Hundres of Guns, Thousands of Deaths

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In my paper I studied the causes of gun violence in the United States. Before I started the research I knew some things such as the high rate of gun ownership, but after looking at statistics even that surprised me. For every 100 people in the United States, there are 120 guns, and the number of guns keeps increasing with thousands sold every month. There are also 30,000 gun deaths in the United States every year, with recent years showing spikes in gun violence. Studies have also shown the great link between being economically poor, and a lack of research due to lobbying by the NRA.

In my research what surprised me the most was just the sheer number of deaths caused by guns every year, with each year consistently hitting in the tens of thousands. I knew through news stories I’ve heard and some very minor previous research I’ve done that the United States had a large amount of gun deaths, but the statistics I found really opened my eyes. Due to my limited information on the topic outside of some news stories, I didn’t have much of an opinion on the topic before this paper. As I finished the paper I finally decided that gun laws need to be passed to protect American citizens. This is still an important topic in the modern US due to the sheer prevalence of gun violence that still exists and is a common, everyday occurrence. Of all the issues that feed into the prevalence of gun violence, the one I care most about is the fact that lots of federal research of gun violence is all but banned and funding is almost nonexistent for third party studies. Gun groups like the NRA got laws passed that blocked federal funding for any “biased research” and without this needed research our lawmakers and citizens aren’t able to make an informed decision.

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