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Sample Research Paper for English 1302
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Sample Research Paper for English 1302
Valerie Alidina
ID #1160393
ENGL 1302:6426
validina-Exercise #25
Shooting From The Lip
Mary was a single mother living in a midwestern city. Alarmed at the increased number of home burglaries in her neighborhood, she did what she thought was best to protect her family – she bought a handgun. At night she kept it in her bedside table hoping she would never have to use it. One night she heard a crash in her kitchen. Heart racing, she reached for her gun and ran toward the kitchen. She flung open the kitchen door and fired one shot in the direction of the noise. That was the beginning of Mary’s nightmare – she had just shot her own 8-year old daughter who was getting a glass of water (Schleifer 27).
This tragic scene is played out with brutal regularity each day in America. The cost to society in human and financial terms is staggering. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research’s “Fact Sheet: Gun Injury and Policy” listed 32,436 gun-related deaths in 1997 (“Fact Sheet”). A Journal of the American Medical Association report estimated the lifetime medical costs per gun injury in 1994 at $17,000. Multiplied by the 134,445 gunshot injuries that were recorded in 1994, the cost computes to $2.3 billion in lifetime medical costs (Cook). What will stop this outrage? On a very superficial level, the answer is simple: private ownership of handguns should be outlawed.
The gun control debate has been raging for a seemingly endless period of time. 1 New laws are proposed by gun control advocates only to have the gun ownership faction dilute it to the point of being meaningless, or strike it down altogether. Why does this issue pose such a dilemma for America, the self-proclaimed leader of the free world? We are a nation of immigrants who hold freedom at an esteemed level. We advertise such in New York Harbor, once considered the front door to the United States: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Freedom is generally not bestowed, nor taken away, without a fight. This fight is becoming a standoff. Insight into the mistrust and suspicion both sides exhibit is found in Henry Henderson’s book, “Gun Control”: “Emotionally the gun control advocate tends to see the gun rights advocate as uncompromising, even fanatical in opposing even the most reasonable measures. In turn, the gun rights advocate tends to see the gun control advocate as untrustworthy and manipulative, proposing reasonable-sounding measures but unwilling to admit their ultimate goals.” (7)
At the core of the gun control debate is the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which 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. Supporters of gun ownership believe this gives each individual a guaranteed right to own firearms. Such is the battle cry for one of the most powerful political organizations in America today, the National Rifle Association, better known as the NRA.
The NRA was founded in 1871 to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis.” In 1934, the NRA added a Legislative Affairs Division “in response to repeated attacks on the Second Amendment.” (“A Brief History”) Any attempt to regulate or “interfere” with this right is met with immediate, and considerable, political pressure. In his article entitled “Under the Gun” published in Fortune magazine, Jeffrey Birmbaum reviews the NRA’s power: “The NRA’s defenders become most active, inspired, and effective when the right to bear arms is under assault. The organization itself seems to get stronger when its issues are in the cross hairs, even if that means – as it always does – mayhem, destruction, and death. All of which helps explain why in 1999, the worst year in memory for mass shootings, the NRA tied for No. 2 in Fortune’s Power 25 survey of clout in the capital, its highest rank ever.” (Birmbaum 1)
The gun control advocates dispute the pro-gun ownership’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. They view this from the historical prospective of newly-established states, attempting to protect itself from the oppression of a “central government,” referring to the oppression left behind in England. The gun control advocates emphasize the Second Amendment allows individual states to protect their citizens by forming “militias”, should the state’s sovereignty be under attack. In her article, “Second Thoughts on the Second Amendment,” Wendy Kaminer explains that one intended purpose was “to ensure that the people would be able to resist a central government should it ever devolve into despotism. But there is little agreement about what that capacity for resistance was meant to entail—armed citizens acting under the auspices of state militias or armed citizens able to organize and act on their own in the interests of individual self-defense against crime, rather than communal defense against tyranny.” (90)
One ironic side note to the Second Amendment debate relates to the paramilitary groups. While both “main stream” factions of the gun debate distance themselves from these groups, it could be said that the paramilitary groups demonstrate the purest interpretation of the Second Amendment today. Dr. Aaron Beck shares some insight into these groups in his book, “Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility and Violence:” Beck describes the paramilitary community’s outlook as a “frontier state of mind” preferring to live in small groups in wide open spaces, fiercely guarding what they view as their sovereignty. “Their collective sensitivities, rugged individualism, and ultra patriotism are expressed in an aversion to restrictions and a yearning to return to the alleged ideals of the Founding Fathers.” The paramilitary groups view the government as “intrusive” and “restrictive” and accept “no authority higher than the county sheriff.” They see the current governmental structure as a threat to their sovereignty, and as a consequence stockpile arms to protect themselves from the “central government.” (158) This clash of cultures has led to deadly confrontations in Ruby Ridge, Utah in 1991 and Waco, Texas in 1993.2
Another prime topic of disagreement in the gun control debate is the declining crime rates, or more precisely, the reason for the declining crime rates. According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1994 to 1999 violent crime has decreased 36.7% and property crime has decreased 36.2% (“Sourcebook”). Each side of the gun control debate takes credit for the decline pointing to supporting data and putting their spin on the result. Rather than forming a constructive path to further decreasing crime, however, these “point-counterpoint” arguments quickly dissolve into meaningless accusations of faulty research methods and control group validity furthering the gun control stalemate.
