Gun Control

Gun Control

Introduction

Everytime you read the newspaper or turn on the TV to watch the news, you hear about gun related violence. Not only war, suicide and gang related shooting, but also six-year old boys killing their classmates in school.

On Tuesday, February 29, 2000 a six-year old boy shot his classmate, of the same age, to death. The two children had gotten into a fight the previous day. The boy had brought a gun from home to frighten her, but accidentely fired it. One single shot was fired inside the classroom at Buell Elementary School, in Mount Morris Township, Michigan, that morning.

Since 1996, there have been 30 major school shootings around the world, 20 of which occurred in the U.S. Most recently, on November 9 this year, a 15 year old shot and killed an assistant principal and seriously wounded two other administrators at Campbell County High School, Jacksboro, Tenneesse, (infoplease.com).

Although violent crimes have declined heavily during the last decade, 1,272,374 cases of murder, robbery, and aggrevated assaults involving firearms were committed

last year. Out of these, 16,137 were murder (The U.S. Department of Justice). In 2000, the U.S. had the highest firearm murder rate per capita of all developed countries in the world (Nation Master). These numbers are terrifying and indeed alarming.

Gun control is truly an important issue, but it is also extremely