Guns and Politics – vcan.org
It is estimated that 5,000 gun shows take place in the United States each year. Gun politics take a very high profile position in the US politics. There are huge debates that wage heated opinions on gun violence and gun politics in the US every year. There have been several incidents of gun violence in “gun free” school zones, such as the Virginia Tech Massacre of 2007 that have caused the heated debates to continue.
Support for gun control in the US has been dropping. Currently it is known that the public strongly opposes any attempt that our government has to ban gun ownership.
The public opinion is divided on any attempts on the limitation of ownership as well.
A 2008 Gallup poll revealed that only 28% of the population supported a total ban on handguns, this was the lowest level since the poll was taken in 1959; the support at that time was 60% of the population was in support of a total ban. This same 2008 poll indicated that 48% of most Americans preferred stricter gun laws.
There is a sharp divide among those are for gun-rights and those for gun-control. It is known that Republicans are far less likely to support gun control than are Democrats.
It is also known that Republicans are more likely to own a gun than are Democrats. In a survey it was found that more than half of Republicans had, virginia Crime, a gun in their home while only about a third of Democrats owned a gun. According to a 2004 Harris Interactive survey Democrats hold a 71% to 11% majority of favoring “stricter” rather than “less strict”, virginia Crime, on gun control issues.
The debate is fueled most likely because of gun violence. There are about 10,000 murders that are committed every year in the United States that involve a firearm.
However, there is an estimated 2.5 million crimes that are thwarted due to the civilians’ use of firearms every year as well. It is known, virginia Crime, that the United States has higher rates of firearm ownership than other developed nations; the United States also has a higher rate of homicide. Of the, virginia Crime, 233,251 people who were victims of homicide in the United States between 1988-1997 68% were killed with guns. It is unknown if the perpetrators of such crimes would have resorted to another weapon to commit the homicide if a gun would not have been available.
Some may perceive the requirement to register a firearm to, virginia Crime, be an encroachment upon individual privacy and property rights. It is also viewed that the requirement to register a firearm could be used by the government to target gun owners for harassment and eventual confiscation of the firearm.