An Adolescent Ailment

Gun Violence An Adolescent Ailment BY Arod56 On an unseasonably cold March morning in 1993, senior elevated school sophomore Edward Gillom exited his first period classroom and made his instruction through the crowded hallways of Harlem High School. After engaging in a heated argument, allegedly over a girl, with Ronricas Pony Gibson and Ricoh Lee, Gillom pulled out a . 38-caliber submarine and opened fire. Gilloms shots fatally wounded Gibson and left Lee with a non-fatal tawshot wound to the neck (Washington Ceasefire, 2011 pg 1).The shooting in Harlem, Georgia s hitked study trouble as integrity of the first high school shootings nd added to the alarmingly high rates of artillery unit violence by jejunes during the 1990s. According to the Virginia youth Violence Project, forty-two homicides took place in the Statesn schools in 1993 (2009 pg/ comparability). go the rate of gun violence in American schools has decreased well since the early 1990s, the death rate for ado lescents due to firearms in the United States is mollify higher than in any other industrialized nation (Vittes, Sorenson, &arbitrator Gilbert, 2003 pg/par).The current generation of American teenagers has grown up surrounded by gun violence in the ews in their video games and in the telly programs they watch. In the last twenty years, the United States has chancen an upsurge of gun cogitate crimes among adolescents as a result, political leaders and their constituents wee-wee become indignant at how accessible the nations gun laws make firearms to children and the mentally unstable to obtain, especially considering the melodramatic decrease of gun control, which will inevitably lead to increase gun crimes involving teenagers and young adults.Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States once said, No free man shall be debarred the use of arms. The constitutional near to keep and bear arms stems from the right to self-defense, and in the 2008 Supreme homage case District of Columbia v. Heller, the court ruled that the Second Amendment defends a pre-existing undivided right to keep and bear arms ncluding, the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation (National despoil Association, 2011 par 4). Although the Constitution gives individuals the right to bear arms, it does non exclude prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in refined places or laws imposing onditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms, (Romano ump Wingert, 2011 par 13).In recent years here has been much discussion among the nations lawmakers and their constituents as to whether or not the Second Amendment is still constitutional the question is whether or not the Second Amendment should be revised, to prohibit the sale of firearms to those who do not proper certain conditions and qualifications, or even removed from the constitution. According to a national survey of 1 ,005 high school students, conducted by Vittes, Sorrenson and Gilbert, 63. percent of high school students believe that regulating he sale of guns does not outrage the constitution (2003, pg 12). In the same survey, 64. 6 percent responded that they would retain stricter laws addressing the sale of firearms, and 82. 2 percent of those surveyed, believe that the government should make and enforce laws make it more difficult for criminals to obtain a guneven if it way law abiding citizens would have a harder time purchasing guns (2003, pg 9).While the hazard ot the Second Amendment being removed trom the Constitution is highly unlikely, the regulations that pro-gun control lobbyists have suggested seem incredibly logical. But despite the seemingly widespread support of stricter gun control, the gun control legislation that many Americans would like to see has yet to be passed by congress. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2008 the Nationa l Rifle Association, the largest anti-gun control agency, spent 2. million dollars lobbying for pro-gun legislation, which is forty one times more than what gun control lobbyist could spend (Romano &ump Wingert, 2011 par 7). The Gun Control performance of 1968, which is a revision of the National Firearms Act of 1934, established regulations for the selling of firearms and was passed in an effort to educe the amount of amerciable firearm sales, to confine the sales of firearms to the buyers state and to restrict certain populate from, buying, selling, or transporting firearms (National Rifle Association, 2011b pg/par).As a result, national law prohibits the sale of firearms to those whom argon currently under indictment for a felony, have been convicted of a felony, an immoral alien, a fugitive from the law, has been dishonorably discharged from the military, addicted to illegal narcotics or are non- residents of the state in which they are trying to purchase a gun (National Rif le Association, 2011b pg/par). Despite these laws, lack of enforcement allowed individuals like Seung-Hui Cho and Jared Loughner, the shooters at the 2007 Virginia technical school massacre and the 2011 Tucson, Arizona shooting, to obtain firearms and take the lives of innocent people.The longer these laws go unenforced the longer gun violence crimes will continue to rise. on that point have been three noticeable periods in history during which the rates of adolescent gun violence peaked dramatically1972-74, 1980 and 1992-3, with 1992-3 being the most dramatic increase (Wilkinson &ump Fagan, 2001 pg 110). During the fourteen year timespan etween 1997 and 2011 there have been one-hundred and lxxxvii shootings on public school property in the United States (The Brady rivulet to Prevent Gun Violence, 2010).In their study of adolescents and their exposure to gun violence Wilkinson and Fagan declared that, Although violence has been a recurrent theme for decades among urban delinquency , youth gun violence has become more prevalent and more concentrated spatially and socially in the past two decades. Starting in 1985, gun violence among teenagers rose sharply in prevalence it diffused readily through a generation of teenagers it sustained a high prevalence and incidence for ver 5 years and it has declined steadily in the past several(prenominal) years.This patter resembles nothing less than the outbreak of a contagious unhealthiness (Wilkinson ump Fagan, 2001 pg 109). Although this study was conducted in 2001, its findings remain true, according to the National demonstrate of Justice since 2002 the prevalence of adolescent gun violence in America has risen steadily since 2000 (2010, chart 1). This outbreak of violence among youth is most prevalent and abundant in urban communities with high rates of low-income families and gang up activity like Chicago, Illinois.In their 2009 report on youth violence in Chicago Roseanna Ander, Phillip Cook, Jens Ludwig and Ha rold Pollack stated that, Over the past 50 years, our guild has made far less progress in understanding how to protect our citizens from violence than from all manner of disease.