Introduction
In the recent history, Gun violence in America has been an issue of huge concern. In this annotated outline for my research, it details down the summary of the main points of my projects as well as providing the working thesis statement. The outline also provides the section headings. Underneath each section heading is a list of the identified resources that I will be utilizing in my research. The outline also provides an annotation for each research.
Summary of Main Points
The research will be looking at the current literature surrounding the controversial issue of gun control in America.
I will be covering on the statistics on gun violence is the country versus the statistics of other first world country.
The research will also provide an analytical view of the current legislation on gun control
I will also cover on the political influence in relation to the issue of gun violence and the security such as the use of smart guns as well as biometric and RFID’s as a way of addressing the concern.
THESIS STATEMENT: To determine the current situation on gun violence in America while providing statistical evidence and make recommendation on the way forward in the quest to address the problem.
My research plan is to continue searching for academic sources to incorporate into my argument. I'll start with the works cited pages of my current sources so that I can see the context of their arguments and inform my readers more about the current conversations surrounding the issue of gun control legislation. I will look at statistics about gun violence versus other forms of weapons used violently so that I can offer a solid form of evidence for my readers. I also need to locate more sources about the National Rifle Association's influence on gun control legislation, and possibly find statistics about the gun lobby's influence on the wording and purpose of legislation for gun control, as well as how many political candidates and elected officials accept campaign money from the NRA and it's associated lobbies. I'd also like to look at gun violence statistics for the United States versus other “first-world” countries and countries with stringent gun control measures.
History of Gun Violence
A whopping $100 million is the current day cost of gun violence in the United States. According to authors Phillip Cook and Jens Ludwig, investments in deterrence, evasion, and harm minimization to both public and private establishments and the general public, essentially encompass a far higher share of the burden imposed by gun-violence in the United States today than which was formerly identified. An extensive survey was conducted by these two authors for measuring the independent costs of living in a community that has higher risk of losing one’s own life or the life a beloved due to gun violence.
Apparently, a reality is that each of the citizens of the United States, regardless of their place of residence and life style, share gun violence costs. “Whether waiting in line to pass through airport security or paying taxes for the protection of public officials; whether buying a transparent book bag for our children to meet their school's post-Columbine regulations or subsidizing an urban trauma center,” the steps that are taken by use today are numerous and similar is the magnanimity of the expenditures too.
Legislation
Medlock argues that the NRA plays on the inherent, irrational fears of people that others' with access to weapons may act out irrationally in order to raise anxieties about the need for guns. As with Murphy, Medlock begins with the context that no new gun legislation has passed since 1993, in large part due to the efforts of the NRA. Medlock also highlights the symbiotic relationship between the NRA and the gun industry: he discusses the way that gun manufacturers' include promotional materials for NRA membership to gun buyers, and the NRA, in turn, reviews firearms in its magazines with the aim of providing new customers.
Murphy looks at the persuasive power of the NRA's rhetoric about gun control in this essay. He notes that despite NRA's insistence that gun rights are under attack, actual gun legislation and policies have not changed much in the past two decades, and that the most recent gun legislation was remarkably favorable to the NRA's demands. Murphy argues that the gun lobby and the gun industry contribute to a culture of fear in America by perpetuating visions of threats everywhere that can only be kept at bay by arming oneself. Alongside this insidious referencing of danger everywhere, the NRA repeatedly keeps itself in the news with dire warnings about government officials taking guns away from citizens and leaving a defenseless population.
Stell argues that additional gun control legislation and measures for handguns—he makes the distinction between handguns and assault guns—are useless as an anti-homicide measure. His paper is largely a response to and refutation of the work of F.E. Zimmring, a U.C. Berkeley Criminal Justice professor and advocate of “handgun scarcity among the general population,” or stringent gun control measures for handguns in order to prevent handgun assaults and homicides. Stell opposes the idea that guns are any more dangerous than other potential weapons, and that guns offer a way to level the playing field in conflicts, so to speak. He argues that preventing some people from owning handguns restricts their civil right to defend and protect themselves. In essence, his paper argues that state restrictions on handguns create situations where innocent people are disproportionately victimized because of handgun restrictions.
Available Statistics
There is considerable evidence that states that gun violence costs are more than the costs associated with issues like obesity and Medicaid.
Source:
There are two categories of costs that are associated with gun violence in the United States. They are namely, direct costs and indirect costs. Every time a someone is attacked or injured by a bullet from a gun, there are numerous expenses that come into picture, like for instance, emergency services, investigations of the law enforcement officers, and long-term medical as well as mental-healthcare costs, along with the costs of court and prison. In the United States, approximately 87 % of all the above costs and their relevant burden is upon the taxpayers.
