Gun violence is one of the many fluttering buzzwords of our stylish media. The use of the word expands across political lines and public dialogue. More recently has been the subordinate used out of its inner context, ”the Violence.” Indeed- What makes it more striking is the word; Gun, as violence by and of itself is a manifestation, though its implication exceptionally pummels curiosity of the modern society. The uproar has always threatened the social primates and gains in fierceness and scope by their level of intellectual development. In consequence human existence occupies the top position on the violence scale. Interesting enough, That does not necessarily mean the ratio of the concentration of a given society would Eventually predispose citizens to more aggression.
Violence is committed using physical force to harm, injure, abuse, damage, or destroy another existence. Although there are numerous definitions as to what real violence entails- is a matter of distinct controversy. The World Health Organization ( WHO) defines violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or true, against oneself, another person, or a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of stemming in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation. The WHO distributes violence into three broad categories of self-directed, interpersonal, collective force. It intends to differentiate self-inflicted violence from, violence brought upon an individual by another person or small group of people, as well as abuse inflicted by larger groups such as states, organized political factions, militia, and terrorist organizations. Each sector is further subdivided to reproduce more distinct types of violence into physical, sexual, psychological-emotional. It even also can be categorized into instrumental (reactive) and hostile.
While violent commotion is part of human genetic propensity, nevertheless, it is primarily rectified by the upswing of our civilizations and the denominations.
Gun-related violence is violence, with the only discrepancy that is perpetrated with the use of a tool; gun or firearm. The criminality of the Gun-related assault banks on the social, political, ethical, and legal stature of the given community. If determined as criminal violence is called homicide assault with a deadly weapon, or suicide, attempted suicide, depending on the jurisdiction. Non-criminal forms of abuse may be accidental, unintentional injury, and death, except in cases of criminal negligence. Other ways of gun violence statistics are military or paramilitary activities.
Triggers of violence
Precipitations of violent actions are many, but all share the common notion of a discrepancy between motive and impulse control. According to a study, researchers cross-referenced 30 years of data from nationwide Swedish registries to gauge the probability of perpetrating a vicious crime within a week of particular circumstances in 35,000 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, 30,000 with bipolar disorder, and 2,763,000 unaffected controls. The triggers were found to be exposed to violence, parental bereavement, self-harm, traumatic brain injury, accidental injury, or substance intoxication. The incidence was found highest in the schizophrenia group, the bipolar-disorder second and final the control group. In analyses accounting for genetic and environmental factors such as socioeconomic status, moving often, and being single, all demonstrated a high probability of a brutal crime within a week after a stimulus, compared to other eternities. Ethologists of the 29th-century- saw aggression and violence as a reaction to internal body riggings, or intuitions. The latest theory was supported by Freudian psychoanalysts, who found an assault being derivative of an inborn tendency to destroy. Socialization aspects are also realized as potential contributors. Latter not only serve as a trigger for biological development, but it also furnishes a context for acquiring cognitive behaviors. Whatever; the inclination for pandemonium is said to be written on an individual’s genetic profile, it perpetually molded through relationships with others. Situational facets, including intrinsic and socialization ordeals, shape an individual’s predisposition to the given turmoil. It is also postulated that situational motivations can subjugate to violence and heightened gravity of attitude. Nearly any aversive circumstances can incite violence. Even nonviolent individuals can swivel into vicious behavior when they fall into the lure of violent throng. Group violence appears to bring in people to feel personally less accountable for their demeanor, behaving in manners they would never do solitary. Children regularly exposed to violent environments frequently experience several of the same indications and permanent impacts as kids who are scapegoats of chaos, encompassing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Children deprived of a peaceful childhood can suffer emotional and physical aftermath years to come, even scarred for life.
Workplace Violence is another modern-day issue, as it can accompany Criminal Intent while perpetrator holds no relationship with the targeted establishment. The accompanying primary motive can only be theft. Workplace violence may involve Customer/Client, Worker-to-Worker, Domestic Violence, and Ideological. It is commonly the result of stressful circumstances like Staff shortages, increased patient morbidities (if healthcare), exposure to violent individuals, and the absence of strong workplace violence prevention policies.
Statistics of violence and gun violence
On the global scale, violence is known to result in the deaths of an estimated 1.28 million people in 2013, depending up from 1.13 million in 1990. Of the deaths in 2013, roughly 842,000 were associated with suicide, 405,000 interpersonal violence, and 31,000 collective violence or war and legal intervention. In Africa, out of every 100,000 people, annually approximate 60.9 people die from violence.
According to GunPolicy.org, there are 875 million civilian controlled guns worldwide in circulation, making seventy-five percent of the total number of firearms. Half of these guns (48 percent) are in the United States, which has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world. Gun-related Incursion resulted in 180,000 deaths in 2013, up from 128,000 deaths in 1990. There were yet 47,000 unintentional firearm-related deaths in 2013.
Degrees of gun-related violence vary vastly among geographical territories, countries, and even provincially. The Rates of vicious casualties using a firearm is reported to span from as low as 0.03 and 0.04 per 100,000 populations in Singapore and Japan to 59 and 67 per 100,000 in Honduras and Venezuela. Statistical evidence indicates that the highest percentages of brutal deaths by gun in the world occur in low-income South and Central American countries such as Honduras, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Jamaica. The United States, on the other hand, has the 11th outstanding ratio of gun violence on the planet. It is by far the largest of any significant or highly developed nation, having a gun homicide rate which is 25 time its peers, an unintentional gun death rate of 6 times higher, a firearm suicide rate is eight times higher, and an overall firearm death rate which is ten times more than the average respective rates of other top earnings countries. It is vital to recognize how, why, who, by whom, and against whom the violence is Being committed if we expect to understand the problem and accordingly find a solution. To achieve that, we must also recognize the psychology of violence.
