used for suicides.

Gun rights groups claim that confusing voters about different types of guns continues to be a strategy of gun-control groups, who in turn claim that certain types of firearms are either particularly unsafe, particularly likely to be used in crime, or particularly unsuited for "sporting purposes," and therefore should be banned. The types of guns so designated has included: any small, inexpensive handgun ("junk gun" or "Saturday night special"), any handgun weighing more than 50 ounces (1.4 kg), any handgun not incorporating either new "smart-gun" or "micro-stamping" abilities, all handguns, semi-automatic "assault weapons" (using either the 1994 definition or a more expansive definition), and .50 caliber rifles.

The proposal in the early twentyfirst century to ban .50 caliber rifles such as the Barrett M82 nationally shows the typical issues that arise in campaigns to ban certain firearm types. Gun control groups have used the phrase "Sniper Rifle Ban" to promote the proposal, in recognition of the sniper role of the M82, with effective range of 1,800 m. However, the M82 is also used as an "anti-matériel" weapon due to its large caliber; and many rifles of long range and high accuracy, but lower caliber, are used as sniper (but not anti-matériel) weapons. Gun rights groups see the attempts to ban .50-cal rifles as the first step toward banning a "sniper gun" or "high-powered rifle" category. The Los Angeles Police Department was criticised by Barrett for deceiving the public when, according to Barrett, it showed a police-owned Barrett M82 at a press conference supporting a ban on ownership in Los Angeles of .50 caliber weapons, and implied that it could at the time be bought in Los Angeles, without clarifying that sale of the rifle was banned by existing California state law.

Political arguments

Political arguments about gun rights primarily fall under two related questions:

1. Does the government have the authority to impose gun regulations?
2. If so, should the government regulate guns?

The first category is collectively known as rights-based arguments. It consists of Second Amendment arguments, state constitution arguments, right of self-defense arguments, and security against tyranny and invasion arguments. Public policy arguments, the second category of arguments, revolve around the importance of a militia, the reduction of gun violence and firearm deaths, and also can include arguments regarding security against foreign invasions.

Rights-based opinions

Rights based opinions are based upon the most fundamental question about gun control: whether or to what degree the government has the authority to regulate guns.

Fundamental right

The primary author of the U.S. Bill of Rights, James Madison, considered the listed rights —— including a right to keep and bear arms —— to be "fundamental" maxims. In 1788, he wrote: “The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with the national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion.”

The view that gun ownership is a fundamental right was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). The Court stated: "By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects." The Court observed that the English Bill of Rights of 1689 had listed a right to arms as one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen.

When the Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment in McDonald v. Chicago (2010), it looked not so much to the founding, but to the year 1868 when the amendment was ratified, and observed that most states had provisions in their state constitutions explicitly protecting this right. The Court concluded: "It is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty."

Second Amendment rights

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted on December 15, 1791, states "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." Disagreement about the Second Amendment is a touchstone of modern political debate about guns in America.

Prior to District of Columbia v. Heller, there was a debate surrounding the question of whether or not the Second Amendment included an individual right. In Heller, the Court concluded that there was indeed such a right. Although the decision was not unanimous, all justices endorsed an individual rights viewpoint, but differed on the scope of that right.

Many gun rights advocates believe the Second Amendment protects the right to own guns for individual purposes. They argue that the phrase "the people" in that amendment applies to all individuals rather than an organized collective, and they state that the phrase "the people" means the same thing in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 9th, and 10th Amendments. They also cite the fact that the Second Amendment resides in the Bill of Rights and argue that the Bill of Rights, by its very nature, defines individual rights of the citizen. As part of the Heller holding, the majority endorsed the view that the Second Amendment protects a right to have guns for individual purposes. Robert J. Spitzer and Gregory P. Magarian argue that this final decision by the Supreme Court was a misinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

After the Heller decision there was an increased amount of attention on whether or not the Second Amendment applies to the states. In 2010 in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment's provisions do apply to the states (via the Fourteenth Amendment).

Self-defense

The ancient Roman statesman Cicero said that, “if our lives are endangered by…violence or armed robbers or enemies, each and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.” In the United States, that ancient concern about self-defense is at the center of a national dispute, with the two major opposing interest groups being the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the National Rifle Association.