Indirect costs, on the other hand, comprise of factors like lost income, loss for the employers, and the impact upon the quality of life, that is based by studies upon the amounts related to the jury award given to the victim for the pain and suffering that is undergone, in instances of wrongful injury or/and death.
A study conducted by Ted Miller, in collaboration with Mother Jones, evaluated data of the year 2012 and the study discovered that the annual cost of gun violence in the United States goes beyond $229 billion, out of which the direct costs are $8.6 billion, which comprise of “long-term prison costs for people who commit assault and homicide using guns,” and is supposedly the largest direct expense incurred by a nation, at $5.2 billion per annum. Much prior to taking into account the more abstract costs of gun violence, “the average cost to taxpayers for a single gun homicide in America is nearly $400,000. And we pay for 32 of them every single day.”
While the above being the case of direct costs of gun violence, the indirect costs on the other hand are approximately $221 billion, out of which $169 billion is regarded as being the impact on the quality of life of the victim, according to researchers. With $229 billion being the approximate yearly costs of gun violence in the United States, the toll resulted due to this serious crime might be estimated as being $47 billion approximately, and this figure is more than the global revenue of Apple for the year 2014 and $88 billion greater than the money that the US government had budgeted for the purpose of education in the same year. Breaking the above figure further down, it would equate to more than $700 per year per individual.
Political Influence
According to authors Esposito and Finley, the current concern regarding gun control is massively influenced by the political paradigm and it is through the political reforms alone that this mayhem can be effectively addressed (Esposito & Finley, 2014).
While there is extensive amount of literature and research that has been done in relation to the “gun culture” of the American society and the way in which this culture is ingrained into the rather prolonged history of anti-statist individualism in the United States, there is very little attention that is imparted upon the way in which this culture, to be precise, the set of values and perceptions that support pro-gun or anti-gun control politics has, in recent decades, been reinforced by the dominant market philosophy which is commonly denoted as neoliberalism.
The gun culture of the American society is deeply ingrained into the ideologies of self-reliance and “rugged individualism” that the existing neoliberal philosophy relates with the virtue and accountability; the kind of hyper-masculine angle that is related with pro-gun politics, and the form of people willing to introduce any steps, comprising violence, to safeguard “what is his” is attuned with the kinds of agency supported within a society that follows a neoliberal market structure.
Gatehouse's essay explains gun control measures that are currently in place for buying a weapon in America, then devotes the rest of his essay to the loopholes in such laws that allow potentially harmful people access to guns. As he puts it, “However, an NICS [National Instant Criminal Background Check] is only required when the dealer is federally licensed, and therefore covers just 60 per cent of all gun sales. And there are loopholes big enough to drive a dynamite-laden truck through.” The largest of these loopholes is that being placed on the government's terror watch lists and no-fly lists does not prevent one from buying a gun. Gatehouse offers the idea that a potential solution is smaller steps toward adding more and more gun control measures at the state level rather than the federal level.
Johnson responds to the question of how people who should not have access to guns—particularly mentally ill people and people with criminal backgrounds—are able to legally purchase and own guns by offering a precise explanation of how the “Charleston Loophole” works. This loophole allows people with criminal backgrounds to obtain weapons legally by default if background checks are not processed within seventy-two hours.
Security Measures
Today, there is so much of technological advancement that is happening globally that technology can be leveraged for achieving anything and this aptly applies to the issue of gun control too. A study that examined data from the cities of Maryland and Wisconsin discovered use of personalized guns might have disallowed 37 % of involuntary or unintended deaths due to gun violence. Obviously and logically, use of personalized guns would certainly not evade the total gun deaths happening in the United States today; yet, they will certainly help deal with accidental gun deaths, suicides of youngsters, and the assaultive as well as homicidal shootings.
Making use of the current day sophisticated technology for addressing the issue of gun violence is also an innovative way of dealing with this global epidemic and such a use can also bring in a long term solution to this problem. Intelligun, a smart gun that uses patented fingerprint lock system, is one of the solutions that uses technology and this is distributed by Kodiak Industries, Utah.
Although the prevalence of sophisticated technologies like biometric sensors as well as RFID have been long been existent globally, usage of such technology in guns and other arms are still in their nascent stages. According to a study conducted by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in the year 2013, a whopping tens of millions of dollars has been invested into the research of gun safety by the NIJ, yet, there are only three organizations globally who might possibly arrive at a practical solution to this huge market.
