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One of the most dangerous myths of America's gun debate is that passing federal gun control laws is the only way to prevent gun violence and save lives - and that therefore the issue is hopeless and nothing will change.

That's a convenient excuse for apathy, but it's not true. In fact, there are many different avenues to preventing gun violence. Very few of them rely completely on politicians in Washington. No matter where you live, there are steps you can take to prevent violence and make the people around you safer.

Here are five ways to reduce gun deaths and injuries in America that don't require a single vote from Congress.

Five things

Lois Beckett is a senior Guardian reporter covering gun policy

Topics

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Five things you could do right now to reduce gun violence in America

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One of the most dangerous myths of America's gun debate is that passing federal gun control laws is the only way to prevent gun violence and save lives - and that therefore the issue is hopeless and nothing will change. That's a convenient excuse for apathy, but it's not true.

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The second amendment has become a badge and bumper sticker, a shield for gun activists and scripture for much of the American right. But like other cherished texts, it is not as clear as many make it out to be.

The amendment reads: "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."

For most of the republic's lifespan, from 1791 to 2008, those commas and clauses were debated by attorneys and senators, slave owners and freedmen, judges, Black Panthers, governors and lobbyists. For some, the militia was key; for others the right that shall not be infringed; for yet others, the question of states versus the federal government. For the most part, the supreme court stayed out it.

"Americans have been thinking about the second amendment as an individual right for generations," said Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA and author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. "You can find state supreme courts in the mid-1800s where judges say the second amendment protects an individual right."

But for the 70 years or so before a supreme court decision in 2008, he said, "the supreme court and federal courts held that it only applied in the context of militias, the right of states to protect themselves from federal interference".

In 2008, the supreme court decided the District of Columbia v Heller, 5-4 , overturning a handgun ban in the city. The conservative justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion in narrow but unprecedented terms: for the first time in the country's history, the supreme court explicitly affirmed an individual's right to keep a weapon at home for self-defense.

Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, saying the decision showed disrespect "for the well-settled views of all of our predecessors on the court, and for the rule of law itself". Two years later, he dissented from another decision favoring gun rights, writing:

The reasons that motivated the framers to protect the ability of militiamen to keep muskets, or that motivated the Reconstruction Congress to extend full citizenship to freedmen in the wake of the Civil War, have only a limited bearing on the question that confronts the homeowner in a crime-infested metropolis today.

This fight over history, waged by supreme court justices and unlikely allies and foes, goes all the way back.

"People look at the same record and come to wildly different conclusions about what the view was in the 18th century, in the 19th century," said Nicholas Johnson, a Fordham University law professor who argues against Winkler's view of 20th-century case law.

Attempts to parse "original" intent go all the way back to the revolution and its aftermath, when the country's founders bickered about what exactly they were talking about. Carl Bogus, a law professor at Roger Williams University, has argued that James Madison wrote the second amendment in part to reassure his home state of Virginia, where slave owners were terrified of revolts and wary of northerners who would undermine the system.

"The militia were at that stage almost exclusively a slave-control tool in the south," he said. "You gave Congress the power to arm the militia - if Congress chooses not to arm our militia, well, we all know what happens."

The federalist Madison's compromise, according to Bogus, was to promise a bill of rights. After weeks of tense debate, his federalists narrowly won the vote to ratify the constitution. "He writes an amendment that gives the states the right to have an armed militia, by the people arming themselves."

A year later, the federal government passed a law requiring every man eligible for his local militia to acquire a gun and register with authorities. (The law was only changed in 1903.)

After the civil war, second amendment rights were again debated by Congress, which abolished militias in the former Confederate states and passed the 1866 Civil Rights Act, explicitly protecting freed slaves' right to bear arms. A century later, the founders of the Black Panthers took up guns, symbolically and literally, to press for equal civil rights in California.

The state's conservative lawmakers promptly took up the cause of gun control. In 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act, banning the public carry of loaded guns in cities. The governor said he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons".

Reagan later supported the Brady Act, a gun control law named after his aide, who was shot during an assassination attempt on Reagan in Washington DC. The National Rifle Association supported the Mulford Act but opposed the Brady Act, signed into law 26 years later.

Winkler, the UCLA professor, said that during the 1970s, a "revolt among the membership profoundly altered the NRA overnight. Since the 1930s, the group had supported restrictions on machine guns and public carry, but angry hardliners took control over the organization in 1977, when moderates wanted to retreat from lobbying work. The group then began a decades-long campaign to popularize its uncompromising positions.

"The NRA goes far beyond what the second amendment requires - people walking around with permits, on college campuses," Winkler said. "Their argument is it's a fundamental right and freedom. People care more about values than they care about policy."

