Gun Control, Violence and Safety

Question 1

How much more likely are Americans to be killed by firearms than other high income countries?

Answer 1

Americans are 25 times more likely to be killed in gun homicide than other high income countries.

Question 2

What is the number 1 cause of children’s death in the United States?

Answer 2

Firearms
Firearms recently became the number one cause of death for children in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle deaths and those caused by other injuries.

Question 3

How many Americans are killed by gun violence each year?

Answer 3

In an average year, gun violence in America kills 40,000 people

Question 4

How much does gun violence cost the U.S each year?

Answer 4

The economic consequence by gun violence to our nation of $557 billion. This $557 billion problem represents the lifetime costs associated with gun violence, including three types of costs: immediate costs starting at the scene of a shooting, such as police investigations and medical treatment; subsequent costs, such as treatment, long-term physical and mental health care, earnings lost to disability or death, and criminal justice costs; and cost estimates of quality of life lost over a victim’s life span for pain and suffering of victims and their families.

Question 5

How much is the medical cost for gun violence?

Answer 5

Initial costs are high.
ED care for firearm-related injuries averages $1,500 per patient, while initial care for those admitted as inpatients averages $31,000, which produces an annual total of $1 billion in initial medical costs, according to a 2021 GAO report .

Question 6

How many people are shot by firearms everyday?

Answer 6

Every day, on average, 316 people in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides and suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, and police intervention.

Question 7

How many are killed by gun violence each day?

Answer 7

Every day, 106 people die from gun violence.
39 are murdered

64 kill themselves

1 is killed unintentionally

1 dies but the intent is unknown

Question 8

How many are injured by gun violence each day?

Answer 8

Every day, 210 people are shot and survive.
95 are injured in an attack

10 survive a suicide attempt

90 are shot unintentionally

4 are shot in a legal intervention

Question 9

Are black americans disproportionately

Answer 9

Black Americans compose 59% of victims of gun homicide but only 14% of the US population.

Black Americans experience 8 times as many gun homicides as white Americans. And Black children and teens (ages 1-17) are three times more likely to be killed with a gun than their white peers.

Question 10

How many hate crimes involve firearms?

Answer 10

Every year, an average of 10,300 hate crimes involve firearms.

28 hate crimes involve a firearm each day.

Nearly a fifth of hate crimes are based on sexual identity and gender identity bias. LGBTQ+ are more likely to be targeted for a hate crime more than any other group.

90% of suicides attempts with a gun are fatal.

LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to die by suicide than non-LGBTQ youth, implying that firearm suicides could have a disproportionate impact on transgender and adolescent members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Question 11

What percentage of suicides are by guns?

Answer 11

Firearms are used in half of all suicide deaths. Suicides make up three in every five gun deaths. Suicide by firearm is almost always deadly — 9 out of 10 firearm suicide attempts result in death.

Question 12

What are the main causes of gun related deaths?

Answer 12

Gun-related deaths from preventable, intentional, and undetermined causes totaled 45,222 in 2020, an increase of 13.9% from 39,707 deaths in 2019. Suicides account for 54% of deaths related to firearms, while 43% were homicides, and about 1% were preventable/accidental. Please note that the term gun is used on this page to refer to firearms that can be carried by a person, not to the larger class of weapon.

Question 13

What year did americans die because of gun related reason the most?

Answer 13

More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2020 than in any other year on record, according to recently published statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included a record number of gun murders, as well as a near-record number of gun suicides. Despite the increase in such fatalities, the rate of gun deaths – a statistic that accounts for the nation’s growing population – remains below the levels of earlier years.

Question 14

How many people die from gun-related injuries in the U.S. each year?

Answer 14

In 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three other, less common types of gun-related deaths tracked by the CDC: those that were unintentional, those that involved law enforcement and those whose circumstances could not be determined.

Question 15

How many murders involved firearms?

Answer 15

Nearly eight-in-ten (79%) U.S. murders in 2020 – 19,384 out of 24,576 – involved a firearm. That marked the highest percentage since at least 1968, the earliest year for which the CDC has online records.

