More than four decades ago, gun lobbyists began to assert that possessing a gun was the only way to ensure that American citizens could defend their family members and friends against criminals. Over the next 35 years, the sale of firearms and provision of gun permits would increase by more than 300% in the US. In states like Florida, automatic assault weapons became cheaper to own than ordinary handguns during the 1980s. The high levels of automatic assault weapons procurement since then have corresponded with a sharp increase in assault weapon-related homicides in different urban and rural areas of the US. This study aims to depict the relationship between the enactment of laws banning the sales of automatic assault weapons and the decrease in gun-related homicides in seven states in the US. For this purpose, the researchers will distribute a survey with 14 open and close-ended questions to 20 police chiefs stationed across the seven regions under focus.

Gun Violence in the United States Would Drop Significantly If the Sale of Automatic and Assault Style Weapons Would Be Banned

Introduction

            In the last few decades, automatic assault firearms have become the preferred agents of death in the US. According to Waxman (2018), while homicides involving implements such as knives have only increased by 10% since the 1960s, homicides involving guns have increased by 48%. Today, 66% of all homicides that are committed in the United States are facilitated by guns (Waxman, 2018). However, these statistics do not mean that handguns are favored by American criminals. Rather, it means that the availability of automatic assault weapons has made it easier for criminals to target multiple victims in a singular shooting incident.

The term ‘automatic assault weapon’ is descriptive of the type of gun which can fire bullets at a rapid rate without the individual wielding it having to pause and reload (Giffords Law Center, 2018). A person handling an automatic assault weapon can inflict much more damage than a person who has an ordinary handgun as the former will be able to fire more rounds without needing to reload. Innocent citizens who are targeted in a mass shooting spree are more likely to escape if the shooter has an ordinary handgun than if he has an automatic weapon as the former has a slower rate of firing that permits citizens to escape. All regulations that are been proposed to ban the sales of assault weapons aim to decrease the number of casualties that result from gun-related crimes and mass shootings. A law banning the sale of automatic weapons would, therefore, not only reduce gun violence, but also decrease the fatality rate in mass shooting incidents.

Hypothesis

In this study, the researchers hypothesize that ratifying laws that ban the sale of automatic guns and other assault firearms will result in the reduction of gun-related fatalities, as well as the number of victims who are severely wounded every year in gun violence.

Research Objective

The main objective of this research is to reveal the association between ratifying laws that ban the sales of automatic guns and other assault rifles and lower numbers of gunshot victimizations in seven states.

Background

American gun enthusiasts regularly assert that the American Constitution gives them the right to possess weapons to protect or defend themselves and their families from criminals. The US Constitution’s Second Amendment stipulates that “the right of American citizens to keep weapons should not be interfered with because maintaining an armed militia is vital in keeping the state free from attacks” (Barrett, 2013). Regrettably, the reality is that this law was made in 1791 to protect the then-infant nation, which was made up of just 13 states, from justified attacks from World Powers even as it expanded its territory. Based on this fact, gun ownership laws should have been permanently changed in 1959 after the States of Hawaii and Alaska were incorporated into the US. As this did not happen, a large percentage of American citizens retained the automatic and ordinary firearms even though there was no longer any visible threat to the US which had, by then, become a superpower.

The murder of prominent Americans like President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jnr. and Robert Kennedy in the 1960s inspired the US Congress to ratify the 1968 Gun Control Act, which was meant to regulate the sales and ownership of firearms (Waxman, 2018). This initiative brought immediate pushback from the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) which launched lobbying operations to ensure that other laws would not be ratified to further impede the sales of guns in the US. According to Barrett (2013), the NRA has invested millions of dollars in studies to challenge the association between increased gun ownership and gun-related fatalities, while also contributing to the political campaigns of potential candidates who support the right to own guns. This fact resulted in the US Supreme Court celebrating the right of private individuals in the US to own guns.