The gun ownership group believes the decrease in crime proves that private handgun ownership is a deterrent to crime, empowering individuals to self-defense in case of attack either at home or on the streets. In his article entitled “The Untold Triumph of Concealed-Carry Permits,” David Kopel reports that Florida’s murder rate decreased 36% within a few years of passing a concealed handgun law (126). One particularly controversial study was conducted by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz and published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology of the Northwestern University School of Law in 1995. They concluded that as a result of empowering the public to self-defensive use of guns, the crime rate has decreased. Kleck and Gertz maintain that their research contradicts the National Crime Victimization Survey statistics that defensive gun use incidents number between 68,000 times to 82,000 times a year. They maintain the incidents of defensive gun use to be closer to 2.2 million to 2.5 million times a year (108). Further they conclude that concealed handguns are a deterrent to crime in that criminals do not want to confront an armed victim.
Conversely, gun control advocates point to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (“Brady Law”) as the cause of the decreasing crime rate. Passed in November 1993, the Brady Law called for a five-day waiting period before the purchase of a handgun from a licensed dealer could be finalized so a background check of the purchaser could be conducted. The only serious challenge to the Brady Law since its passage was an objection by state police who were initially burdened with the task of conducting these background checks. Since that time, a national computerized database has been put in place so these background checks are conducted similar to the credit card purchase authorization system in place today (Henderson 24).
Brady Law advocates point to the fact that since its passage, 173,000 gun applications were refused between 1994 and 1996 because the potential purchaser did not pass the background check. During this same period of time, the number of aggravated assaults decreased 12.4%, robberies decreased 4%, and murders decreased 2.6% (239).
While the stalemate continues, our citizens--and our children--die from gunshot wounds in homes, schools, day care centers, and even churches. The one way to dramatically and immediately decrease handgun violence statistics: take guns out of individuals’ hands.
America is saturated with guns. This fact is reported by Gary Rosen in “Yes and No to Gun Control” published in Commentary Magazine in September of last year. Rosen reports that the number of guns in America has grown “ . . . from about 75 million in the late 1960’s to some 230 million today.” (2) Further evidence of the proliferation of guns is documented in Tom Diaz’s book, Making A Killing: The Business of Guns in America. Diaz states that 46% of the guns available to civilians between 1899 and 1993 were manufactured between 1974 and 1993 (69). Gun ownership advocates believe if handguns are outlawed, the only people carrying guns will be the criminals. That is true, of course. However, if everyone is carrying a gun it is very difficult to distinguish the “good guys” from the “bad guys.”3 Possession of a handgun in itself would be probable cause to be stopped by the authorities. In his article entitled “Guns All Under the Place,” staff writer Scott Flander discusses the conditions encountered by the local police after gun ownership laws were relaxed in Philadelphia: “Like the drunk who police spotted with a gun in his back waistband. He told police he had a permit, which was true. But the gun was stolen. Or the permit-holder who loaned his gun to a friend outside a university bookstore. The friend allegedly took the gun inside, used it to make a threat against his girlfriend, then walked back out and returned the gun. Or the man - apparently deranged - who shot a taxi driver in the face last November simply because, he told the cabbie, ‘It's your day to die.’ ’And these are people who are legally carrying weapons,’ says Officer Stacey Bier, also of the gun-permit unit. ’Can you imagine the people who are illegally carrying weapons?’" (Flander)
The Second Amendment, or any amendment, cannot guarantee a right to a group of individuals that presents an immediate danger to others in society. As Melissa Huelsman, attorney on the faculty at Southwestern University School of Law in California states in “Gun Control,” the debate over the intent of the Second Amendment is a moot point. In her interpretation, “the [Second] Amendment does not prohibit the government from restricting or regulating that right for our collective safety, much as it does the rest of the individual rights Amendments.” Huelsman points out that the government regulates other individuals’ rights in the interest of safety for all. As an example, she cites that it is illegal to libel another individual even though the First Amendment declares that “no law” can inhibit free speech (99). The mother of a gunshot victim put it in more human terms: “Their right to bear arms cost me the right to raise my son.”