In the late 1990s, several prominent liberal attorneys, such as Laurence Tribe and Akhil Reed Amar, also argued for an individual right while advocating gun regulation. Gun control activists say they have not changed tack since the supreme court's 2008 decision. Scalia wrote a narrow opinion and listed several exceptions, such as bans on "unusual and dangerous weapons" and sales to domestic abusers and people with mental illness. He also wrote that states and cities could ban firearms from places like government buildings.

Lower courts have upheld many gun laws around the country since 2008, and the supreme court has declined to hear any second amendment cases since 2010. Attorneys and activists on both sides expect a looming fight over the right to carry guns in public, which the Heller decision does not address.

"The courts generally strike a balance between the need for lawmakers to protect public safety and this notion of second amendment rights," said Avery Gardiner, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The Heller decision, she said, was "entirely consistent" with gun laws like background checks.

"There's a mythology here that the supreme court has said something about the second amendment that it hasn't," she said. "I think most Americans don't like reading the footnotes."

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The right to bear arms: what does the second amendment really mean?

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Its words have fueled centuries of debate - and not until 2008 did the supreme court clearly back an individual's right to keep a weapon at home for self-defense

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MIAMI - Florida lawmakers gave final passage to a $400 million gun control and school safety bill on Wednesday in defiance of the National Rifle Association, which opposed the legislation's firearm restrictions. The bipartisan vote came three weeks after a gunman killed 17 people in a rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

The legislation, which passed the State Senate on Monday and now heads to the governor, would raise the minimum age to purchase any firearm to 21 from 18; impose a three-day waiting period on gun purchases; fund school police officers and mental health counselors; and allow local school districts and sheriffs to arm certain school personnel. It would also ban so-called bump stocks, which make guns fire faster, and give law enforcement more power to commit people deemed a threat.

While the gun bill was the first to pass in the state in years, it fell short of the demands of many of the students and educators who have in recent weeks led a national call for stronger firearm restrictions.

(Read our article about exactly what's in the bill, and what's not, here.)

The emotional debate in the House, which lasted eight hours, culminated with powerful remarks from Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat who graduated from Stoneman Douglas High and told of attending the funerals of the dead. He broke down and needed a moment to compose himself when he shared that one of the victims, Jaime Guttenberg, was the daughter of his son's preschool writing teacher.

The chamber, which bustled with activity during almost every other speech, was rapt in attention. Vote for the bill, Mr. Moskowitz implored his colleagues.

"This isn't hard," Mr. Moskowitz said. "Putting your kid in the ground is hard. This is easy."

"This may be the most consequential vote we ever take on this floor," said Representative Shawn Harrison, Republican of Tampa. "Grown-ups protect our kids. It's what we do. It's our turn. Don't let them down."

The legislation passed, with a vote of 67 to 50. Lawmakers rose, looked up into the public gallery and applauded Andrew Pollack, whose daughter, Meadow, was killed in the shooting. He sat through the debate and remained until the vote, even though it likely meant he missed his flight back home.

Hours earlier, the grand jury in Broward County charged Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in the Feb. 14 massacre - one of the deadliest school shootings in American history - with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.

The indictment of Mr. Cruz, who has confessed to the killings, was essentially a formality, and the primary legal debate now centers on whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty. Mr. Cruz's lawyers have offered a plea bargain - consecutive life sentences without parole - in a bid to avoid a trial and the threat of execution.

"The only question is does he live or does he die?" said Howard Finkelstein, the Broward County public defender, whose office is representing Mr. Cruz. "The question for the community, and specifically the victims' families - is it worth what will be a three-year trial odyssey followed by a 15-year appellate odyssey?"

In the State Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, the provision to voluntarily arm trained school "guardians," including librarians and school counselors, threatened to derail the legislation. But the families of all 17 people killed in Parkland sent House members a letter on Tuesday urging them to vote yes.

"You must act to prevent mass murder from ever occurring again at any school," they wrote. "This issue cannot wait. The moment to pass this bill is now."

On Thursday, several House Democrats cited the letter as the reason they would favor the proposal, even after the Democratic caucus took a formal position against it. The legislation prompted raw comments on the House floor and exposed a racial divide among Democrats: Black legislators warned their white counterparts that arming educators might result in discrimination against students of color.

Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has not said if he will sign the bill into law. His own proposal after the Parkland shooting did not envision arming school personnel or requiring a waiting period for all gun purchases.

Follow Patricia Mazzei on Twitter: @PatriciaMazzei.
Alan Blinder contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Florida Lawmakers Pass Bill on Guns, Defying N.R.A.. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Florida Gun Control Bill Passed by House, Defying N.R.A.