All these facts, though, cannot eradicate the realities of modern life in America. According to Waxman (2018), American law enforcement officials have publicly acknowledged that the increase in the ownership of automatic and semiautomatic weaponry has corresponded with the rise of mass shootings, as well as an increase of drug traders in poorer parts of urban areas. Drug and gang wars then create a situation in which the involved criminals strive to own the most effective weapons- which are usually automatic firearms- to ensure that they and their subordinates and customers are well protected when they buy or sell drugs such as cocaine and heroin. Also, when random mass shootings occur repeatedly, as has been the case over the past eight months, studies have shown that citizens are more likely to become paranoid about their own and their family members’ personal security.

This then causes ordinary citizens to procure automatic assault firearms to be able to protect themselves in public against imagined enemies. According to Waxman (2018), what has become clear is that there are few American citizens who are willing to remain without weapons when their immediate neighbors, mentally deranged individuals, and criminal elements such as drug dealers all own automatic assault firearms. Whereas more than 50% of participants in a study conducted on the need for guns just a decade ago showed that most Americans bought guns for target-practice sports or hunting, a recent study on the same subject showed that most American procure automatic assault firearms today for self-protection (Follman, Aronsen & Pan, 2019).

Literature Review

This inclination of an increasing number of American citizens to procure military-style automatic rifles for reasons related to self-defense has alarmed local state governments all over the US. As is depicted in Appendix A, some seven states even have taken caution by banning the private ownership of automatic assault firearms within their own jurisdictions. In the past, the federal government took steps to stop the proliferation of automatic assault firearms around the country. In 1994, the US government ratified the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (DiMaggio, Avraham, Berry, Bukur, Feldman, Klein, Shah, Tandon & Frangos, 2019). This law aimed to prevent the manufacture of semi-automatic and automatic rifles with parts such as pistol grips, flash suppressors, folding stocks, detachable magazines, grenade launchers and bayonet mounts to sell them to private citizens (Di Maggio et al., 2019). This law made it a crime for private citizens to procure AK-47s, TEC 9s, AR-15s, Uzis and other similar weapons. According to Di Maggio et al. (2019), mass shooting related fatalities decreased by approximately 70% all over the US after this law was ratified.

The US is not the only nation to experience a radical shift in crime rates after enforcing bans on the procurement and selling of firearms. During the 1980s and 90s, Australia suffered numerous fatalities due to its lax regulations on the procurement and selling of guns (Chapman & Aplers, 2018). In 1996, there was a mass shooting episode in Tasmania that resulted in the deaths of 35 innocent civilians (Chapman & Aplers, 2018). It is after this incident that the Australian government decided to implement gun safety laws that would greatly decrease the number of semiautomatic and automatic weapons being sold outside of military establishments and personnel. Based on this regulation, any Australian citizen has to demonstrate that there is a serious reason for him to own any firearm before being issued with a firearm license today (Chapman & Aplers, 2018). Since 1996, Australia has not experienced any mass shooting incident, while the US has been subjected to more than 100 such incidents. Also, gun-related fatalities have reduced by approximately 72% since the 1996 gun safety regulations were ratified in Australia (Chapman & Aplers, 2018). This fact alone proves that the claim that ‘banning automatic firearms will not have any effect on crime levels,’ which is frequently touted by the NRA, is simply incorrect.

After the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act

The 1994 ‘Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act’ was ratified on condition that its sponsors would permit a ‘sunset provision’ to be attached to it (Di Maggio et al., 2019). This statute would cease to apply after a decade as it would automatically expire after that period. The politicians who had sponsored this law presumed that they would be able to renew it in 2004. However, the little political support that the law had enjoyed in 1994 had petered out by then. Upon the expiry of this law, American citizens were suddenly authorized to purchase high capacity magazines as well as automatic firearms in all states that did not have local regulations that banned their procurement by private citizens. According to Di Maggio et al. (2019), there was a 239% increase in gun-related fatalities and 183% increase in automatic firearm-associated mass shootings in the US after the expiry of the 1994 ‘Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act’.