Handgun control laws are unenforceable because law enforcement agencies cannot keep guns from criminals or juveniles. You only have to look as far as today’s headlines to see how gun control laws have failed to keep guns from children. To illustrate the point, an ABC news team sent a young-looking reporter into a high school posing as a new student to see how accessible guns were. Within a day the reporter had his choice of weapons. One seller had to be driven to the meeting point because he was too young to have a driver’s license (Schleifer 40).
Although the Brady Law has succeeded in keeping guns from a certain group of people, it is obvious that the vast majority of criminals do not attempt to purchase guns “over the counter.” In a survey of prison inmates conducted in June 1999, 31% of inmates obtained guns from family or friends who probably did pass a background check, and another 28% obtained guns from the black market (Henderson 226).
There is nothing in a background check that can indicate intent of gun usage. The purchasers of the guns used in the Columbine shooting would have passed the current background check requirements, and yet passing those guns along to juveniles resulted in the largest loss of life on a school campus to date. Also, the shooter who killed seven people in a Fort Worth church would have passed a background check as well because he did not have a record of a diagnosed mental illness although neighbors, and even the local police, felt he was “irascible” and “mentally unbalanced.” (Rosen 5)
A substantial amount of time and energy has been devoted to debating statistical methodology and control group validity without definitive data proving beyond a shadow of doubt that either side has a reason to claim victory in the decreased crime numbers. In his article “Gunslinging in America,” Fred Guterl speaks to the ambiguity of this research. He quotes Franklin Zimring, professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley as saying, “What we have here is critically flawed – on both sides.” Guterl compares today’s gun control issue with the early debate and subsequent scientific data proving that cigarette smoking caused cancer. Early on, most researchers were convinced that a cause and effect connection existed between smoking and cancer. Such a link pertaining to gun violence and crime statistics is elusive to both sides of the gun control debate (Guterl 127).
Setting aside research methodology debates, the claim that gun ownership deters crime is not supported by the facts. Comparing the regional 1999 violent crime statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice with regional gun ownership statistics recorded in a Gallup poll conducted in February 1999 reveals quite the opposite (Henderson 233). The highest geographical region of gun ownership (South – 46%) reflected the highest crime rate ratio (4,932). Further, it does not stand to reason that a concealed weapon could be a deterrent. In order for a deterrent to be effective, it must be blatant, much like hanging a “Guard Dog on Premises” sign on the front door. A guard dog would not be a deterrent if it were kept muzzled and hidden in the closet. They are still deadly, still able to attack, but certainly not a deterrent.
Further diluting the argument that guns are a deterrent to crime is the fact that few criminals break into homes seeking a confrontation. The National Council for the Control of Handguns reports that 90% of burglaries occur when no one is at home (Dolan 140). To research his article, “Fifty Million Handguns,” Adam Smith met with convicts serving time to gain insight into their methods and motivations. Smith quotes one convict as saying, “If I wanted to meet people I would have become a mugger.” (154) What criminals are looking for are things to steal that can be sold on the street quickly. Guns stolen from individuals’ homes provide a particularly rich booty. Smith found that most TVs and stereos are sold at a discount, but guns are sold at a premium.
