Gun Control Overview
What is gun control?
The issue of gun control is basically whether we should have any restrictions on who has access to guns and what sort of guns they have access to. Guns are one of the only two industries in the US that have no real regulation, and the other is tobacco. Guns even have very little regulation by the courts. So the issue is what sort of limitation should there be on who gets access to them and what sort of guns they get access to.
What is the history of gun control?
Basically, there has been very little gun control in this country. There really are only three major gun control acts that have ever been adopted. One was the 1934 National Firearms Act. This was a reaction to the violence that was going on in the gangster era, in the Al Capone era during the Depression, and Congress at that stage acted basically to ban machine guns and similar sorts of weapons, sawed off shotguns, machine guns. That happened in 1934 and we didn't have any other real gun regulation in the country until 1968 after the assassinations of Senator Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Junior, some of the rioting in the streets during the 60s. Congress adopted the Gun Control Act of 1968. This basically set out a list of prohibited purchasers, people that according to federal law would not be allowed to buy guns, and primarily focused on felons, those who were a danger to themselves or others because of mental illness, as well as some other categories of people. There was no other gun control act under the early 90s when the Brady Bill passed. The Brady Bill was a reaction to the fact that with the 1968 Gun Control Act setting out the prohibited purchasers all they really did was create a form where people were asked: Are you a felon? Are you a danger to yourself or others because of mental illness? And you can't really rely on felons or people that are dangerous to check the right box. So the Brady Bill said we should actually be doing some background checks. We should actually check to see whether the individual is a felon, has been adjudicated as mentally ill. So a system was set up where there would be background checks and eventually a national instant check system, a database, and that's what the Brady Bill did. That was expanded a couple of years later to include another prohibited class, people that had domestic violence restraining orders against them. Basically, those are the only three gun control acts that we have in this country. Some states have done some other things, but it's really a pretty weak, minimal set of laws that we've got regulating guns in the United States.
Why is the topic of gun control an emotional issue?
One of the challenges I face as President of the Brady Campaign is to understand the psychology behind the arguments of the gun control issue. People do get very emotional about this. I've given speeches, and people who don't agree with me they got red in their face and you can see the veins bulging. I think at one level those who oppose gun controlled or concerned about gun controlled feel that it's a plot to take all their guns away and confiscate their weapons. That's not what we're about. We're about common sense of restriction and access of guns. Somehow others feel that their guns are going to be taken, they're not going to be allowing the hunt, they're not going to allowed to protect themselves, and they're going to be in the mercy of thugs and gangs or an oppressive government. It's interesting psychology, I think it has to do with feelings of powerlessness, feelings of mistrust with the government, feelings of fear. It touches on a real sensitive nerve. That makes us hard to try to find common ground in the issue and that's what I'm trying to do. You can keep your guns, but we can do some common sense things to make it harder for dangerous people to get them.
Why do we need gun control?
Right now, we make it too easy in this country for dangerous people have weapons. Again, when someone looks the situation and see how easy that was for the killer their to get the guns even though his roommates and professor purely said that person should not have be a guns . It shows that there's a need for some restrictions to make it hard for dangerous people to get weapons and we can do that by having background checks even in the other groups that generally our considered gun ride groups agree that and the people that are mainly dangerous for themselves should not be getting weapons that's would be the background check system. We also look at that in the fact people some guns are not for the civilian use, 50 calibers sniper rifle are deserves the thing that can shoot helicopter, can do the assassination attempt for a mile away that not something should be the civilian should be getting automatically . But right now mistemper we are very restrictions in gun and as a result we have one of highest levels of violence in the whole world.