According to Follman, Aronsen & Pan (2019), more than three American citizens are killed due to gun violence every hour. The sheer number of mass shootings that are committed using automatic or semi-automatic firearms are so many that they have stopped attracting the attention of politicians who often ascribe such incidences to mental illness. From 2000 to 2017, more innocent American civilians died needlessly in mass shootings staged with automatic assault firearms than military personnel in Afghanistan (DiMaggio et al., 2019). The random possession of automatic and semi-automatic assault rifles is not just detrimental to ordinary civilians but also law enforcement officers. According to Follman, Aronsen & Pan (2019), 25% of the police officers who were murdered in the line of duty in 2014 were killed using semi-automatic assault firearms. Some of the mass shooting incidents which have been staged using automatic assault weapons include:

• The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting incident in which 17 citizens were killed
• The shooting incident at the Sutherland Springs Church where 26 citizens were killed
• The shooting incident at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in which 26 people were killed
• The shooting incident at the Las Vegas music festival where 59 people were killed
• The shooting incident at the Aurora movie theatre where 12 people were killed
• The shooting incident at the ‘Tree of Life’ Synagogue where 11 people were killed
• The shooting incident at the San Bernardino Community Center where 14 citizens were killed
• The shooting incident at the Pulse Nightclub where 49 people were killed (Luca, Malhotra & Poliquin, 2017).

The Lethality of Attacks That Are Posed Using Semi-Automatic or Automatic Assault Firearms

When categorizing mass shooting incidents on the basis of the weapons that are used, it becomes evident that in cases where military-style automatic weapons are used, there are many more casualties than in cases where they are not. According to Luca, Malhotra & Poliquin (2017), while there is just an average of 2 deaths in mass shooting incidents when automatic assault firearms are not used, there is an average of 5 deaths and numerous injuries in incidences where such weapons are used. In the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting incident, the attacker used an automatic assault firearm and killed 49 people, while seriously wounding 53 others (Follman, Aronsen & Pan, 2019).

When criminals decide to engage in a mass shooting, it is not uncommon for them to carry more than one semi-automatic rifle to cause maximum damage. Also, there has been a growing preference among such characters to match their semi-automatic firearms with the type of ammunition that can pierce through bullet-proof vests (Follman, Aronsen & Pan, 2019). Clearly, there is an urgent need for the federal government, along with all local state governments to ratify laws that will forbid the production of automatic assault firearms to sell them to private citizens under any context.

Methodology

In this study, the researchers will use the survey method to acquire details about the levels of automatic assault firearm-related fatalities in seven states before the enactment of local laws prohibiting the manufacturing and selling of automatic assault firearms and after the said rules were implemented. In this qualitative study, a survey with 14 open-ended as well as close-ended questions (See Appendix B) will be distributed to 20 police chiefs who are stationed across California, Connecticut, Washington DC, Maryland, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

 References

Barrett, P. (2013). Glock: The rise of America’s gun. New York: Broadway Books.

Chapman, S. & Aplers, P. (2018). Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms halted mass shootings

for 22 years: A response to criticism from Gary Kleck. Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice, 10(1), 94-103. https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/18216/2/Kleck%20Response%20ESchol.pdf

DiMaggio, C., Avraham, J., Berry, C., Bukur, M., Feldman, J., Klein, M., Shah, N., Tandon, M.

& Frangos, S. 2019). Changes in US mass shooting deaths associated with the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban: Analysis of open-source data. J Trauma Acute Care Surg., 86(1), 11-19.

Follman, M., Aronsen, G. & Pan, D. (2019, Aug. 31). US mass shootings, 1982-2019: Data

from Mother Jones’ investigation. MotherJones. Retrieved from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/

Giffords Law Center. (2018). Assault weapons: State by state. Retrieved from

Assault Weapons: State by State

Luca, M., Malhotra, D. & Poliquin, C. (2017). The impact of mass shootings on gun policy.

Harvard Business School. Retrieved from https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/16-126_ce055015-fc1c-4a8c-9a8a-8a9361d808bb.pdf

Waxman, O. (2018, Feb. 16). Why Americans started buying military-style weapons like

the one used in the Florida shooting. TIME. Retrieved from https://time.com/5162573/ar-15-history-mass-shootings/