Imagine this; a man goes shooting with two youths in the woods three times within a month. He decides they are good guys and chooses to sell them a semiautomatic TEC DC-9. Using the same gun, the two youths attack their own fellow students at school and ultimately take their own lives. This couldn't happen in America right? Wrong! This particular scenario is not hypothetical, but actually occurred in a now infamous town named Littleton, Colorado. The availability of weaponry and the violence caused by guns in society today should cause the United States of America to create stricter gun control regulations.
One of the major reasons that American society needs stricter gun control is that guns are present in many crimes. According to the U.S. Census of 2000, 64.9% of all homicide victims were murdered with firearms (United States 8). Guns are not limited to murders either. According to Constance Crooker, "During the 1990's criminals used guns during aggravated assaults more than 164,000 times per year and during robberies more than 181,000 times per year" (1). The effects of these crimes are not only felt by the victims, but by everyone in society causing an increase of fear in America. With stricter gun control regulations, the government can keep guns out of the hands of people who intend to misuse them or harm others with them.
Another reason for new regulations is that nations with stricter regulations in place right now have much lower rates of murders and gun accidents. Japan, Great Britain, Switzerland, Canada, Sweden, and Australia are six countries with stricter gun control laws and about the same population when combined as the United States. The handgun murder total for these countries was 291 in 1998. That very same year, the U.S had 10,276 more handgun murders for a combined total of 10,567 handgun murders in the U.S. in 1998 (Crooker 5). Far more disturbing than that fact is that American society is killing their children at an alarming rate.