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MIAMI - Florida lawmakers gave final passage to a $400 million gun control and school safety bill on Wednesday in defiance of the National Rifle Association, which opposed the legislation's firearm restrictions. The bipartisan vote came three weeks after a gunman killed 17 people in a rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

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Newsela | Understanding key terms in the gun control debate

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Gun regulations can vary from state to state

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Newsela | Issue Overview: Guns in America

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On April 28, 1996, a 28-year-old man named Martin Bryant drove his yellow Volvo to a popular tourist spot in Port Arthur, Australia, a former penal colony on the island state of Tasmania, and opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon. Before the day was through, he had shot dead 35 people and wounded 18 others. Twelve of those deaths came at the Broad Arrow Café, where Bryant first ate lunch and then sprayed bullets with his Colt AR-15 SP1, which he had stowed in a tennis bag. At the gift shop next door, he murdered eight more people. Later, he shot a young mother running away with her two children-all three at close range.

He was a loner, with a clean-shaven face and wavy blond hair. His IQ was said to be 66. By all accounts, he was a terrible shot. But with the weapons he carried-the AR-15 and a second, self-loading military-style rifle-aim was almost immaterial. The SP1 could fire several rounds per second with little recoil. Pointing the gun at a crowd of tourists, it was hard not to hit somebody.

If all this sounds too horrifically familiar-an estranged loner, an AR-15, dozens dead in a matter of minutes-there is a remarkable twist to the story. In the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, Australian lawmakers did something about it.

Within just weeks of that tragedy, elected officials in each of Australia's six states and two mainland territories-pressed forward by police chiefs across the continent and by the then-newly elected prime minister- banned semi-automatic and other military-style weapons across the country. The federal government of Australia prohibited their import, and lawmakers introduced a generous nationwide gun buyback program, funded with a Medicare tax, to encourage Australians to freely give up their assault-style weapons. Amazingly, many of them did. ( Simon Chapman, an emeritus professor in public health at the University of Sydney, and an influential proponent of the original firearms legislation, has a very good summary here. You can also read his free ebook here.)

A land of roughneck pioneers and outback settlers, Australia had never embraced much government regulation and certainly not about their guns. This was a land of almost cartoonish toughness and self-reliance, home of Crocodile Dundee and Australian rules football. Here even the kangaroos box. But Port Arthur had followed too many prior deadly shooting sprees and Australians were clearly sick to death of them.

So what happened after the assault-weapon ban? Well therein lies the other half of the story twist noted above: Nothing.

Nothing, that is, in a good way.

Australian independence didn't end. Tyranny didn't come. Australians still hunted and explored and big-wave surfed to their hearts' content. Their economy didn't crash; Invaders never arrived. Violence, in many forms, went down across the country, not up. Somehow, lawmakers on either side of the gun debate managed to get along and legislate.

As for mass killings, there were no more. Not one in the past 22 years.

In 2002, a mentally impaired student at Monash University in Melbourne shot two people dead and injured five others. He came to his rampage with six handguns, not an assault rifle. Had he been carrying an AR-15, the toll would have been far worse. But even so, Australian lawmakers added a new National Handgun Agreement, a separate buyback act, and a reformulated gun trafficking policy to their legislative arsenal.

There has been no similar shooting spree since.

But it wasn't just the murderous rampages that faded away. Gun violence in general declined over the following two decades to a nearly unimaginable degree. In 2014, the latest year for which final statistics are available, Australia's murder rate fell to less than 1 killing per 100,000 people-a murder rate one-fifth the size of America's.

Just 32 of those homicides-in a nation of 24 million people-were committed with guns. By comparison, more than 500 people were shot dead last year in the city of Chicago alone. (Chicago has about 2.7 million residents.)

Perhaps most remarkable is what happened with gun suicides in Australia in the wake of the post-Port Arthur firearm legislation. They dropped by some 80 percent, according to one analysis.

What stopped many of those would-be suicides-quite straightforwardly, it seems-was the lack of access to a gun, a generally immediate and effective method of killing. ( Nine out of 10 suicide attempts with a firearm result in death, a far higher share than attempts by other methods.) Public health experts call such an effect " means restriction." Some Australians found other ways to take their own lives-but for many, that acute moment of sadness and resolve passed in the absence of a gun.

Suicide "is commonly an impulsive act by a vulnerable individual," explain E. Michael Lewiecki and Sara A. Miller in the American Journal of Public Health. "The impulsivity of suicide provides opportunities to reduce the risk of suicide by restricting access to lethal means."

Which brings us back to the here and now. In 2015, an unthinkable 22,103 Americans shot themselves to death with a gun (see Table I-21)-accounting for just over half of the suicides in the country that year.

It isn't hard to imagine what would happen without all those guns at the ready. In a world of raging hypotheticals, we actually have some good, hard answers for this. All we have to do is look down under. There are millions of American families begging us to do it.
Correction: This post has been updated to reflect the correct number of rounds fired by the AR-15.
This essay appears in today's edition of the Fortune Brainstorm Health Daily. Get it delivered straight to your inbox.