The eighteenth-century English jurist William Blackstone called self-defense "the primary law of nature" which (he said) man-made law cannot take away. Following Blackstone, the influential American jurist St. George Tucker wrote that "the right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible."

In both Heller (2008) and McDonald (2010), the Supreme Court deemed that the right of self-defense is at least partly protected by the United States Constitution. The Court left details of that protection to be worked out in future court cases.

Security against tyranny and invasion

Although gun rights supporters promote firearms for self-defense, hunting, and sporting activities, a further (and sometimes greater) motivation is fear of tyranny. A 2013 Rasmussen Reports poll indicated that 65 percent of Americans believe gun rights provide protection against tyranny.

Such arguments often mention the Nazi government as a type of tyranny that purportedly could have been inhibited by an armed population, and such arguments may rely upon a counterfactual history in which the Nazis did not disarm groups like the German Jews and instead had to cope with gun rights. However, the anti-tyranny argument pre-dates the Nazis, extending back centuries in the United States to colonial days; even earlier in Great Britain, one finds the check-against-tyranny argument for gun rights. Historians have tended to not address such arguments, according to Robert J. Cottrol:

Could the overstretched Nazi war machine have murdered 11 million armed and resisting Europeans while also taking on the Soviet and Anglo-American armies? Could 50,000-70,000 Khmer Rouge have butchered 2-3 million armed Cambodians? These questions bear repeating. The answers are by no means clear, but it is unconscionable they are not being asked.

Gun control activists argue that security against foreign invasions, or security against tyrannical domestic government, would require much heavier weapons than mere guns, such as bazookas, rocket launchers, tanks, and the like.

Various gun rights advocates and organizations — including Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and Gun Owners of America — take the position that an armed citizenry is the population's last line of defense against tyranny by their own government. This belief was also familiar at the time the Constitution was written. A right of rebellion was not explicitly included in the Constitution, and instead the Constitution was designed to ensure a government deriving its power from the consent of the governed.

In response to arguments that German gun control laws were an enabling factor in The Holocaust, that prevented Jews and other victims from implementing an effective resistance, writers such as Bernard Harcourt agree that gun laws and regulations were used in the genocide of the Jews, but argue that the prior levels of gun ownership were not high enough to enable significant resistance, and that confiscation was a minor and incidental piece of the actions perpetrated by the Nazis. Gun control activists further argue that the use of Nazi allusions by gun rights activists is meant to raise undue fear about modern disarmament and "throw a scare into gun owners in order to rally them to the side of the NRA", and that use of the Holocaust in these arguments is offensive to the victims of the Nazis.

The Declaration of Independence stated that, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..." Abraham Lincoln echoed the Declaration in his first inaugural address:

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in defense of the Shays' Rebellion in 1787:

What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Yet, the legal scholar Roscoe Pound has said:

[A] legal right of the citizen to wage war on the government is something that cannot be admitted. ... In the urban industrial society of today a general right to bear efficient arms so as to be enabled to resist oppression by the government would mean that gangs could exercise an extra-legal rule which would defeat the whole Bill of Rights.

Opponents of this right of revolution theory also argue that the intent of the Second Amendment was to avoid a standing army by ensuring the viability of people's militias, and that the concept of rebellious private citizens or rogue militias as a check on governmental tyranny was clearly not part of the Second Amendment. As historian Don Higginbotham notes, the well-regulated militia protected by the Second Amendment was more likely to put down rebellions than participate in them. In his book "Armed People Victorious," Larry Pratt recounts how countries as dissimilar as Guatemala and the Philippines preserved their freedom against communist insurgency by arming the people and forming rural militias in the 1980s. Gun-rights advocacy groups argue that the only way to enforce democracy is through having the means of resistance.

Critics of the "security against tyranny" argument also criticize it on the ground that replacing elected officials by voting them out of office is sufficient to keep the government in check, although there are numerous examples in history of elected officials assuming absolute power, with little regard to laws. Gun right advocates put forward the Battle of Athens on August 2, 1946 as an example of citizens in desperate circumstances using firearms where all other democratic options have failed.

