Gun control, or firearms regulation, is the set of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians.
Homicide is an act in which a human causes the death of another human.
Arthur L. Kellermann is an American physician and epidemiologist. Until his resignation in November 2022, he served as a professor of emergency medicine at the VCU School of Medicine, senior vice president of health sciences for Virginia Commonwealth University, and CEO of the VCU Health System. He was formerly professor and dean of the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Kellerman served as director of the RAND Institute of Health and founded the department of emergency medicine at Emory University and the Center for Injury Control at Rollins School of Public Health. His writings include 200 publications on various aspects of emergency cardiac care, health services research, injury prevention and the role of emergency departments in providing health care to the poor. Kellermann is known for his research on the epidemiology of firearm-related injuries and deaths, which he interpreted not as random, unavoidable acts but as preventable public-health priorities. Kellermann and his research have been strongly disputed by gun rights organizations, in particular by the National Rifle Association of America, although Kellermann's findings have been supported by a large body of peer-reviewed research finding that increasing gun ownership is associated with increased rates of homicide and violence.
Gun laws in Australia are predominantly within the jurisdiction of Australian states and territories, with the importation of guns regulated by the federal government. In the last two decades of the 20th century, following several high-profile killing sprees, the federal government coordinated more restrictive firearms legislation with all state governments.
Gun politics is defined in the United States by two primary opposing ideologies concerning the private ownership of firearms. Those who advocate for gun control support increasingly restrictive regulation of gun ownership; those who advocate for gun rights oppose increased restriction, or support the liberalization of gun ownership. These groups typically disagree on the interpretation of the text, history and tradition of the laws and judicial opinions concerning gun ownership in the United States and the meaning of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. American gun politics involves these groups' further disagreement concerning the role of firearms in public safety, the studied effects of ownership of firearms on public health and safety, and the role of guns in national and state crime.
Gun culture in the United States encompasses the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs about firearms and their use by private citizens. Gun ownership in the United States is legally protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Firearms are used for self-defense, hunting, and recreation.
Crime has been recorded in the United States since its founding and has fluctuated significantly over time, with a sharp rise after 1900 and reaching a broad bulging peak between the 1970s and early 1990s. After 1992, crime rates have generally trended downwards each year, with the exceptions of a slight increase in property crimes in 2001 and increases in violent crimes in 2005-2006, 2014-2016 and 2020-2021. While official federal crime data beginning in 2021 has a wide margin of error due to the incomplete adoption of the National Incident-Based Reporting System by government agencies, federal data for 2020-2021 and limited data from select U.S. cities collected by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice showed significantly elevated rates of homicide and motor vehicle theft in 2020-2022. Although overall crime rates have fallen far below the peak of crime seen in the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the homicide rate in the U.S. has remained high, relative to other "high income"/developed nations, with eight major U.S. cities ranked among the 50 cities with the highest homicide rate in the world in 2022. The aggregate cost of crime in the United States is significant, with an estimated value of $4.9 trillion reported in 2021. Data from the first half of 2023, from government and private sector sources show that the murder rate has dropped, as much as 12% in as many as 90 cities across the United States. The drop in homicide rates is not uniform across the country however, with some cities such as Memphis, TN, showing an uptick in murder rates.
Gun violence is a term of political, economic and sociological interest referring to the tens of thousands of annual firearms-related deaths and injuries occurring in the United States. In 2022, up to 100 daily fatalities and hundreds of daily injuries were attributable to gun violence in the United States. In 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics reported 38,390 deaths by firearm, of which 24,432 were suicides. The national rate of firearm deaths rose from 10.3 people for every 100,000 in 1999 to 11.9 people per 100,000 in 2018, equating to over 109 daily deaths. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S. In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm. In 2011, a total of 478,400 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes were committed with a firearm.
Gun-related violence is violence committed with the use of a firearm. Gun-related violence may or may not be considered criminal. Criminal violence includes homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, and suicide, or attempted suicide, depending on jurisdiction. Non-criminal violence includes accidental or unintentional injury and death. Also generally included in gun violence statistics are military or para-military activities.
Crime in Chicago has been tracked by the Chicago Police Department's Bureau of Records since the beginning of the 20th century. The city's overall crime rate, especially the violent crime rate, is higher than the US average. Gangs in Chicago have a role in the city's crime rate. The number of homicides in Chicago hit a 25-year high in 2021.
Murder of pregnant women is a type of homicide, often resulting from domestic violence. Domestic violence—or intimate partner violence (IPV)—is suffered by many, and when analyzing cases in which victims came forward, men are more likely than women to commit acts of severe domestic battery, and women are more likely to suffer serious injury as a result. Many of these women fear harm not just to themselves but also to their unborn children. Recently, more focus has been placed on pregnancy-associated deaths due to violence. IPV may begin when the victim becomes pregnant. Research has shown that abuse while pregnant is a red flag for pregnancy-associated homicide.
In 2018, the Small Arms Survey reported that there are over one billion small arms distributed globally, of which 857 million are in civilian hands. The survey stated that American civilians account for an estimated 393 million of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms, or about 120.5 firearms for every 100 American residents.
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, a United States federal law which included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms that were defined as assault weapons as well as certain ammunition magazines that were defined as large capacity.
Proposals for universal background checks would require almost all firearms transactions in the United States to be recorded and go through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), closing what is sometimes called the private sale exemption. Universal background checks are not required by U.S. federal law, but at least 21 states and the District of Columbia currently require background checks for at least some private sales of firearms.
Mass shootings are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm related violence. Definitions vary, with no single, broadly accepted definition. One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which a shooter kills at least four victims. Using this definition, a 2016 study found that nearly one-third of the world's public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 occurred in the United States, In 2017 The New York Times recorded the same total of mass shootings for that span of years. A 2023 report published in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022, found there had been 4,011 mass shootings in the US, most frequent around the southeastern U.S. and Illinois. This was true for mass shootings that were crime-violence, social-violence, and domestic violence-related. The highest rate was found in the District of Columbia, followed by Louisiana and Illinois.
