America’s Gun Laws and Regulations
Providing a detailed overview, this essay breaks down the mosaic of America’s gun laws and regulations, exploring the federal-state interplay and the inherent complexities that shape the country’s approach to firearm governance. Also at PapersOwl you can find more free essay examples related to Crime topic.
Introduction
One of the major reasons for the founding of the U.S. was to enable people to live freely in order they can pursue happiness and their purposes in life. As a civilized country, however, there was a necessity to enact laws and regulations to shield every American citizen. For more than two centuries, the Bill of Rights as well as the American Constitution have permitted the different city states to practice or enforce the gun laws without infringing on the rights and freedoms of the American citizens.
The Second Amendment offers the American residents the right of bearing firearms, though it does not having any reservations (Ghatak, 2018). Therefore, all states have their rules concerning the legal possession and purchase of guns, though, across the country, gun violence and crimes are a dominant issue.
With the increasing cases of mass shootings, it is difficult to come by the original ideologies and measured claims. Emotions are presently running high as the liberal commentators are shouting at the conservative advocates with unusual venom levels on how they are being irrational for opposing the new laws of gun control (Haynes, 2016). On the defensive, the conservatives believe that mass shootings may just be evaded through an even well-armed population. Conversely, most liberals who adamantly believe in the stern gun control regulations also think that the tough-on-crime conservatism legacy is liable for the mass incarceration horrors, together with every racial baggage it bears with it.
Several advocates of gun control appear to be implying that governments are capable of passing new felony rules, which would take arms off the public without the necessity of more aggressive watching/policing, without the racial differences in the enforcement characterizing the criminal justice system, and without prisoning more people (Rossi, 2017). Of course, this is a fantasy because tough-on-crime politics and gun control are different sides of one coin. If governments are serious regarding the crackdown on illegitimate arms in a sensible manner, they would require using all similar tools, which they utilized in cracking down on felonies from the 70s onwards tough criminal punishments and aggressive policing, particularly in minority and poor neighborhoods, which tend to bear the highest crime rates.
Actually, most left-wingers believe that the notorious stop-and-frisk policies of New York was questionably among the most efficient policies of gun control within the United States. Furthermore, every evidence hints that more severe gun regulations would fall unduly on the same individuals who have constantly bear the tough criminal justice rules’ brunt. According to Bynum, Grommon & McCluskey (2013), 47.3% of the people convicted for federal firearm offenses are black Americans a racial variation greater than all other classes of federal offenses, inclusive of the drug felonies. In addition, local, state, and federal administrations arrest blacks for gun offenses at a rate, which is five times greater than they arrest the whites.
Over 3 out of 4 firearm arrests are usually in urban settings; therefore, people empathizing with the Black Lives Matter moment’s message that youthful, black men within the cities of America are unfairly treated by the system of criminal justices and that mass incarceration has seriously devastated very many communities need to think further regarding what the draconian policies of gun control they are pining for would typically encompass (Haynes, 2016). Many socially liberal champions of gun control do not consider themselves to be pushing policies, which would worsen the mass incarceration problem or abet racial profiling.
They consider themselves as hunting for their political rivals the social conservative whites within the red city states.
And, in fact, it might be possible crafting gun policies such as requiring more backdrop checks at the gun shows that will mainly impact individuals in such demographic. However, few intelligent witnesses are under illusions that such kind of representative half-measure on firearms control would sensibly slash into the gun violence statistics of America. Meaningfully decreasing gun crimes within a country with over 300 million firearms would probably need the kind of confiscatory gun rules enforced within Australia and some nations in Europe (Ghatak, 2018). And the mechanism of enforcing such rules could well oppose the vision for prison and police reform, which has gained momentum on the right and left alike in the past years.
Fighting Gun Control without Mass Incarceration
Mass shootings, as contended by the advocates of gun control, undoubtedly affirm that riffles should not be on the American streets. However, they are capable of obscuring more customary types of individual gun crimes interpersonal neighborhood feuds, domestic violence, suicides and also government-perpetrated violence, which through mass incarceration, global warfare, and policing has made the armed forces preferred state language even with the dramatic decrease of the violent street crime (Ghatak, 2018). In order to handle this, the United States requires transformative politics, which disarms citizens, America, and state alike, and challenges the causes of violence and crime perpetrated abroad and at home.
That implies a long, radical, and systematic political initiative of reducing the dominance of lethal firearms as well as the socio-economic circumstances, which encourage individuals to utilize them. This is not equating all gun possession forms. A weapon in the Klansmen’s hands is a completely distinct thing than that, which is seized by blacks in self-defense. And that is why disarmament has to be universal, incorporating the carceral states themselves, and occur on economically and racially impartial terms. A regime of gun control, which perpetuates crime is opposing the course of tranquility and peaceful existence.
The U.S. government impose few precious restrictions on the distribution and production of firearms but then place draconian punishments on the poor blacks who own them. According to Bynum, Grommon & McCluskey (2013), the U.S. laws currently echo a period when tackling gun violence was immensely keeping the handguns from the hands of street thugs and gangbangers. This approach of collaboration between the conservatives and the liberals has resulted in large numbers of individuals, disproportionately Africans, locked up for illegitimately owning guns, which are otherwise allowed to circulate nearly freely. Felony convictions, even for nonviolent drug crimes, ideally make it illegitimate for people to own the guns, which millions of individuals consider a fundamental constitutional right. It is approximated that about a third of adult African males have a crime history, making them, when they attempt living the fully-packed American dream, the imprisonment subject.
Several other regulations turbocharge sentences when guns are involved, however vaguely, in crimes. As stated by Charles (2018), by the ending of 2015, an approximated 78,800 individuals were prisoned in the state and federal penitentiaries with their severest charge being the public order crimes involving guns. This figure does not encompass several others who serve time on firearm sentences, or whose charges for offenses were extended due to guns, because prisoners are often classified on the basis of what is considered their most stern crime.
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America's Gun Laws and Regulations. (2019, Jan 13). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/americas-gun-laws-and-regulations/