Then-senator John F. Kennedy wrote in 1960:

Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.

Gun rights advocacy groups rarely believe in the plausibility of an "instant" rebellion's success through traditional warfare. Those who believe that arms allow for successful rebellions against tyranny hold that guerrilla warfare is the method in which liberty could once again (or even for the first time) be achieved. The right of free people to form militias to protect life, liberty, and property, Larry Pratt argues, has been shown historically to be essential for the preservation of freedom.

State constitutions

See also Gun laws in the United States (by state)

Each of the fifty states has its own laws regarding guns. Most of the states' constitutions provide for some form of state-level right to keep and bear arms with only seven states remaining silent on the issue. Many states' constitutional provisions for firearm rights are at least similar to, if not directly derived from, the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. Hawaii's constitution simply copies the text of the Second Amendment verbatim, while North Carolina and South Carolina begin with the same but continue with an injunction against maintaining standing armies. Alaska also begins with the full text of the Second Amendment, but adds that the right "shall not be denied or infringed by the State or a political subdivision of the State". Rhode Island, on the other hand, subtracts the first half of the Second Amendment, leaving only, "[t]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".

The majority of the remaining states' constitutions differ from the text of the United States Constitution primarily in their clarification of exactly to whom the right belongs or by the inclusion of additional, specific protections or restrictions. Seventeen states refer to the right to keep and bear arms as being an individual right, with Utah and Alaska referring to it explicitly as "[t]he individual right to keep and bear arms", while the other fifteen refer to the right as belonging to "every citizen", "all individuals", "all persons", or another, very similar phrase. In contrast are four states which make no mention whatever of an individual right or of defense of one's self as a valid basis for the right to arms. Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Tennessee all state that the right is "for the common defense", while Virginia's constitution explicitly indicates that the right is derived from the need for a militia to defend the state.

Most state constitutions go on to enumerate one or more appropriate reasons for the keeping of arms. Twenty-four states include self-defense as a valid, protected use of arms; twenty-eight cite defense of the state as a proper purpose. Ten states extend the right to defense of home and/or property, five include the defense of family, and six add hunting and recreation. Idaho is uniquely specific in its provision that "[n]o law shall impose licensure, registration, or special taxation on the ownership or possession of firearms or ammunition. Nor shall any law permit the confiscation of firearms, except those actually used in the commission of a felony". Fifteen state constitutions include specific restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. Florida's constitution calls for a three-day waiting period for all modern cartridge handgun purchases, with exceptions for handgun purchases by those holding a CCW license, or for anyone who purchases a black-powder handgun. Illinois prefaces the right by indicating that it is "[s]ubject...to the police power". Florida and the remaining thirteen states with specific restrictions all carry a provision to the effect that the state legislature may enact laws regulating the carrying, concealing, and/or wearing of arms.

Public policy theory

A second category of political theory is founded on the premise that even if the government has the authority to regulate guns, to do so may or may not be sound public policy.

Importance of a militia

Opponents of a restrictive interpretation of the Second Amendment point out that at the time of the Second Amendment in the late 18th century, the word "militia" meant all able-bodied male citizens between the ages of 17 and 45. Even today, the United States Code states that the militia is all male citizens and resident aliens at least 17 up to 45 with or without military service experience, including additionally those under 64 having former military service experience, as well as including female citizens who are members of the National Guard.

Gun violence debate

The public policy debates about gun violence include discussions about firearms deaths - including homicide, suicide, and unintentional deaths - as well as the impact of gun ownership, criminal and legal, on gun violence outcomes.

In the United States in 2009 there were 3.0 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants; for comparison, the figure for the United Kingdom, with very restrictive firearm laws (handguns are totally prohibited, for example) was 0.07, about 40 times lower, and for Germany 0.2. However, Brazil also has stricter guns laws than the United States of America, yet has a homicide rate of 18.1 per 100,000 inhabitants. The U.S. ranks 28 in the world for gun homicides per capita. From the same source, of the 107 countries where complete data was available, the U.S. ranked 41 out of 107 for total homicides per capita. This inconsistent data makes direct correlation of gun laws to gun crime difficult.