There is evidence to support the gun owner’s claim that an armed victim is less likely to incur a life-threatening injury than an unarmed victim. However, few street crimes come with an instruction handbook. Scott Flander recounts the story of Earnest Toland, who found himself unwittingly in the middle of a domestic dispute. While driving a female friend to work, the woman’s ex-boyfriend rammed Toland’s car. In the exchange, Toland’s car received severe damage. When the attacker came at them with a club, Toland pulled his gun and shot the man. “The wounded man ran, and Toland and the woman were safe. But Toland admits that when he saw the damage to his car, he went into a rage, and shot out the tires and back window of the man's Jeep. Toland wasn't charged with the shooting - that was ruled self-defense - but his permit was revoked for shooting up the Jeep.” (Flander) Keeping a gun at home has proven to be more dangerous to the inhabitants of a home than to intruders. The Johns Hopkins Fact Sheet reports that there is a three-fold increase of homicide in homes with guns than homes without guns (“Fact Sheet”). There is also a controversial and frequently challenged study conducted by the Coalition to Stop Gun violence that concluded, “a firearm in the home is 43 times more likely to be used for suicide or murder than self-defense.” This study has set off a firestorm of contradictory studies. The general consensus is this is a misleading figure because few home intrudes are actually shot and killed in a confrontation (Rosen 5).
Mixing unsupervised children and handguns in the home has proven to be a deadly combination. In his book All You Need To Know About Weapons In School and At Home, Jay Schleifer refers to a study done by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence. According to Schleifer, this study reviewed 266 accidental handgun shootings from 1986-1988 with victims under the age of 16. Half of these victims were shot in their home; another 30% were shot at a friend’s house. In 60% of these cases, no adult was home at the time of the shooting (33). It is very ironic that most parents command their latchkey children to stay indoors after school to avoid street crime with little regard for the potential of indoor violence.4
Handgun violence costs are passed along to all Americans. Joseph Stalin is quoted as saying: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” These statistics come with a price – specifically in medical costs. The increased expense of treating gunshot victims is increasing the cost of healthcare in general for everyone, reflected by higher insurance costs, higher hospital bills for those who can pay, and a greater burden on Medicaid programs. These costs are detailed in Susan Headden’s article “Guns, Money, and Medicine” published in the July 1996 issue of U.S. News & World Report. Her research indicates that four out of five gunshot victims are uninsured or on public assistance. Taxpayers, therefore, are paying the tab for these medical costs “that have spiked nearly nine-fold since 1986, to a stunning $4.5 billion a year.” Headden conducted interviews with several trauma specialists throughout the country finding a consensus that these gun wounds are more frequent – and involve substantial more resources to treat – than any other type of injury. “A typical stab wound, for example, cost $6,446 to treat in 1992; the average gunshot case cost $14,541. Although gunshot wounds account for fewer than one percent of injuries in hospitals nationwide, they generate nine percent of injury treatment costs.” The high cost is attributable to the fact that most gunshot wounds require surgery to repair. Bullets by design tend to inflict a great deal of damage, known as “disruption” in the medical field. It stands to reason that rapid-fire assault weapons present the most amount of damage, and the highest recovery costs (26).
One specific example described by Headden was a patient in the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. who spent 16 days in intensive care ($1,487 per day), received drug therapy ($13,580), X-rays and miscellaneous supplies ($19,063) and yet paid nothing on his $100,838 bill upon discharge. Medicaid will pay about 70 percent, leaving the hospital to recoup the other 30 percent from their insured patients. “Such cost shifting, a report to Congress estimated, forced private patients to pay an average of 29% above the actual costs of their care in 1993. According to one study, the University of California-Davis Medical Center, despite incurring three-year losses of nearly $2.2 million on gunshot victims, actually made a profit on its trauma center, so heavily did it shift the burden to patients who could pay.” (27)
The pro-gun ownership groups vehemently purport that guns are not the problem – that “guns don’t kill – people kill.” Yes, it is a fact -- people kill. Even without guns, people kill. Violence is a fact of life in America. The contributing factors to today’s violent society is outside the scope of this paper, but the presence of handguns in the equation greatly increase the human loss of life. As Gary Rosen concluded: “Guns certainly make such violence as we have more deadly, but they in no sense generate that violence, and still less to they explain the dispiriting fact that we murder one another much more often than do Europeans or the Japanese.” (5)
Many social factors contributing to the volatility of today’s society cannot be changed overnight, but removing handguns would be a relatively quick process with an immediate impact. By doing so, the scientific minds devoting time to the research and development of better, safer guns could devote their time to a better, safer society.
