Gun Violence Issues - Research Paper Example

University Title

Introduction

Firearms and domestic abusers are a lethal combination. To stop gun violence, it is imperative to know where to start. A study conducted by the Public Health Journal in the United States (U.S.) revealed that domestic violence involving a gun greatly endangered the victims, co-workers, bystanders, other family members, and the risk of homicide (Weinberger et.al, 2015). Law enforcement professionals have discovered that the criminal justice system needs to closely coordinate with community organizations and relentlessly enforce the existing laws to decrease violent domestic homicide.

Practitioners, scholars, and experts were hosted by the Justice Department in 2016, October 7, to talk about this critical intervention (Malina et.al, 2016). The discussion that was held during the Community Policing Week and the month for awareness on domestic violence was opened by Sally Yates, the Deputy Attorney General, by emphasizing the commitment of the Justice Department to creating a country where the terror of domestic violence did not affect its citizens. She noted that in the past eighteen years, the National Instant Criminal Background Checking System (NICS) had reinforced the law against domestic violence by preventing federally licensed dealers from selling firearms to persons already convicted of domestic abuse. She noted, however, that NICS was only as effective as the data is contained in the system.

In this regard, Yates reached out to all the Attorneys in the U.S. to step up their efforts in the submission of information to NICS so that potential gun owners who had a history of either domestic abuse convictions or restraining orders could be prevented from purchasing a firearm. Gun violence in America is a term, which refers to different types of violence such as criminological, psychological, and sociological, that despite their vast differences, they employ the same weapon.

Background

The United States can be deemed to have several gun problems as opposed to a single gun problem. Several Americans have lost their lives from gun violence ever since independence and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Gun violence is not considered equal in all its dimensions. It is nevertheless, undisputable that gun violence in the U.S. has two predominant connotations; one local and the other national. When it involves the public such as mass public shootings, it attracts national attention. For instance, the recent gun violence coverage of the tragedy that took place at the Community College at Umpqua.

In most cases it is viewed more alarming when the social order is ruptured by one individual who uses the most violent ways involving firearms to disrupt the peaceful coexistence of a community than private or concealed acts of violence involving victims who are sometimes culpable either by context where the neighborhood is rife with crime or by behavior in terms of the relationship with the perpetrator. That is what characterizes the local type of gun violence where gangs are involved in urban areas such as Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore and where it appears that the violence is out of control but, somehow it does not draw attention to the majority of the public in the country and is less worrying (Webster et.al, 2013).

Conversely, when gun violence involves mass shootings, it attracts the public eye and can, therefore, be termed as a national tragedy. However, the fact that mass shootings are not frequent occurrences makes them significantly inadequate for strategically instituting prevention measures. On the contrary, the more common occurrence of gun violence that takes place in urban areas involving groups and gangs is preventable and examinable due to its recurrence, and most of the people in the U.S. have accepted this urban gun violence as an unavoidable reality.

According to Steadman et.al (2015), gun violence in the U.S. does not only involve strangers but, people also with or had intimate relationships. It was noted by Jacqueline Campbell from the Hopkins School of Nursing that approximately forty to fifty percent of women who were murdered in the U.S. were killed by either their ex-partners, boyfriends, or husbands. That is almost nine times the rate of people who were killed by strangers while in comparison, approximately five to eight percent of men were murdered by their partners.

Other longitudinal studies from the State University at Michigan conducted by April Zeoli revealed that when abusers are restricted by stringent laws from purchasing a firearm, there is a substantial decline ranging from seven to nineteen percent in the number of murders involving intimate partners.

This data refutes the much-acclaimed hypothesis that in the event an abuser who does not have a firearm wants to commit murder, he/she will simply opt to use another weapon. The reality of the situation is that there are higher chances of death occurring if the perpetrator is in possession of a firearm. A new website from the National Firearms and Domestic Violence Resource Center was established by Kristine Lizdas to assist communities, court personnel, attorneys, and law enforcement agencies, to prevent homicides involving domestic violence through comprehensive enforcement and implementation of firearms prohibitions at all government levels.

Discussion

Gun violence involves a host of associated factors such as poverty and racism. The church being on the forefront as one of the leading organizations for social, ethical, and moral equity, its role in gun violence is, therefore, indispensable. Speaking out is a powerful tool but not sufficient enough to curtail gun violence. It is imperative that deep relationships and strategic planning accompany symbolic action. Past research studies have revealed that the chances of a homicide happening is increased by approximately five-hundred percent in a situation of domestic violence where a firearm is present (Caetano, Schafer, & Cunradi, 2017).

McGinty et.al (2014) contend that in the United States, it has been established that more than half of the deaths involving women have been caused by their intimate partners with a firearm. Furthermore, it was revealed that between the years 2001 and 2012, there were fewer U.S. troops who lost their lives in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined in comparison to the number of women who were killed by their intimate partners using a firearm. The church in its quest for equity acknowledges the fact that moral leadership is not as simple as appears to be and does not occur easily. The church through witnessing basic human dignity violations strives to translate those violations as a desecration of the divine law.

The church largely defines morality as an objective phenomenon where the wrongness or rightness of something is independent of the feelings associated with it. The dilemma is that human beings have conjured up morality to serve their interests and when the religious community takes a bold stand and seeks to extend justice on morality grounds, it is condemned by the political protagonists as revolutionary. In essence, the church does not have any objections to ownership of firearms. The objections arise in the manner that these firearms are utilized to satisfy personal and selfish interests that are in most cases, immoral and unjust. The church can only be termed as revolutionary if appropriation and silence become the status quo. Also, if the church agrees to partner with the community it serves following community rules instead of its religious doctrines of equity and social justice, then the church, in this case, can be deemed by the political divide to be dangerous and revolutionary (Butts et.al, 2015).