Those concerned about high levels of gun violence in the United States in comparison to other developed countries look to restrictions on gun ownership as a way to stem the violence. Those supportive of long-standing rights to keep and bear arms point to the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which some interpret as specifically preventing infringement of the "right of the people to keep and bear arms", independent of serving in a militia, as the means by which to stem the violence.

Within the gun politics debate, gun control advocates and gun rights advocates disagree on more practical questions as well. There is an ongoing debate over the role that guns play in crime. Gun-rights groups say that a well-armed citizenry prevents crime and that making civilian ownership of firearms illegal would increase the crime rate by making law-abiding citizens vulnerable to those who choose to disregard the law. They note that more people defend themselves with a gun every year than the police arrest for violent crimes and burglary and that private citizens legally shoot almost as many criminals as public police officers do. Some gun control organizations say that increased gun ownership leads to higher levels of crime, suicide and other negative outcomes.

Logical pitfalls in the gun-violence debate

The essential question in the gun policy debate is, "Will restrictions on gun ownership (or, for a particular proposed law, will this restriction) cause violent crime to decrease?" Debate attends even this question, with some claiming that overall reduction in violent crime is the goal, while others claiming that reduction in gun-crime is a good in itself (even if replaced by equal numbers of, say, knife-crime) because of the gun's assumed higher potential for lethality.

The "gold standard" for how an intervention (such as a new law) affects a human population is the double-blinded, randomized control study. Such studies are almost never available to answer public policy questions. Current studies (see below) examining guns and violence have either tried to stratify the risk of violence based on gun ownership (determined by interview for individuals within one locale, or by population statistics for international comparisons) or by level of legal restriction, using either an international comparison for different levels of regulation or a historical one (i.e. how did the regional crime rate change when a new gun law was introduced there).

These studies have different faults. The chief problem of the gun-ownership-as-risk-factor studies is that while they can – if well-designed – show the numerical correlation between gun-ownership and gun violence, they cannot determine whether the correlation is due to cause and effect, due to a common cause, or due to chance. John Lott uses the example of hospitals: there may be a significant degree of correlation between those who recently died and those who recently were in hospital, but that does not necessarily mean the hospital stay caused their deaths. A third factor (e.g. severe illness) may have caused both the hospitalization and the death.

The internationally controlled comparisons are flawed by the fact that other international differences (such as level of illegal drug trafficking or level of civil-rights limitations on police surveillance) may overwhelm the gun-restriction or gun-ownership differences as a source of difference in violent crime rate.

Similarly, the historically controlled studies may miss other trends over time (e.g. economic cycles, changes in gang presence, changes in other laws etc.) that are more important than the introduction of the studied gun law.

No study can be free of all of these faults and so part of the policy debate will center on which studies are "most free" of confounding error. It must be considered, however, whenever a public policy change concerning firearms is proposed (either loosening or tightening gun restrictions) that three assumptions are being made.

First, it is assumed that the proposed law, if enforced as intended, would actually reduce overall violent crime (or simply gun-related crime, if that is the goal). Second, it is assumed that enforcement of the law as intended (that is, its application to the target population–, e.g. criminals or identifiable potential criminals– without its simply being ignored or easily circumvented by that group) can, in fact, be accomplished. Any study claiming that its data "shows" that a given law produced a given effect is simultaneously asserting that these first two assumptions were true.

Finally, as the resources to prevent violence will never be infinite, there is a third assumption: that devoting the resources to implement the new law will make more of a difference in violence prevention than simply devoting those same resources to (better?) implementation of existing laws.

Relationship between criminal violence and gun ownership

See also: Crime in the United States

There is an open debate regarding the relationship between gun control and violence and other crimes. The numbers of lives saved or lost by gun ownership is debated by criminologists. Research difficulties include the difficulty of accounting accurately for confrontations in which no shots are fired and jurisdictional differences in the definition of "crime".