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How Australia All But Ended Gun Violence

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On April 28, 1996, a 28-year-old man named Martin Bryant drove his yellow Volvo to a popular tourist spot in Port Arthur, Australia, a former penal colony on the island state of Tasmania, and opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon. Before the day was through, he had shot dead 35 people and wounded 18 others.

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As the US continues to stall on gun control talks, the largest study ever conducted on the topic has found a clear link between firearm regulation and fewer gun-related deaths around the world. Until recently, studies on gun laws have been limited to just one city or country, and have failed to reach consistent conclusions.

But in 2016, researchers took a broader view - the team reviewed 130 high-quality studies conducted in 10 countries over the past 60 years. And while they stopped short of saying they've conclusively proved that gun restrictions equal fewer deaths, the research provides pretty powerful evidence to suggest that it's the case.

"Across countries, instead of seeing an increase in the homicide rate, we saw a reduction," lead researcher Julian Santaella-Tenorio from Columbia University told Zack Beauchamp over at Vox.

To figure this out, Santaella-Tenorio and his team systematically analysed 130 studies that had been conducted across 10 different countries, including the US, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, and Austria.

Each of the studies looked at some kind of specific gun legislation change, and its impact on gun-related homicides, suicides, and/or unintentional injuries or deaths, and was carefully selected for the quality of its research.

After analysing all of these studies, the researchers came up with three conclusions:

1. It usually takes major legislation overhaul - not just one new law - to see significant change.

2. Restricting access to guns and their purchase is associated with reductions in firearm deaths.

3. Individual studies need to be better executed and planned in future to get more convincing results.

That first point is particularly interesting. Because the 130 studies were mostly dealing with different laws, the review wasn't able to pinpoint one specific 'magic' legislation that turned gun deaths around.

But it showed that when countries pass several laws at once that worked together to overhaul the country's firearm code, gun-related deaths tended to decrease.

Santaella-Tenorio told Beauchamp that these overhauls generally included:

Banning "weapons that are actually very powerful", for example, automatic weapons.

Implementing background checks.

"They all required permits and licenses for purchasing guns," Santaella-Tenorio told Vox.

For example, in South Africa in 2000, the Firearm Control Act contained all these measures, and saw a 13.6 percent reduction in firearm homicides every single year for the next five years.

A similar overhaul law was introduced in Australia in 1996 in the wake of a mass murder, and according to one study, overall firearm death rates decreased by 14 percent the following year. Tellingly, there also hasn't been another mass shooting in the country in the 20 years since.

But even outside of those huge overhauls, small changes were found to make a difference.

"Laws restricting the purchase of (e.g. background checks) and access to (e.g. safer storage) firearms are also associated with lower rates of intimate partner homicides and firearm unintentional deaths in children, respectively," the researchers write in Epidemiologic Reviews.

On the opposite end of the scale, in 2007, Missouri got rid of laws requiring people to have a permit to purchase a firearm. Following this legislation change, one study found that Missouri's homicide rate increased by 25 percent. No other changes in legislation appear to be able to explain the change.

Of course, there are limitations to the studies being analysed here. For starters, all of them were observational, which meant that researchers couldn't control for variables. That's a problem, because there are a whole lot of other factors in society that influence gun deaths outside of gun law, and by simply looking at the data after the fact, those patterns aren't always obvious.

A longitudinal study - where researchers are doing long-term monitoring of a population that just happens to have its gun laws changed halfway through - would be better, but that kind of happy coincidence is impossible to plan, and as yet hasn't happened by chance.

The authors of each of the 130 studies could have also had affiliations and personal interests that might have biased their results, Santaella-Tenorio and the team admit (who, for the record, declared no conflicts of interest in their review).

But they believe that their analysis provides compelling evidence that gun control really does save lives. And they hope that better research will point to some clear, evidence-based solutions for the United States, where more than 8,500 people were killed by guns in the first 10 months of 2015 alone.

"This information is key to move this field forward," the authors write, "and for the development of effective policies that may counteract the burden that firearm injuries pose on populations."

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Review of More Than 130 Studies Provides Powerful Evidence That Gun Control Saves Lives

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As the US continues to stall on gun control talks, the largest study ever conducted on the topic has found a clear link between firearm regulation and fewer gun-related deaths around the world. Until recently, studies on gun laws have been limited t

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History of Gun Control Laws
Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, enslaved people, indentured servants, and Native Americans; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned.

Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. Several colonies' gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. Read more history...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

The Second Amendment is not an unlimited or individual right to own guns.

Further, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of militias to own guns, not the right of individuals to own guns. Former Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissenting opinion for District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, wrote, "the Framer's single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee 'to keep and bear arms' was on military use of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias," hence the inclusion of the phrase "well regulated militia."

Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, stated there is nothing about an individual right to bear arms in the notes about the Second Amendment when it was being drafted, discussed, or ratified; the US Supreme Court declined to rule in favor of the individual right four times between 1876 and 1939; and all law articles on the Second Amendment from 1888 to 1959 stated that an individual right was not guaranteed.
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Pro 2

More gun control laws would reduce gun deaths.

Approximately 50% of unintentional fatal shootings were self-inflicted; and most unintentional firearm deaths were caused by friends or family members.

Five women are murdered with guns every day in the United States. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 5,364 US soldiers were killed in action between Oct. 7, 2001 and Jan. 28, 2015; between 2001 and 2012 6,410 women were killed with a gun by an intimate partner in the United States.

Researchers found that a "general barrier to firearm access created through state regulation can have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide rates in the United States. Permit requirements and bans on sales to minors were the most effective of the regulations analyzed."

Gun licensing laws were associated with a 14% decrease in firearm homicides, while increases in firearm homicides were seen in places with right-to-carry and stand-your ground-laws.

More gun control leads to fewer suicides. When US gun ownership goes down, overall suicide rates drop; meanwhile, each 10 percentage-point increase in gun ownership is linked to a 26.9% increase in the youth suicide rate. In Indiana and Connecticut, after "red flag" laws to remove guns from people who may pose a threat were enacted, gun suicides decreased by 7.5% and 13.7% respectively, while suicides by other means did not decrease during the same time. A person who wants to kill him/herself is unlikely to commit suicide with poison or a knife when a gun is unavailable.

The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 31% of total accidental shooting deaths could have been prevented by installing safety devices on guns: 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks; and 23% of accidental shooting deaths by adolescents and adults per year could be prevented by loading indicators showing when a bullet was in the chamber ready to be fired.

Marjorie Sanfilippo, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Eckerd College who has researched children's behavior around guns, stated, "We put gates around swimming pools to keep children from drowning. We put safety caps on medications to keep children from poisoning themselves.... [B]ecause children are naturally curious and impulsive, and because we have shown time and again that we cannot 'gun-proof' them with education, we have a responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of children."
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Pro 3

The presence of a gun makes a conflict more likely to become violent.

The FBI found that arguments (such as romantic triangles, brawls fueled by alcohol or drugs, and arguments over money) resulted in 1,962 gun deaths (59.9% of the total).

An editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health noted, "gun-inflicted deaths [often] ensue from impromptu arguments and fights; in the US, two-thirds of the 7,900 deaths in 1981 involving arguments and brawls were caused by guns." A study published in the same journal found that "the weapons used [in altercations]... were those closest at hand." And thus, according to another study, "[r]ather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."

Common sense gun control laws can decrease the likelihood of a violent situation turning deadly. President Ronald Reagan and others did not think the AR-15 military rifle (also called M16s by the Air Force) should be owned by civilians and, when the AR-15 was included in the assault weapons ban of 1994 (which expired on Sep. 13, 2004), the NRA supported the legislation. A Mother Jones investigation found that high-capacity magazines were used in at least 50% of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012.When high-capacity magazines were used in mass shootings, the death rate rose 63% and the injury rate rose 156%.
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Pro 4

A majority of adults, including gun owners, support common sense gun control such as background checks, bans on assault weapons, and bans on high-capacity magazines.

According to a Feb. 20, 2018 Quinnipiac Poll, 97% of American voters and 97% of gun owners support universal background checks. 67% support a nationwide ban on assault weapons, and 83% support mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases.

As much as 40% of all gun sales are undocumented private party gun sales that do not require a background check (aka the "gun show loophole").

53% of all adults surveyed approve of high-capacity magazine bans. 89% of adults with a gun in the home approve of laws to prevent the purchase of guns by the mentally ill, and 82% approve of banning gun sales to people on no-fly lists.

77% of Americans support requiring a license to purchase a gun.

Don Macalady, member of Hunters against Gun Violence, stated, "As a hunter and someone who has owned guns since I was a young boy, I believe that commonsense gun legislation makes us all safer. Background checks prevent criminals and other dangerous people from getting guns."

Many would like to see the U.S. enact more laws like other countries, citing the fact that countries with restrictive gun control laws have lower gun homicide and suicide rates than the United States. Both Switzerland and Finland require gun owners to acquire licenses and pass background checks that include mental and criminal records, among other restrictions and requirements. In 2007 Switzerland ranked number 3 in international gun ownership rates with 45.7 guns per 100 people (about 3,400,000 guns total). In 2009 Switzerland had 24 gun homicides (0.31 deaths per 100,000 people) and 253 gun suicides (3.29 deaths per 100,000 people). Finland ranked fourth in international gun ownership rates with 45.3 guns per 100 people (about 2,400,000 guns total). In 2007 Finland had 23 (0.43 deaths per 100,000 people) gun homicides and 172 gun suicides (4.19 deaths per 100,000 people).
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Con 1

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects individual gun ownership.