Another argument in the U.S. concerning gun violence emanates from the feminist resistance movement. It is characterized by phenomenal groups that operate outside established institutions with several women vying for public offices to build formidable grassroots and consolidate their power. Groups such as the Indivisible and Women’s March are reformulating the activism landscape with messages involving the need to reorganize gun reforms and institute measures that will substantively reduce gun violence in the communities. Gun reform activists continue lobbying for sensible gun legislation, working on campaigns, and mobilizing people from all the states to attend and make their contributions in town hall meetings. Comprehensive gun bills have been passed by some states since the Sandy Hook shooting that took place in 2012 while Congress has typically remained silent on the issue (Weinberger et.al, 2015). These state-based successes that have mostly been pioneered by women advocates provide a blueprint of how legislation on gun violence ought to be approached in the era of Trump.

Victims and survivors of gun violence including daughters and mothers who have lost their loved ones as a result of gun violence have actively spearheaded movements directed towards ending it. Groups such as Lipstick from Boston, Million Moms March, and Moms Demand Action are leading forces that consistently push for change. Despite online threats and harassment even at public events, these women set aside their personal experiences and trauma with gun violence and project towards the establishment of organizations that would completely eradicate gun violence. Feminist concerns about ending gun violence in most cases conflict with the prevailing culture of violence, obsession with guns, and toxic masculinity.

In some cases, mass shootings have their roots in social injustice and domestic abuse. For instance, the mass shootings that took place at Sandy Hook School, Houston, Isla Vista, and Lafayette were preceded by domestic violence before the actual shootings. A more effective, sustainable, and comprehensive groundwork can be laid for fighting against gun violence if the manner in which gun violence intersects with pertinent issues such as domestic violence is underscored and by investing especially in women who are victims of gun violence. However, the paradox about gun violence is that it has been proven that not all gun violence is unthinkable or unpredictable. Furthermore, it should not be so disheartening to address a single type of gun violence. Urban gun violence can be tackled prudently, but it will demand a high degree of social, ethical, and moral awareness.

About causes of death, mass shooting is arguably the phenomenon that receives the most attention in the United States. Despite the perceived or real lethality and frequency of mass shootings, they constitute a negligible percentage of all gun homicides ranging at less than one percent (Jena, Sun, & Prasad, 2014). According to Caetano, Schafer and Cunradi (2017), over sixty percent of deaths caused by gun violence are suicides while the majority of the rest is a result of relationship problems or interpersonal conflicts that occur in almost every community yet, they are ignored in favor of a single incident of a mass shooting.

Each mass shooting is accompanied with an outraged effort on designing preventive strategies for the next one. Literature reviews on mass shootings suggest that armed guards, regulation of video games, mental health services, and warning signs all constitute ineffective or weak reactions to mass shootings.

By definition, the nature of such mass shootings that are often correlated with extremism or mental illness is aberrational. This claim is, however, disputed by some threat assessment experts such as Mark Follman who claim that timely interventions to such events as mass shootings can be achieved through sufficient training especially in the common warning signs. However, several case studies indicate that these warning signs are broadly shared by other disciplines. It is a fact that majority of the mass shooters comprise of young white men suffering from acute mental health disorders (Swanson et.al, 2015). Such traits cannot be instrumental in assisting threat assessment experts in determining or identifying the next most likely attack. This is because several young men enjoy violent movies, get angry about their relationships, jobs, or school, and suffer from mental health disorders. Nonetheless, the number of these men who commit mass murders is very tiny.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Social networks dictate where and how people their time, placing them within the rippling effects of the actions of their associates, and affect and alter their behaviors. In several urban communities given the unconscionable violence levels concentrated in them, it is imperative that people make sense of the patterns, locations, contexts, and influences that make it happen. The knowledge of how it happens implies that it is also possible to know how it can be terminated. One approach that has practically indicated the possibility of directly reducing and confronting group-led, urban gun violence is focused deterrence. The employment of this strategy with collaborations of the community, government, and police insisting that this type of violence must come to an end provide the most effective preventive mechanisms to stop gun violence.

The fact that gun violence is in most cases a result of understandable forces such as group conflicts, economic incentives, and personal disputes, focused deterrence inevitably increases the costs of violence associated with settling such disputes. This strategy has been found by meta-analytics to reduce violence in several cities significantly. This record has been extended to historically troubled, violent cities. For instance, New Orleans that once had the highest homicide rate in the 1970s was counteracted with a focused deterrence intervention that resulted in a substantial reduction in gun violence by approximately 32.1 percent. This included a reduction in non-lethal firearm attacks and firearm-related homicides.

A similar intervention was carried out in Chicago where disincentives and incentives were expressly communicated to known offenders. In this regard, it is evident that once the potential offender has been identified and the likely possible reasons for carrying out such an action, gun violence can then be substantially decreased because it now becomes a replicable and manageable task.

Gun violence can be effectively tackled by learning about the prevailing gun laws, advocating to change the ineffective gun laws that to a large extent overlook domestic violence, actively participating in preventing violent situations, and changing the culture of abuse that is deeply embedded in the society. Gun violence can effectively be approached and eradicated through a social, moral, religious, and ethical intersection that is properly and deeply entrenched in the political system of any society or community.