America is known to be one of the most well-armed nations in the world.
Americans own about 20% of the world’s stockpile of firearms, with 265 million being privately owned by Americans and 133 million being concentrated in the hands of Americans called, “super- owners”, who have an average of 17 guns each. The reason why Americans own so many guns is because of the second Amendment in our constitution, which guarantees American citizens the right to possess firearms, it states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” However, the second amendment is relatively vague and is a frequently discussed controversial topic in American politics. There are many advocated for gun control laws that wish to have stricter laws to prevent certain groups of people from possessing a firearm, than there are those who disagree with gun control laws and believe that there should be more lenient gun control to help people defend themselves during risky situations.
Although Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms, there needs to be more precautions set in place to insure the safety of the people, therefore the second amendment should be reinterpreted so that stricter gun laws can be implemented. Many Americans feel that owning a firearm is the best solution to protect themselves at home, however someone who is mentally ill may be unable to make logical decisions. The gun laws pertaining to those who suffer from mental illnesses should be more restrictive. In February 2017, President Donald Trump repealed an Obama-era regulation that would have made it easier to block the sale of firearms to people with certain mental illnesses. The Obama regulation would add people receiving Social Security checks for mental illnesses and people who were deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to the national background check database, it sought to block some people with severe mental health problems from purchasing guns. The Obama administration predicted it would have added around 75,000 names to the national background check database, it would lessen the availability of firearms to those who may not use them with the right intentions. However, it would not change any existing laws regulating who can purchase firearms but plausibly prevented certain classes of mentally ill individuals from purchasing firearms by allowing a new data source to be included in a system that runs those background checks. In the United States only a few states impose stricter restrictions on gun purchases because of mental health and in all but 19 states, private sales do not necessitate a background check, and therefore do not involve a mental health screening.
According to the Federal National Institute of Mental Health, In the United States more than 45 million adults live with a mental illness, which includes 10 million who have a serious mental illness. Serious mental illness refers to a “mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder resulting in serious functional impairment, which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.” Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, states, “gun control in our country isn’t really gun control. It’s people control, and how we do that is complicated.
” Gun control in America is a national conversation at the intersection of guns, mental illness, safety and civil rights. There are always competing ideas about the nature and causes of the problem and how can we solve it. Public health experts focus on the broader complex problem of firearms, the related injury and mortality in the United States. Each year in the United States, approximately 32,000 people are killed with guns, 19,000 of them by their own hand and another 74,000 are injured in nonfatal gunshot incidents. These public health experts recommended various prevention policies which included universal background checks for gun purchasers, a ban for military style assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines and increased enforcement, penalties and loosened evidentiary standards for prosecuting those charged with illegal gun sales.