The technology works in a simple way. It uses fingerprints locking system to capture the user’s part of biometric details also referred to as the RFID system. When the owner of the gun holds it and passes the figure on the sensor, it unlocks the gun to function. However, a stranger user cannot unlock the system meaning that the gun cannot fire unless it is authorized by the owner.
Similarly, another German arms manufacturer named Armatix had recently created a smart system sing RFID that encompasses a unique handgun, which has a watch that is enabled with the help of the RFID technology. This handgun possess a 10-round magazine and is a 22 caliberiP1 pistol. Activation and deactivation of the handgun can be done by feeding a PIN number, which will inevitably close down after a specific interval of time or in case the gun moves away for a distance of 15 inches or more from the watch.
The fingerprint sensor system also has other advantages. For instance, the owner does not need to undergo a specific process to unlock the gun. The owner just holds the gun in the normal way. The shaping of the gun is also based on the normal shape. After using, the gun relocks right away meaning that it can never be useful in case somebody steals it. I will be utilizing this source to provide ample information to some of the security measures in order to curb gun violence.
While both Armatix and Intelligun are constantly striving towards improving their existing technology to several of the other arms that they manufacture, one of the most important concerns that these arm makers have is about the acceptance of such technological advancement, which is quite challenging. In addition, reliability is another important concern that surrounds the debate pertaining to gun control and safety.
Use of RFID technology in controlling weapons is also a new measure that is being sought after to deal with gun control. With the advent of the modern Gen 2 technologies as well as also due to the availability of new products from SkyRFID, managing weapons with the help of RFID is not just possible but also is turning out to be highly successful with RFID tags being developed for mounting on a weapon or embedding it into the weapon itself.
Conclusion
The primary objective of this research paper is to determine the current situation on gun violence in America while providing statistical evidence and make recommendation on the way forward in the quest to address the problem. As detailed in the above research, gun control today is not just an issue that only the United States is facing, but it is a global epidemic. Along with the use of technology, government intervention and introduction of stringent legislations are the need of the hour, in order to effectively handle this issue. Including computer technology might not completely resolve the issue, but it would certainly offer incremental benefits. The technology used in the personalized guns will continue to evolve slowly and would certainly progress with the progress of commercialization.
References
Finley, L. E. (2014). Beyond Gun Control: Examining Neoliberalism, Pro-gun Politics and Gun Violence in the United States. Theory in Action, 7(2), 75-103.
Gatehouse, J. (2015, December 09). Disarming the American Gun Problem. Retrieved March 17, 2016, from Maclean's: http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/disarming-the-american-gun-problem/
Ho, D. J. (2015, October 08). How America Let Criminals and the Mentally Ill Buy 55,887 Guns. Time.com. Retrieved March 17, 2016, from http://labs.time.com/story/gun-loophole/
JS. Vernick, M. O. (2003). Unitnentional and Undetermined Firearm Related Deaths: A Preventable Death Analysis for Three Safety Devices. Injury Prevention, 9, 307-311.
Koidakarms. (2016). Intelligun. Retrieved from Koidakarms: http://kodiakarms.com/product/intelligun/
Ludwig, P. J. (2000). Gun Violence: The Real Costs. Oxford: OXford University Press.
Medlock, S. (2005). NRA = No Rational Argument? How the National Rifle Association Exploits Public Irrationality. Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights, 11(1), 39-63.
Miller, T. (2015, June). What does Gun Violence Really Cost? Retrieved March 17, 2016, from Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/true-cost-of-gun-violence-in-america
Murphy, J. (2012). Fear: The NRA's Real Firepower. Nation, 295, pp. 11-15. Retrieved March 14, 2016
Postscapes. (2016). RFID Smart Gun Systems. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from Postscapes: http://postscapes.com/rfid-smart-gun-systems
SkyRFID Inc. (2015). RFID Weapon Management. Retrieved March 17, 2016, from SkyRFID Inc.: http://skyrfid.com/RFID_Weapons_Management.php
Squires, P. (2000). Gun Culture Or Gun Control?: Firearms, Violence and Society. New York: Routledge.
Stell, L. (2004). The production of criminal violence in America: is strict gun control the solution? The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 32(1), 38-46.
Teret, S. P. (2014). Personalized Guns: Using Technology to Address Gun Violence. The Abell Report, 27(2), 1-8. Retrieved March 17, 2016, from http://www.abell.org/sites/default/files/publications/Aug2014_Smart_Guns_FINAL_0.pdf
