What is Gun Violence

Have you ever seen any news on social medias related to gun violence? I bet most of the people will give an answer “yes”. As what I said, gun violence and gun control have already became very hot topics, and people are still having debates about whether gun ownership should be protected or prohibited. In order to improve the discussion surrounding gun violence and gun control, we should change the focus and make new policies. And I also believe governments, cultures, and interpersonal relationships are three areas of society that are most responsible for the United States high rates of gun violence and gun deaths.

We should shift our focus from mass shooting to some other area related to gun violence. Not just mass shootings contribute to gun violence deaths,but also do homicides and suicides. Even though we always receive notifications from all different kinds of social media telling us mass shooting just happened, but compared to other factors cause gun violence death, mass shooting is not frequent, and the people doing the shootings are different; the criminals could be either old or young, men or women, and Asian or American. According to statistics, every year more than 33,000 gun death take place in the United States, and nearly two-thirds of the deaths are suicides. Maggies mentioned in his article that, “Particularly since 2000, homicide rates have fallen significantly from their 1980 peak and continued on a generally downward trend for most of the 21st century. Meanwhile, suicides are way up with the biggest increase among women”.

The factor that leads to the majority of gun violence deaths are not even homicides, to say nothing of mass shootings. New policies are also demanded to improve the discussion of gun violence and gun control. Since our focuses are way too narrow, then the designed policies are not capable to solve the root causes of gun violence deaths effectively. The trends are different because the situation are different and the people are different, so different solutions are warranted as well. If we only focus on mass shootings, and think it as the main cause and factor that contributes to gun violence deaths, then we are not likely to implement laws that can effectively reduce the number of gun violence deaths.

Gun violence is not just one problem, it is many, so there will not be only one solution. If we keep focusing on mass shootings, we will probably miss opportunities to establish new laws that really work. The best way to solve a problem is to find what goes wrong and fix them. So it seems government is responsible for the high rates of gun violence and gun deaths in the United States, because the governments could not focus on the correct subjects, then good laws and restrictions, that can reduce the number of gun deaths effectively, could not be made. Governments are responsible to provide safety and keep the order when most of people agree to give up little freedom to exchange more freedom, which is to be protected and live safer.

So if government cannot protect its people properly, and its people are scared to get shot everyday, then it is government's responsibilities and failures. I believe culture is another reason why the United States has such a high rate of gun violence and gun deaths. There were 90 mass shootings in the United States between 1996 and 2012, , and the next four countries with the most mass shooting had 54 in total. The United States is not the only country which allows its citizens to bear arms, but why only it has the highest rate of gun violence and gun deaths, so this must be due to the culture. But culture is the social behavior and norms found in human societies, so it is not possible to change a culture in a short period of time. Interpersonal relationship has been believed the most to be responsible for gun violence and gun deaths.

At least 54 percent of mass shooting involve domestic or family violence--with the perpetrator shooting a current or former partner or a relative. I also heard a couple of mass shootings at school because of he or she got bullied when he or she was in school. So interpersonal relationship will cause some psychological illness--which is also referred to mental health--then someone will get mad and shoot other people. Gun violence issues are hard to deal with, and there are multiple reasons that contribute to the issues. Thus, multiple solutions are required in order to be able to prevent such things happen. And there are also different areas of society responsible for a high rate of gun violence and gun death, therefore, it will probably take a long period of time to solve this problem completely.

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