One area of research in the relationship between criminal violence and gun ownership is defensive gun use (DGU). Gun rights advocate John Lott says there is a positive correlation between gun control legislation and crimes in which criminals victimize law-abiding citizens. According to Lott, criminals ignore gun control laws and are effectively deterred by armed intended victims just as higher penalties deter crime. His work involved comparison and analysis from data collected from all the counties in the United States. Lott's study has been criticized for not adequately controlling for other factors, including other state laws also enacted, such as Florida's laws requiring background checks and waiting period for handgun buyers. More recent similar findings by Jens Ludwig further support John Lott statistical evidence. Since concealed-carry permits are only given to adults, John J. Donohue suggests that analysis should focus on the relationship with adult and not juvenile gun incident rates. He finds a small, positive effect of concealed-carry laws on adult homicide rates, but states the effect is not statistically significant. NAS suggests that new analytical approaches and datasets at the county or local level are needed to evaluate adequately the impact of right-to-carry laws.

Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, estimated that approximately 2.5 million people used their gun in self-defense or to prevent crime each year, often by merely displaying a weapon. The incidents that Kleck studied generally did not involve the firing of the gun and he estimates that as many as 1.9 million of those instances involved a handgun. The National Rifle Association regularly reprints locally-published stories of ordinary citizens whose lives were saved by their guns.

One study found that homicide rates as a whole, especially homicides as a result of firearms use, are not always significantly lower in many other developed countries. This is apparent in the UK and Japan, which have very strict gun control laws, while Israel, Canada and Switzerland at the same time have lower homicide rates and high rates of gun distribution. Dr Kleck has stated, "...cross-national comparisons do not provide a sound basis for assessing the impact of gun ownership levels on crime rates." One study published in the [International Journal of Epidemiology], which found that for the year of 1998:

During the one-year study period (1998), 88 649 firearm deaths were reported. Overall firearm mortality rates are five to six times higher in high-income (HI) and upper middle-income (UMI) countries in the Americas (12.72) than in Europe (2.17) or Oceania (2.57) and 95 times higher than in Asia (0.13). The rate of firearm deaths in the United States (14.24 per 100 000) exceeds that of its economic counterparts (1.76) eightfold and that of UMI countries (9.69) by a factor of 1.5. Suicide and homicide contribute equally to total firearm deaths in the US, but most firearm deaths are suicides (71%) in HI countries and homicides (72%) in UMI countries.

Similarly statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) show that the number of homicides per 100,000 in the UK at 1.14 as of 2006, was considerably below that of the US (5.62 per 100,000) in 2006, and again far below the rate of homicides in the US specifically using a firearm (3.36 per 100,000 people) in the same year. The UK rate of homicide was also below that of Canada in 2006 (1.86 per 100,000). However, the UNODC statistics from the same year also show Switzerland to have a homicide rate of 0.8 per 100,000, again indicating the difficulties of direct international comparisons.

In a New England Journal of Medicine article, Arthur Kellermann found that people who keep a gun at home increase their risk of homicide. Florida State University professor Gary Kleck disagrees with the journal authors' interpretation of the evidence and he notes that there is no evidence that the guns involved in the home homicides studied by Kellermann, et al. were kept in the victim's home. Indeed, it was later discovered that Kellermann's own data indicated that no more than 1.7% of the homicides committed in the counties he studied were committed with a gun kept in the victim's home. Thus, victim gun ownership could not have had more than a negligible effect in elevating the risk of being murdered. Similarly, Dave Kopel, writing in National Review, criticized Kellermann's study. Researchers John Lott, Gary Kleck and many others still dispute Kellermann's work. Kellerman's work has also been severely criticized because he ignores factors such as guns being used to protect property, save lives and deter crime without killing the criminal—which, Kleck and others argue, accounts for the large majority of defensive gun uses. Kellermann responded to similar criticisms of the data behind his study in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, amending his original claim to reflect that "sixty-two percent of this group reported that the victim lived in a home where one or more guns were kept" instead of the original ninety-three, which does not change the validity of his original assertion. Finally, another argument cited by academics researching gun violence points to the positive correlation between guns in the home and an already violent neighborhood. Lott's results suggest that only allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms, deters crime because potential criminals do not know who may or may not be carrying a firearm. The possibility of getting shot by an armed victim is a substantial deterrent to crime and prevents not only petty crime but physical confrontation as well from criminals who do not possess the means to match an increase in force. Lott's data comes from the FBI's massive crime statistics from all 3,054 US counties. Other scholars, such as Gary Kleck, dispute Lott's findings, arguing that there is no evidence that total rates of gun carrying (legal and illegal) actually increased after Right-to-Carry laws made it easier to get a carry permit, or that criminals' perceptions of crime as risky increased after the laws were passed. While criticizing Lott's theories as overemphasizing the threat to the average American from armed crime and therefore the need for armed defense, Kleck's work speaks towards similar support for firearm rights by showing that the number of Americans who report incidents where their guns averted a threat vastly outnumber those who report being the victim of a firearm-related crime. Others have pointed out that the beneficial effects of firearms, not only in self-protection, deterring crime and protecting property, but also in preserving freedom, have not been properly studied by public health researchers.