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution reads, "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."

Lawrence Hunter, Chairman of Revolution PAC, stated, "The Founders understood that the right to own and bear laws is as fundamental and as essential to maintaining liberty as are the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and the other protections against government encroachments on liberty delineated in the Bill of Rights."
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Con 2

Gun control laws are discriminatory and infringe on citizens' rights

Current gun control laws are frequently aimed at inner city, poor, black communities who are perceived as more dangerous than white gun owners. Charles Gallagher, Chair of Sociology at LaSalle University, stated that some gun control laws are still founded on racial fears: "Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1."

Background checks and micro-stamping are an invasion of privacy. Background checks require government databases that keep personal individual information on gun owners, including name, addresses, mental health history, criminal records, and more. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worried that Senator Harry Reid's 2013 proposed background check legislation (the bill failed 54-46) would have allowed the government to keep databases of gun purchases indefinitely, creating a "worry that you're going to see searches of the databases and an expansion for purposes that were not intended when the information was collected." Micro-stamping similarly requires a database of gun owners and the codes their personal guns would stamp on cartridge cases. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote that they would oppose any legislation that infringes "on the American people's constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance."

Gun control laws infringe upon the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety. The police cannot protect everyone all of the time. 61% of men and 56% of women surveyed by Pew Research said that stricter gun laws would "make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families." Nelson Lund, Professor at George Mason University School of Law, stated, "The right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself is a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life" and "many [gun control laws] interfere with the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals." A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, a gun control advocate, carried a concealed gun when her life was threatened and her home attacked by the New World Liberation Front in the 1970s.

Gun control laws, especially those that try to ban "assault weapons," infringe upon the right to own guns for hunting and sport. In 2011, there were 13.7 million hunters 16 years old or older in the United States, High-powered semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are used to hunt and in target shooting tournaments each year. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, "So-called 'Assault weapons' are more often than not less powerful than other hunting rifles. The term 'assault weapon' was conjured up by anti-gun legislators to scare voters into thinking these firearms are something out of a horror movie... [T]he Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, both labeled 'assault weapons,' are the rifles most used for marksmanship competitions in the United States. And their cartridges are standard hunting calibers, useful for game up to and including deer." According to a Feb. 2013 Pew Research report, 32% of gun owners owned guns for hunting and 7% owned guns for target or sport shooting.
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Con 3

Gun control laws simply do not work.

Gun control efforts have proved ineffective. According to David Lampo, Publications Director of the Cato Institute, "there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates." Banning high-capacity magazines will not necessarily deter crime because even small gun magazines can be changed in seconds.The "gun show loophole" is virtually nonexistent because commercial dealers, who sell the majority of guns at shows and elsewhere, are bound by strict federal laws. According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, most state-level gun control laws do not reduce firearm death rates, and, of 25 state laws, nine were associated with higher gun death rates.

Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people). The country has only one legal gun store (the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales), compared to at least 63,709 legal gun stores and pawn shops in the United States as of Feb. 10, 2014. Mexico's gun store is on a secure military base and customers must present a valid ID, go through a metal detector, and turn over cellphones and cameras to guards. To actually buy a gun, customers have to show proof of honest income, provide references, pass a criminal background check, prove any military duties were completed with honor, and be fingerprinted and photographed. If allowed to purchase a gun, the customer may buy only one gun (choosing from only .38 caliber pistols or lower) and one box of bullets. Between 2006 and 2010, Mexico's one gun shop sold 6,490 guns, yet as of 2012, Mexicans own about 15,000,000 guns, or about 13.5 guns per 100 people.

The main reason gun control doesn't work is because laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws. Of 62 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012, 49 of the shooters used legally obtained guns. Collectively, 143 guns were possessed by the killers with about 75% obtained legally. A Secret Service analysis found that of 24 mass shootings in 2019 at least 10 (42%) involved illegally possessed guns.

The logical conclusion is that gun control laws do not deter crime; gun ownership deters crime. A study in Applied Economics Letters found that "assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level" and "states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murders." While gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, the murder rate decreased. Journalist John Stossel explained, "Criminals don't obey the law... Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these [illegal] weapons now have a much easier job... As the saying goes, 'If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.'"

More gun control is not needed; education about guns and gun safety is needed to prevent accidental gun deaths. 95% of all US gun owners believe that children should learn about gun safety. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute, Inc (SAAMI), stated, "Whether in the field, at the range or in the home, a responsible and knowledgeable gun owner is rarely involved in a firearms accident of any kind." According to Kyle Wintersteen, Managing Editor of Guns and Ammo, studies show that "children taught about firearms and their legitimate uses by family members have much lower rates of delinquency than children in households without guns" and "children introduced to guns associate them with freedom, security, and recreation-not violence." [82] [85] [154]
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Con 4

Gun control laws give too much power to the government and may result in government tyranny and the government taking away all guns from citizens.

