Handgun Legislation

There is little argument over the issue of whether or not guns cause devastation in American society, for it is clear that they do. In 1990 it was reported by the U.S. Department of Justice that some 680,000 Americans each year are confronted by criminals with handguns, and more than 24,000 are killed or wounded in these confrontations. This has led the American Bar Association to conclude that the availability of guns in America is out of control and that strong gun control legislation is needed. In response to this perception, the ABA sponsored two measures before Congress in 1991. The first of these was the Brady bill requiring a waiting period before a gun can be purchased in order to give police time to conduct a background check on the purchaser to determine previous criminal convictions or signs of mental illness.

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ricans are becoming desensitized to violence and I fear this colors all debate about handguns. Every day, we read horror stories of sleeping children killed by random bullets flying through walls or other innocents gunned down while standing on street corners, yet we do little more than shake our heads and mutter 'how awful' (McClurg 601). This desensitization takes place from childhood. By the age of eighteen, the average American child will have watched more than 200,000 violent acts on television, 40,000 of them murders, and handgun violence is a part of television entertainment and news accounts alike. Some 22,000 people are killed by handguns each year. The public at large has become so inured to this violence that the gun control debate has also become commonplace. Americans seem unable to work up the anger needed to do something about the problem. The rising tide of violence, however, has real meaning to those professionals who have to cope with it each day so that every major law enforcement organization has spoken out on behalf of reasonable gun control measures like the Brady Bill (McClurg 601-603). Opposing all gun control measures of any kind is one of the most powerful lobbies in the nation, the National Rif
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Approximate Word count = 2744
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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