In his book Private Guns, Public Health, David Hemenway makes the argument in favor of gun control and he provides evidence for the more guns, more gun violence and suicide hypothesis. Rather than compare America to countries with radically different cultures and historical experiences, he focuses on Canada, New Zealand and Australia and asserts that the case for gun control is a strong one based on the relationship he finds (contrary to most other researchers) between lower crime rates and gun control. More thorough reviews of the research literature, however, do not support Hemenway's optimistic claims about the impact of gun laws

Firearms are also the most common method of suicide, accounting for 53.7% of all suicides committed in the United States in 2003. Most research has nevertheless found no relationship between gun availability and suicide rates, suggesting that other suicide methods, such as hanging, can usually be substituted for shooting.

A 2003 CDC study determined "The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes." They go on to state "a finding of insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness but rather as an indicator that additional research is needed before an intervention can be evaluated for its effectiveness."

For a more detailed discussion of the historical and current gun violence issues in the United States, see Gun violence in the United States.

Public Health Law Research

Public Health Law Research, an independent organization, published in 2009 several evidence briefs summarizing the research assessing the effect of a specific law or policy on public health, that concern the effectiveness of various laws related to gun safety .

There is not enough evidence to establish the effectiveness of "shall issue" laws, as distinct from "may issue" laws, as a public health intervention to reduce violent crime.

There is insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of waiting period laws as public health interventions aimed at preventing gun-related violence and suicide.

Although child access prevention laws may represent a promising intervention for reducing gun-related morbidity and mortality among children, there is currently insufficient evidence to validate their effectiveness as a public health intervention aimed at reducing gun-related harms.

There is insufficient evidence to establish the effectiveness of such bans as public health interventions aimed at reducing gun-related harms.

There is insufficient evidence to validate the effectiveness of firearm licensing and registration requirements as legal interventions aimed a reducing fire-arm related harms.

Courts and the law

Supreme Court decisions

Since the late 19th century, with three key cases from the pre-incorporation era, the Supreme Court consistently ruled that the Second Amendment (and the Bill of Rights) restricts only Congress, and not the States, in the regulation of guns. Scholars predicted that the Court's incorporation of other rights suggests that they may incorporate the Second, should a suitable case come before them.

"Americans also have a right to defend their homes, and we need not challenge that. Nor does anyone seriously question that the Constitution protects the right of hunters to own and keep sporting guns for hunting game any more than anyone would challenge the right to own and keep fishing rods and other equipment for fishing – or to own automobiles. To "keep and bear arms" for hunting today is essentially a recreational activity and not an imperative of survival, as it was 200 years ago. "Saturday night specials" and machine guns are not recreational weapons and surely are as much in need of regulation as motor vehicles." — Ex-Chief Justice Warren Burger, 1990.

Until recently, there had been only one modern Supreme Court case that dealt directly with the Second Amendment, United States v. Miller. In that case, the Supreme Court did not address the incorporation issue, but the case instead hinged on whether a sawed-off shotgun "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." In quashing the indictment against Miller, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas stated that the National Firearms Act of 1934, "offend[ed] the inhibition of the Second Amendment to the Constitution." The federal government then appealed directly to the US Supreme Court. On appeal the federal government did not object to Miller's release since he had died by then, seeking only to have the trial judge's ruling on the unconstitutionality of the federal law overturned. Under these circumstances, neither Miller nor his attorney appeared before the US Supreme Court to argue the case. The Court only heard argument from the federal prosecutor. In its ruling, the Supreme Court overturned the trial court and upheld the law.