57% of people surveyed by Pew Research in Feb. 2013 said that gun control laws would "give too much power to the government over the people."

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre stated, "if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it [the Second Amendment] there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny."

Concurring, Alex Jones, radio host, stated, "The Second Amendment isn't there for duck hunting, it's there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs... 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!"

Marco Rubio (R-FL), US Senator, speaking about gun control laws during his 2016 presidential campaign, stated, "If God forbid, ISIS visits our life, our neighborhood, our school, any part of us, the last thing standing, the last line of defense could very well be our ability to protect ourselves."
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Did You Know?

1. A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer, and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer.

2. The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks.

3. The Centers for Disease Control listed firearms as the #12 cause of all deaths between 1999 and 2015, representing 1.3% of total deaths. They were also the #1 method of death by homicide (67.3% of all homicides) and by suicide (51.9% of all suicides).

4. Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people).

5. Carrying a concealed handgun in public has been permitted in all 50 states since 2013, when Illinois became the last state to enact concealed carry legislation.

6. Five women a day are killed by guns in America. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute.

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Proponents say the Second Amendment is not an unlimited right to own guns. Opponents say the amendment protects individual gun ownership.

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Newsela | PRO/CON: Is it time to pass tough gun control laws?

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For or against stricter gun control laws?

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Newsela | In mass shootings, focus should be on gun access, not mental illness, some experts say

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Website of the National Rifle Association and an explanation of their stance on gun control

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It is no high secret where the NRA stands in relationship to the politics of gun control in the United States. Furthermore, the sole purpose of the organization is to protect and enforce their stance on politics of gun control.

The answer is simple: the NRA is pro-gun. Though the foundation of the NRA began as a simple way to train soldiers to become more proficient in shooting their rifles, the organization has held the right to bear arms as their maxim, their battle-cry, their motto, for what is now hundreds of years.

At the most basic of the stance of politics of gun control is the Second Amendment as written in the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. It exists for solely to protect an individual's right to own a handgun for the purpose of self-defense. However, in order to understand the NRA's position, it is important to at least have a grasp of gun politics in the United States, at its broadest sense.

While those who support gun rights tend to be affiliated with the NRA's credo, those who are in support for gun control have validated and substantiated arguments. The politics of gun control are based upon the premise that the government exists essentially to protect its people's rights. The government, therefore, must also be instituted to prevent acts of crime and violence and maintain a semblance of order. Logic would dictate that because firearms and guns are essentially weapons of a violent nature, they should at the very least have regulations and laws dictating the ownership, possession, and carrying of firearms.

However, the debate of the politics of gun control--regardless of position--are hard to prove in favor of either argument. It is a simple fact that violence relating to firearms in the nation's most recent history has been a problematic issue. However, the regulation of gun violence is not only dependent on the regulation of firearms, but of human's capacity for free will and deviant behavior. The main doubt regarding gun control is whether the implementation of stricter laws than those already in place will actually have an impact on lowering violence, and specifically gun violence. On the other hand, how does the possession of a firearm essentially endanger the commonwealth, even if for the sole purpose of self-defense, and threaten social order.

Such are the conundrums and juxtapositions that politicians are currently battling day in and day out through the judicial courts system of the United States. The simple way to describe it is that in possibly violating the rights to bear arms for the sake of social safety, an individual may have no way to defend him/herself if the situation arises; the other is to allow the possession, ownership, and carrying of weapons freely, while possibly putting more firearms readily available to unqualified hands, and possibly raise gun violence.

The effect that guns have on violence is one that is proven quantifiable and qualifiable; the impact that gun control itself will have on reducing gun violence has not been clearly proven. The stalemate between pro-gun rights and pro-gun control is one that has been stagnant for many years, and probably will continue to be for ones to follow. Though there have been small victories or forward steps for each of these views concerning the politics of gun control, nothing major has been contrived toward exposing which side may be prove to be the best solution.

Regardless of the outcome of the battles in politics of gun control, rest assured the National Rifle Association will not rest easy. Their sole existence is to protect the right to bear arms for all United States citizens, and they will not do so until they have secured that right beyond any doubt whatsoever.

Charlton Heston, former President of the NRA, put it best to describe the organization's unrelenting purpose in the protection and upholding the right to bear arms: The NRA will put the issue of politics of gun control to rest when they take the Second Amendment "from [its] cold, dead hands."

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National Rifle Association Political Stance - Gun | Laws.com

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It is no high secret where the NRA stands in relationship to the politics of gun control in the United States. Furthermore, the sole purpose of the organization is to protect and enforce their stance on politics of gun control. The answer is simple: the NRA is pro-gun.