Question 16

How much did gun deaths increased?

Answer 16

The 45,222 total gun deaths in 2020 were by far the most on record, representing a 14% increase from the year before, a 25% increase from five years earlier and a 43% increase from a decade prior.

Question 17

Is 2020 the highest per capita gun death year?

Answer 17

No. While 2020 saw the highest total number of gun deaths in the U.S., this statistic does not take into account the nation’s growing population. On a per capita basis, there were 13.6 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2020 – the highest rate since the mid-1990s, but still well below the peak of 16.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 1974.

Question 18

Which state had the highest rate of gun related deaths?

Answer 18

In 2020, the states with the highest rates of gun-related deaths – counting murders, suicides and all other categories tracked by the CDC – included Mississippi (28.6 per 100,000 people), Louisiana (26.3), Wyoming (25.9), Missouri (23.9) and Alabama (23.6). The states with the lowest rates included New York (5.3), Rhode Island (5.1), New Jersey (5.0), Massachuse

Question 19

What did the 1934 National Firearms Act do?

Answer 19

This legislation is a direct response to gang violence, this act imposed criminal, regulatory and tax requirements on weapons favored by gangsters: machine guns, silencers and sawed-off shotguns.

Question 20

What was the Gun Control Act of 1986?

Answer 20

Firearm Owners’ Protection Act

In 1986, this Act amended the NFA definition of “silencer” by adding combinations of parts for silencers and any part intended for use in the assembly or fabrication of a silencer. The Act also amended the GCA to prohibit the transfer or possession of machine guns.

Question 21

What is the NRA fighting for?

Answer 21

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the largest gun-owners’ organisation in the US, lobbies against gun-control laws.

Question 22

Was the gun industry exempt from oversight the Consumer Product Safety Commission?

Answer 22

In some cases, the NRA supported these measures and even reluctantly endorsed the law. And yet, even as political will favored gun control, the gun industry still received some special protection from higher-ups. It was the sole industry to be exempt from oversight via the new Consumer Product Safety Commission created in 1972. According to The Trace, this is because house representatives feared a slippery slope that would lead the agency to confiscate people’s guns. As a result, there’s more federal oversight over a toy gun than a real one, which is sad and depressing.

Question 23

Where did the individual interpretation orginate from?

Answer 23

The Supreme Court used it to uphold challenges to the 1934 law, arguing sawed-off shotguns and machine guns wouldn’t be used by a state militia. This was the militia interpretation of the amendment; that it only protected gun rights insofar as they would apply to arm a citizen militia. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, scholars began to argue for a more individual interpretation of the second amendment. And the NRA went HAM on this interpretation, even bolting an excerpt of the amendment to the outside of their headquarters. In 2008, the Supreme Court overturned D.C.’s handgun ban after a hotly contested decision on District of Columbia vs. Heller.

Question 24

What happened in Columbia v Heller?

Answer 24

In the 2008 landmark case District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the Second Amendment includes the right of individuals to bear arms for self-defense.

Question 25

What does the National Firearms Act do?

Answer 25

In 1986, this Act amended the NFA definition of “silencer” by adding combinations of parts for silencers and any part intended for use in the assembly or fabrication of a silencer. The Act also amended the GCA to prohibit the transfer or possession of machine guns. An Act to provide for the taxation of manufacturers, importers, and dealers in certain firearms and machine guns, to tax the sale or other disposal of such weapons, and to restrict importation and regulate interstate transportation thereof.

Question 26

What is the Brady Bill and what did it do?

Answer 26

On 1993,
Led by Jim and Sarah Brady, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, or the Brady Bill, established America’s federal background check system for gun sales.

Question 27

Was the assault weapons ban unconstitutional?

Answer 27

The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, popularly known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, was a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

Question 28

Is NRA membership declining?

Answer 28

As a result of lawsuits, leadership scandals, a failed bankruptcy filing, and declining membership, the organization would eventually lose steam in the late 2010s. Their political donations have proportionately dwindled, although they still managed to spend over 29 million dollars in the 2020 federal elections. With the NRA dying a slow death, it’s worth asking, what does that mean for gun culture?