District of Columbia v. Heller

See also: District of Columbia v. Heller and Firearm case law in the United States

On June 26, 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the United States Supreme Court affirmed, by a 5-4 vote, the decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. This decision struck down the D.C. gun law. It also clarifies the scope of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, stating that it stipulates an individual right irrespective of membership in a militia. The majority opinion allowed that, like other rights, the right to bear arms is not "unlimited".

"2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

The dissenting justices said that the majority had broken established precedent on the Second Amendment, and took the position that the Amendment refers to an individual right, but in the context of militia service.

McDonald v. Chicago

Further information: McDonald v. Chicago

June 28, 2010, Chicago gun control law struck down 5 to 4. Ruling that "The Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms fully applicable to the States." which incorporated the Second Amendment against the states.

Gun laws

Mall of America sign giving notice that state law allows private establishments to prohibit guns on the premises.

See also: Gun laws in the United States (by state) and Gun law in the United States

Gun control laws and regulations exist at all levels of government, with the vast majority being local codes which vary between jurisdictions. The NRA reports 20,000 gun laws nationwide. A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine notes 300 federal and state laws regarding the manufacture, design, sale, purchase, or possession of guns.

At the federal level, fully automatic weapons, short barrel shotguns, and short barrel rifles have been taxed and mandated to be registered since 1934 with the National Firearms Act. The Gun Control Act of 1968 adds prohibition of mail-order sales and prohibits transfers to minors. The 1968 Act requires that guns carry serial numbers and implemented a tracking system to determine the purchaser of a gun whose make, model, and serial number are known. It also prohibited gun ownership by convicted felons and certain other individuals. The Act was updated in the 1990s with the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, mainly to add a mechanism for the criminal history of gun purchasers to be checked at the point of sale, and in 1996 with the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban to prohibit ownership and use of guns by individuals convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence.

The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act enacted the now-defunct Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which banned the purchase, sale, or transfer of any weapon specifically named in the act, other weapons with a certain number of "defining features", and detachable magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, that had been manufactured after the beginning date of the ban. The Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, but H.R. 6257 introduced June 12, 2008 sought to re-instate the ban indefinitely and to expand the list of banned weapons. The bill died in committee. New York, California, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut, and New Jersey and several municipalities have codified some provisions of the expired Federal ban into State and local laws.

Gun Free School Zones Act of 1995

The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 severely limited where a person may legally carry a firearm, although this was voided by United States v. Lopez as exceeding Congress' Commerce Clause authority. The act was passed again in its current form in 1995. The act makes it generally unlawful for an armed citizen to travel on any public sidewalk, road, or highway, that passes within one thousand (1000) feet of the property line of any K-12 school in the nation. Only if one has a state permit to carry a firearm are they exempt from the one-thousand foot rule. In which case, depending on the laws of the individual states, full access to the schools is lawful under the Act. "(B) Subparagraph (A) does not apply to the possession of a firearm— ...(ii) if the individual possessing the firearm is licensed to do so by the State in which the school zone is located"

Firearm related violence

Photo from a security camera of shooter Aaron Alexis holding his Remington 870 shotgun during his rampage.

Main article: Gun violence in the United States § Homicides

See also: List of countries by intentional homicide rate

• Homicide

The United States has about five percent of the total world population but residents of the United States own about 42 percent of all the world's civilian-owned firearms. In 2009, according to the UNODC, 60% of homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm

U.S. homicides by firearm vary widely from state to state. In 2010, the lowest homicide by firearm rates were in Vermont (.3) and New Hampshire (.4) and the highest were in the District of Columbia (16.0) and Louisiana (7.8).