Notes
1The first federal legislation regulating guns was adopted in 1927.
2It has been widely reported that the primary motivation behind the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was a protest against the government’s handling of the situation in Waco, Texas.
3A police officer aboard the New Jersey commuter train attached by Colin Ferguson reported at a Senate hearing that had additional passengers aboard that train been armed and returned Ferguson’s gunfire, substantially more deaths would have occurred in the crossfire due to the chaotic scene (Henderson 20).
4In a February 1997 study of 26 industrialized nations, the Center of Disease Control found that the United States accounted for 86% of the total firearm deaths of children under the age of 15. The study further found that the firearm death rate of U.S. children was twelve times higher than among children in the other 25 countries combined (Diaz 197).
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Works Cited
Beck, Aaron T. Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility and Violence. New York: HarperCollins. 1998.
“A Brief History of NRA.” National Rifle Association home page. March 20, 2001. <http://www.nrahq.org/history.asp>
Birnbaum, Jeffrey H. “Features/Lobbyists: Under The Gun.” Fortune. December 6, 1999. <http://www.fortune.com/index.jhtml?channel=article.jhtml&doc_id=200530>
Cook, Philip J. et. al. “The Medical Costs of Gunshot Injuries in the United States.” Journal of the American Medical Association. Vol 282 No.5. August 4, 1999. p.447-454.
Diaz, Tom. Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America. New York: The New Press. 1999.
Dolan, Edward F. Gun Control. Franklin Watts, Inc. as reprinted in Crime and Criminals Opposing Viewpoints. Claudina Debner. Ed. 2nd Edition. Minnesota: Greenhaven Press. 1984.
Estimated Rate of Criminal Victimization and Percent of Change. Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics online. <http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/1995/pdf/t32.pdf>
“Fact Sheet on Gun Injury and Policy” Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. March 21, 2001. <http://support.jhsph.edu/departments/gunpolicy/factsheets.cfm>
Flander, Scott. “Guns All Under the Place.” Philadelphia Daily News. February 13, 2001. <http://dailynews.philly.com/content/daily_news/2001/02/13/local/GUNS13.htm>
Guterl, Fred. “Gunslinging in America.” Discover. May 1996. as reprinted in Guns and Violence. Henny M. Kim. Ed. California: Greenhaven Press, Inc. 1999.
Headden, Susan. “Guns, Money, and Medicine.” U.S. News & World Report. July 1, 1996. as reprinted in Guns and Violence. Henny M. Kim. Ed. California: Greenhaven Press, Inc. 1999.
Henderson, Harry. Gun Control. New York: Facts On File, Inc. 2000.
Huelsman, Melissa. “Gun Control.” Commentator. Southwestern University School of Law. reprinted in Guns and Violence. Henny M. Kim. Ed. California: Greenhaven Press, Inc. 1999.
Kaminer, Wendy. “Second Thoughts on the Second Amendment.” The Atlantic Monthly. March 1996. reprinted in Guns and Violence. Henny M. Kim. Ed. California: Greenhaven Press, Inc. 1999.
Kleck, Gary and Marc Gertz. “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun..” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Vol. 86, No. 1 reprinted in Gun Control Opposing Viewpoints. Tamara Roleoff. Ed. California: Greenhaven Press.1998.
Kopel, David. “The Untold Triumph of Concealed-Carry Permits.” Policy Review. July/August 1996. reprinted in Gun Control Opposing Viewpoints. Tamara Roleoff. Ed. California: Greenhaven Press. 1998.
Rosen, Gary. “Yes and No to Gun Control” Commentary. September 2000. <http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1061/2_110/65014590/p1/article.jhtml>
Schleifer, Jay. All You Need To Know About Weapons In School and At Home. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group. 1994.
Smith, Adam. “Fifty Million Handguns.” Esquire. April 1991. as reprinted in Crime and Criminals Opposing Viewpoints. Claudia Debner. Ed. 2nd edition. Minnesota: Greenhaven Press.1984.
“Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online”. Estimated Rate of Criminal Victimization and Percent of Change. March 20, 2001. <http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/1995/pdf/t32.pdf>
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