Question 29

What is the Bipartisan Safer Communities?

Answer 29

This welcome but tepid measure enhances background checks for purchasers under 21 years of age and incentivizes states’ implementation of protection (“red flag”) laws that allow families and law enforcement to petition courts to remove guns from people at risk of harming themselves and others. It also expands financial support for community mental health care. That same day, in seeming contradiction of the passage of the first federal gun safety law in almost three decades, the Supreme Court took a far more consequential action. It declared a broad right to carry arms in public. Six conservative justices denied New York State the government’s most basic right to safeguard public safety and ensure domestic tranquility.

Question 30

What is the Uvalde, Texas shooting?

Answer 30

On May 24, 2022, a mass shooting occurred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers, while seventeen others survived despite being injured

Question 31

What is the buffalo shooting?

Answer 31

On May 14, 2022, a mass shooting occurred in Buffalo, New York, United States, at a Tops Friendly Markets supermarket in the East Side neighborhood. Ten people, all of whom were Black, were murdered and three were injured.

Question 32

What supreme court decision make about about carrying arms in public?

Answer 32

That same day, in seeming contradiction of the passage of the first federal gun safety law in almost three decades, the Supreme Court took a far more consequential action. It declared a broad right to carry arms in public. Six conservative justices denied New York State the government’s most basic right to safeguard public safety and ensure domestic tranquility. The Supreme Court’s ruling seemed particularly insensitive after 19 students and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., and 10 supermarket shoppers were slain in a racist attack in Buffalo, N.Y. Then, at an Independence Day parade, seven people were killed and more than 30 wounded in Highland Park, Ill. This all happened in less than six weeks.

Question 33

What did Clarence Thomas say about lower court decisions on proper cause?

Answer 33

In Bruen, the Court struck down a 111-year-old New York law requiring “proper cause,” or demonstration of a special need for self-defense to carry a concealed weapon in public. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for a 6–3 majority, held that New York’s concealed carry law includes a “proper-cause” requirement that violates the Second Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense. Thomas rejected lower courts’ decisions, which balanced gun rights with public safety, saying the only thing that mattered was whether laws are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Question 34

Why should we be more critical of supreme court ruling using historical arguments?

Answer 34

The ruling raises the immediate question of whether modern firearms regulations should really be judged by normative standards existing in 1791, when the Second Amendment was adopted. And do justices trained in law even have the expertise to conduct historical analyses? In one way, the justices aren’t really using history as a guide at all. Rapid-fire “assault-style” rifles, high-velocity armor-piercing ammunition—so-called cop killer bullets—and high-capacity magazines couldn’t even have been imagined by the Founding Fathers.

Question 35

Did they have gun regulation in the colonial era?

Answer 35

There was a slew of firearms regulations during the colonial era. Even New York’s concealed carry law is part of a long tradition, starting with Kentucky enacting the first such law in 1813. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that states allowed guns to be carried in public after being pushed by the gun-rights lobby. “Right-to-carry” laws, supporters argued, would deter violent attacks. Subsequent “stand your ground” laws would eliminate the duty to retreat from dangerous encounters. The National Research Council, however, concluded that both laws had no such effect, with some research showing they actually increased violent crime.

Question 36

How much is the annual cost of gun injury in the U.S?

Answer 36

The estimated annual cost of gun injury in 2012 exceeded $229 billion—about 1.4% of GDP.

Question 37

How many people in the US carry a gun?

Answer 37

The big picture: According to the Annals of Internal Medicine, there were an estimated 62 million handgun owners in the U.S. in 2021.

Question 38

How much did the total number of handguns increased?

Answer 38

The total number of adults owning handguns increased from 38 million in 2015 to 53 million in 2019.

Question 39

How much did Concealed carry permits increased?

Answer 39

Concealed carry permits increased by 2.3% in 2022 compared to last year even though nearly half the states enacted constitutional carry laws, according to a report published by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC). Those laws say Americans don’t need to get a government permit to carry firearms.