See also

• Americans for Responsible Solutions
• Brady Campaign
• Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
• Concealed carry in the United States
• Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence
• Federal Assault Weapons Ban
• Firearm case law in the United States
• Gun law in the United States
• Gun laws in the United States by state
• Gun Owners of America
• Gun politics
• Gun violence in the United States
• Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
• Mayors Against Illegal Guns
• Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
• National Rifle Association
• Open carry in the United States
• Pink Pistols
• Right to keep and bear arms in the United States
• Second Amendment Foundation
• Second Amendment Sisters
• Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
• Students for Concealed Carry
• Violence Policy Center

Notes

^ a: The constitutions of the states of California, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, and New York contain no specific mention of the keeping or bearing of arms in any regard.
^ b: The right to keep and bear arms is said to belong to "every citizen" by the constitutions of Alabama, Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, and Texas; to the "individual citizen" by Arizona, Illinois, and Washington; and to a unique but very similar variant therof by Louisiana ("every citizen,") Michigan ("every person,") Montana ("any person,") New Hampshire ("all persons,") and North Dakota ("all individuals.")
^ c: Defense of one's self is listed as a valid purpose for the keeping and bearing of arms by the constitutions of the states of Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
^ d: The defense of the state or simply the common defense is indicated to be a proper purpose for keeping and bearing arms by the constitutions of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
^ e: Defense of one's home and/or property is included as a protected purpose for the keeping and bearing of arms by the constitutions of the states of Colorado, Delaware, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia.
^ f: The defense of one's family is listed as a valid reason for keeping and bearing arms by the constitutions of the states of Delaware, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Utah (which includes both family and "others,") and West Virginia.
^ g: Hunting and recreation are included in the state constitutional provision for the right of keeping and bearing arms by the states of Delaware, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
^ h: The scope of the state constitutional right to keep and bear arms is limited by the states of Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, and North Carolina as to allow the regulation or prohibition of the carrying of concealed weapons; the constitutions of Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas allow for regulations on the carrying or wearing of arms in general.

Further reading

• Brennan, Pauline Gasdow, Alan J. Lizotte, and David McDowall. "Guns, Southernness, and Gun Control". Journal of Quantitative Criminology 9, no. 3 (1993): 289–307.
• Bruce, John M., and Clyde Wilcox, eds. The Changing Politics of Gun Control. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. ISBN 0-8476-8614-0, ISBN 0-8476-8615-9.
• Carter, Gregg Lee, ed. Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law (3rd ed. 2012) excepr and text search
• Carter, Gregg Lee. Gun Control in the United States: A Reference Handbook (2006) 408pp
• Davidson, Osha Gray. Under Fire: The NRA and the Battle for Gun Control, 2nd ed. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998. ISBN 0-87745-646-1.
• Edel, Wilbur. Gun Control: Threat to Liberty or Defense against Anarchy? Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 1995. ISBN 0-275-95145-6.
• Goss, Kristin A. Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America (Priceton Studies in American Politics) (2008)excerpt and text search
• Kates, Don B., and Mauser, Gary. "Would Banning Firearms reduce Murder and Suicide? : A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence" (pp. 649–694). Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Volume 30, No. 2 (Spring 2007).
• Langbein, Laura I., and Mark A. Lotwis, "Political Efficacy of Lobbying and Money: Gun Control in the U.S. House, 1986". Legislative Studies Quarterly 15 (August 1990): 413–40.
• LaPierre, Wayne R. Guns, Crime, and Freedom. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1994. ISBN 0-89526-477-3.
• McGarrity, Joseph P., and Daniel Sutter. "A Test of the Structure of PAC Contracts: An Analysis of House Gun Control Votes in the 1980s". Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 67 (2000).
• Melzer, Scott. Gun Crusaders: The NRA's Culture War (New York University Press, 2009) 336 pp. online
• Spitzer, Robert J. The Politics of Gun Control, 5th ed. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm, 1998. ISBN 978-1-59451-987-1.
• Utter, Glenn H., ed. Encyclopedia of Gun Control and Gun Rights. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press, 2000. ISBN 1-57356-172-X.online, 378pp
• Winkler, Adam. Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America (2011)excerpt and text search

External links

• Gun politics in the United States at Curlie

Gun control advocacy groups:

• Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
• Violence Policy Center
• Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

Gun rights advocacy groups:

• National Rifle Association
• Second Amendment Foundation
• Gun Owners of America