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Newsela article: Overview of guns in America

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News clip on pros and cons of gun control

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Video on msnbc.com: The debate over the nation's gun laws has escalated since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that left 26 children dead. Now, former congresswoman Gabby Giffords - who was shot in the head in Arizona - is launching a new effort to curb gun violence.

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Comparison of gun laws by state

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The Center points to 2010 statistics showing that seven out of 10 states with the strictest regulations also had that lowest gun homicide rates.

But gun rights advocates opposed to tighter regulations argue that this correlation is inconclusive and misleading. They commonly counter that stricter regulations don't do anything to prevent criminals from getting ahold of guns - they simply prevent law abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves. Many also point to states like Maine, which has some of the loosest regulations in the country (it received an F grade by gun control groups, but also has among the lowest gun homicide rates in the country). On the contrary, they argue, the strict gun laws in cities like Chicago and Washington D.C. have failed to prevent those rising homicide rates in those places.

"The gun laws in Chicago only restrict the law-abiding citizens and they've essentially made the citizens prey," Richard A. Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association told the NY Times.

California vs. South Dakota: the toughest and loosest gun laws

Despite its relatively low rate of gun homicides, South Dakota got smacked with an F grade by the Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which identified it as the state with the nation's weakest gun laws. Here's how the two states compare:.

California: toughest gun laws

Requires all gun sales (private or otherwise) to be processed through a licensed dealer, requiring a background check

Requires gun dealers to obtain a state license (rather than just a federal one)

Bans most assault weapons and 50 caliber rifles, and prohibits the sale or transfer of large capacity ammunition magazines

Requires handgun purchasers to obtain a license, after passing a written test

Regulates its gun shows

Limits handgun purchases to one per person per month

Imposes a ten-day waiting period prior to the sale or transfer of a firearm

Maintains permanent records of firearm sales

Gives local law enforcement discretion to deny a license to carry a concealed weapon

Gives local governments authority to regulate firearms and ammunition (although the state legislature has expressly removed this authority in certain areas).

South Dakota: loosest gun laws

Does not require a background checks for private sales

Repealed its 48-hour waiting period for handgun purchases

Does not require gun dealers to obtain a state license

Does not regulate the transfer or possession of assault weapons, 50 caliber rifles, or large capacity ammunition magazines

Does not require gun owners to obtain a license, register their firearms, or report lost or stolen firearms

Does not require the reporting of mentally ill individuals to the federal database used for firearm purchaser background checks

Does not limit the number of firearms that may be purchased at one time

Does not regulate unsafe handguns

Does not allow local governments to regulate firearms

Does not have local law enforcement discretion to deny a concealed handgun permit

99 ways states have loosened gun laws

Mother Jones magazine tracked 99 state laws passed since 2009 that have made guns easier to own and carry in public, and harder for the government to track. According to the report, these laws were pushed through by the National Rifle Association and allies in state capitols. More than two-thirds of them were passed by Republican-controlled legislatures, though often with bipartisan support.

Mother Jones highlighted some of the more striking laws it came across:

Bullets and booze: In Missouri, law-abiding citizens can carry a gun while intoxicated and even fire it if "acting in self-defense."

Child-safety lock off: In Kansas, permit holders can carry concealed weapons inside K-12 schools and at school-sponsored activities.

Short arm of the law: In Utah, a person under felony indictment can buy a gun, and a person charged with a violent crime may be able to retain a concealed weapon permit. Nebraskans who've pled guilty to a violent crime can get a permit to carry a gun.

Sweet Jesus! In Louisiana, permit holders can carry concealed weapons inside houses of worship.

Without a trace: Virginia not only repealed a law requiring handgun vendors to submit sales records, but the state also ordered the destruction of all such previous records.

The big players in the debate

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Are States With Tough Gun Laws Actually Safer?

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The Center points to 2010 statistics showing that seven out of 10 states with the strictest regulations also had that lowest gun homicide rates. But gun rights advocates opposed to tighter regulations argue that this correlation is inconclusive and misleading.

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Article explaining the gun control debate

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The gun-control debate, explained in 5 questions

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December 3, 2015 Update: This post was originally written after nine were killed in a shooting in Oregon in October. It has been updated after Wednesday's California shooting. There are those who would politicize mass shootings and those who would rather not.

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Commercial on importance of knowing warning signs for kids who might use guns

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Infographics on

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u.s. gun violence: the story in graphics - cnn

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U.S. gun violence: The story in graphics - CNN

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Guns and gun violence: Graphics tell the story

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President Obama's plan to reduce gun violence

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Understanding the 2nd amendment: The right to have guns

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the second amendment : understanding those 27 words - cnnpolitics

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Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens called for a repeal. President Trump said "NEVER!" The 27 words have been the source of heated debate since before they were even put to paper. What do they REALLY mean?