Should Gun policies be stricter?

On September 4th of 2024, in the Apalachee High School, Colt Gray, a 14 year old, killed two students, two teachers, and injured seven others. Gray received the gun as Christmas present from his father. His father, Colin Gray, 54, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second- degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of felony murder and is expected to be tried as an adult (Rosales et al.) The Apalachee school shooting was the 218th time a gun was fired or brandished so far in 2024. In the last 10 years, nearly 51% of school shootings occurred while classes were in session, and the rest after school hours. As of September 3rd, 20204, 18 of the 46 people killed in school shooting were under 18 (Gualyieri et al.).

The Second amendment allows people to have the right to bear arms, with a third of Americans say they own a gun. 72% of gun owners claim to own a gun for personal safety, however, while most gun owners enjoy having a gun at home, only 31% of nonowners living in a household with a gun say they enjoy having a gun at home. Despite this, 61% of Americans say it is too easy to obtain a gun, and 58% of Americans favor stricter gun regulations (Schaeffer).

In the United States after John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated, Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, GCA. The GCA is meant to keep firearms from those who should not own guns. One of these is requiring Federal Licenses for transferring firearms. The CGA prohibited certain people from owning firearms, such as felons or children under 18. The Gun Control Act allowed states to enforce their own laws by prohibiting transport of gun laws (Gun Violence Reduction).

While this is in the entire United States, what about in Illinois? Illinois has one of the strongest gun safety laws and low levels of gun ownership in the United States. This is especially the case following the Highland Park shooting on the 4th of July (in 2022). Lawmakers prohibited assault weapons, however, despite the laws, Illinois still has an unethical rate of gun violence. Since Illinois is surrounded by states with weaker gun laws, most guns recovered in Illinois are purchased out-of-state. While Illinois has 50 key policies, and regulates gun industry and safety, there are something that could be added (Everytown Research & Policy). What do we need in Illinois? We need a state rule mandating that all guns include microstamping technology, as this would would aid police in identifying the shooters.

Works Cited

Everytown Research & Policy. “Gun Laws in Illinois.” Everytown Research & Policy, January, 2024, everytownresearch.org/rankings/state/illinois/.

Gualtieri, A., Sawate, J., Gold, R., Johnston, T., & Manthey, G.. “Apalachee High School Shooting Is the Latest in U.S. Here’s How Many Happened in 2024, so Far.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 4 Sept. 2024, www.cbsnews.com/news/how-many-school-shootings-2024-apalachee-winder-georgia/.

“GUN VIOLENCE REDUCTION: NATIONAL INTEGRATED FIREARMS VIOLENCE REDUCTION STRATEGY.” United States Department of Justice Archive - Appendix C, www.justice.gov/archive/opd/AppendixC.htm. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.

Isabel Rosales et al. “The Father of the Georgia School Shooting Suspect Has Been Arrested and Charged, Authorities Say.” CNN, Cable News Network, 6 Sept. 2024, www.cnn.com/2024/09/05/us/winder-georgia-shooting-apalachee-high-school/index.html

Schaeffer, Katherine. “Key Facts about Americans and Guns.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 24 July 2024, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/.

Your goal is to persuade your reader to support law that would mandate microstamping technology incorporated into guns sold in Illinois. One thing I'd recommend is to include the request for specific actions from your audience right at the start of your letter, and then again at the end.

The general model of persuasive advocacy is to present a statement of the problem, and you do this by describing the Apalachee High School shooting and mentioning the assassinations of political figures in the 1960s and further mentioning the Highland Park shooting at the 4th of July parade in 2022.  You accurately point out that the Second Amendment prevents bans, and you might have mentioned court interventions that forced Illinois to allow concealed carry laws. Your point is that despite rights to have guns, there is a well-established history of gun control laws. 

So, I think your letter could have been arranged around this framework:

We ought to have a state law to mandate microstamping technology in guns sold in Illinois. Then, you would describe for your audience what microstamping is, and why you think it's a good thing to do with guns.

Then, you would describe some of the horrible things done with guns, and I like how you use descriptions of specific horrors.  Those anecdotes are powerful.

You might try to state the problem as a series of points: how to ensure that responsible gun owners can enjoy their Second Amendment rights while at the same time preventing unstable death-cult-oriented persons from getting access to guns? How to make it easy to trace guns?  Can we use technology to prevent unauthorized use of guns or unauthorized transfer of gun possessions? Can we hold people accountable if they provide guns to unstable and violent children or adults, but continue to allow responsible gun dealers and manufacturers to provide responsible gun owners with their products?  Perhaps go into some discussion of how people have tried to deal with these problems through legislation.

Then, return to microstamping.  Explain how a law to mandate microstamping of guns in Illinois would contribute to solving some of the problems you've outlined in the previous section.  Then, consider the cases you give in the paragraph where you give examples of mass shooting, and describe how microstamping would have made a difference. 

Conclude with a repeat with your first point, requesting your reader to take steps to pass rules to mandate microstamping.  You might either suggest that the politician introduce such a law and advocate for its passage, or support such a law that has been introduced already.

Student reflects on recent gun violence and mass shootings

 

Free-Writing Response

On September 4th, a student was on the bus to school, with a rifle and a knife in his backpack. Within two hours of arriving at Apalachee High School, he committed the deadliest US school shootings since the March 2023 rampage at the Covenant school in Nashville. Two teachers and two students were dead and nine, one teacher and eight students, were injured. The shooter, Colt Gray missed nine days of classes before the shooting and was charged with four counts of felony murder, and could face life in prison. But how did he obtain the gun? His father bought the gun as a holiday present for his son. He was charged with two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children (CNN).

As of September, there have been at least 49 school shootings, thirteen on college campuses, 36 on K-12 schools. The have left 24 dead and 65 others victims injured (CNN). In September, a man shot his wife and mother-in-law, while two children were there. When the police came, the man turned himself in. The wife was found dead, the mother-in-law was shot, and died later in the hospital. The reason for the shooting was a domestic dispute.

In Dec 2023, a gunman killed three faculty members on a college campus, he died in a shootout with the police. The gunman was roaming the UNLV's Lee Business School and opened fire around noon on their fourth floor. Since it was around noon, if the police had not killed the attacker, there could have been many more (PBS NEWS).

In the United States gun laws vary from state to state (Statisca)

This assignment is to work on a reaction essay for an hour, and I’ve spent my hour reading about mass shootings, school shootings, and gun violence, and now I’m out of time.  I do recommend the powerful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5ykNZl9mTQ.  My sister showed it to me a couple years ago.  Naturally, this topic should (and does) provoke stroke emotions. One of the many thoughts I have is wonder and anger. Why can’t our society find a way to stop these events?

Yes, the reaction essay is an assignment to do a free-writing assignment for just an hour, and freely express your feelings about an issue in social work or social welfare policies.  I think some students exceed the time limits to write more polished reactions, but the point is to allow students to share their feelings and thoughts.  In this case, the thoughts you’re sharing are mainly paraphrases of recent reports on mass shootings and violence. This is one of the more horrible aspects of our culture and society.  In a huge country with hundreds of millions of persons, one can expect the occasional atrocity committed by a few of the worst people subjected to the worst circumstances, but America has way more mass shootings, school shootings, and acts of tremendous violence than one should expect.  There is clearly something in our culture that is creating this situation.  I know that some degree of reasonable gun control laws ought to have a slight impact on the situation, but the sort of total gun bans and strict regulation of guns that might work in other societies would not work here because of the Second Amendment, and my understanding is that cultural changes will be more effective than gun control laws (although both would help) in diminishing these acts of mass violence.

For the time being, gatekeepers (school teachers, coaches, school administrators, school social workers, etc.) who have contact with children are learning to recognize signs that might predict who will act like this.  In the case of the September 4th Georgia school shooting, it seems the family was aware that their son was troubled and potentially dangerous. The authorities seem to agree, since they have charged the boy’s father with crimes for providing the gun. Since I was a child, I’ve thought that middle schools and high schools ought to teach some basic psychology to students, and that such content is just as important as math, science, English, and so forth.  Children can learn about healthy relationships and unhealthy relationships, and learn about friendships and romantic relationships, with the lessons drawing from research on family dynamics, domestic violence, marital satisfaction, and friendship.  Academics have studied these things, and we have a lot of basic knowledge that is no more difficult to understand than quadratic equations and the laws of thermodynamics, which are still taught in high schools, I think. Clearly, children should learn how to recognize signs of persons who are maladjusted and potentially dangerous, and also learn how to create a social environment that diminishes the risk that such people emerge and go on to commit violent crimes and atrocities. There is no harm in learning about the darker side of human behavior if the emphasis is on learning how to recognize it and create a community that does not encourage it. 

Violence prevention is an important field, but the gains we’ve made in learning how to prevent violence are not given much attention.  On the other hand, we (as a society) do give lots of attention to specific acts of violence.  My impression is that the news about violence does not inform the citizenry about what is going on in society or psychologically, and so most people are left with an impression that people are just getting worse, or more people are randomly becoming crazy and violent.  Thus, narratives about the importance of law and order as a way to stop waves of crime are embraced by people hopeful that such a turn in policies will remedy the problem (that they don’t understand).