Psychology of violence and gun violence
From Violence at the political march, terrorism, and startling workplace shootings startle us, where they shouldn’t. Conventional approaches to comprehending battery are virtually outdated. We need to understand violence at the level of brain function, as like all human behavior, it is controlled by the brain. From the day to day road rage, to domestic violence, to a suicide bombing, the biology of hostility and aggression is the root spur of violent behavior. As for the causes of violence; the data show that the murderer is more likely to be someone you know as it is to be a stranger. Deadly suicide is second to accidental injury as the most commonly we see vomited by the hands of young generations. The most critical factor in violence is not pathology, psychology, or politics; instead, it is biology. Feeling left out is cause of violence. Researchers have found shocking evidence that the pain of being prohibited is not so different from the pain of physical suffering.
Social rejection
Rejection presents moral implications for an individual’s psychological health and institution. Social renunciation can have a delirious impact on emotion, cognition, and even physical wellbeing. Ostracized people can turn aggressive. In 2003 Leary and colleagues analyzed 15 cases of school shooters and found all but two suffered from social rejection.
Free speech
Free speech is one controversial topic, as selected types of speech are not automatically protected by the United States 1st Amendment Constitution. The relevant data, history, and procedure indicate that in democracies, the robust preservation of free speech is extra plausible to facilitate social consensus than violent conflict.
Feeling underrepresented
Feeling underrepresented has also shown to contribute to violence. Countries that utilize more restricted electoral systems experience a significant increase in probabilities of domestic terrorism than countries that employ more comprehensive electoral systems. It represents the correlation between the apparent underrepresentation of minority factions in Western European democracies and the related degrees of household terrorism suffered by these nations.
Entitlement and violence
Egomaniacal Me! Me! Me! Attitude Linked to narcissism is the sense of entitlement that can handily be blundered as normal behavior, and even healthy. After all, don’t our parents and societies always tell us that “we’re unique,” “we’re special,” and “we’re number one”? But in reality, having a sense of entitlement is a destructive pattern of self-appreciation because of its preponderance to harm others, indirectly threatening the person committing in continuation. Meaning, a perception of entitlement is ascertained and ratified by the assumption that the perpetrator is the hub of the macrocosm. If the universe doesn’t meet their needs and ambitions, all hell will break loose.
Establishing consolidation as a precipitant of violence
One of the most historical examples of how consolidation can organize collective force is the pre-second world war, the German Nazi Party of borrowing the climate of terror to their objective through the inducement of anti-communism when Göring asserted that the communists had schemed a nationwide coup to oust the Weimar Republic. Such a perpetuated by hysteria facilitated the populace against the Marxist, one of the Nazi’s leading foes. Upon the start of violence days after the uprising, Hindenburg signed the Emergency Decree for the Protection of the German People. Such consolidative practices have not been unique in the history of humankind, as in one way or another, always existed as gangs, rebels, mafia, guerrilla, militia, etc. Yet, all share common traits of hate, anger, whether rational or unreasonable, catalyzed by co-building individual popular attitudes. Some examples of catalysts we can note of are gamification of patriotic behavior, populous rhetoric, and profile.
Populism and violence
Populism raises embarrassing suspicions about contemporary idealized democracy. It has frequently exemplified the wicked expression of the universal civilization. Unintentional, yet it is a reflector through which democracy may ponder itself. For example, the Genocide in Kenya’s 2008 was an offshoot of the normalization of Populism, ethno-nationalism during the post-election crisis. Or the rise of the Filipino strongman populism movement that led to local violence in the global context. Even further the populist Prime Minister recently legitimized India’s militant groups and targeted attacks against religious minorities.
Government role and violence
It is a common belief that governments and politicians have been elected to protect their citizens. At a glance, it may seem that way, too, but unfortunately, politics has its murky angle. Political violence is unrest committed by population or administrations to accomplish politically driven objectives. A state often wields political violence against other nations as the war against non-state players, notably police brutality, counter-insurgency, and genocide, or it can characterize politically-motivated unrest by non-state thespians against the commonwealth rebellion, hence riot. Political chaos can also be directed against other non-state activists. Non-action on behalf of a regime is, in fact, considered an aspect of political violence, by declining to ameliorate famine or denying aid to politically identifiable factions within their turf. If an imbalance of power between government and public exist, political violence frequently seizes to become asynchronous clash where neither account can directly assault the other, instead the weaker opponent banks on schemes such as terrorism and guerrilla war, often comprising raids on civilian and non-combatant victims that are merely observed as an agent for the hostile coalition especially with the expanding countenance of populism. Such minorities independently conclude that their country’s policies will never concede to their needs and thus speculating that violence is not only justified but also essential to conform to their political ideals. Furthermore, numerous administrations around the world think they need to use violence in the injunction to deter their masses into submission. At other times, governments use leverage to uphold their territory from foreign incursion or other threats of force and to compel other governments or overthrow the colony.
Right to bear arms and violence
There are not too many states in the world that constitutionally uphold the right to carry arms for its constituents. In the United States, the Constitution protects the individual right to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment (Amendment II) was approved as part of the Bill of Rights. In 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court affirmed for the first time that the right belongs to individuals, for self-defense in the home, while emphasizing that the right was not unconditional, hence does not stave off the presence of specific long-standing embargoes such as those forbidding the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill or restrictions on the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. State and local governments are limited to similar breadth as the federal government from violating this liberty. The Second Amendment was based somewhat on its peer statute; English common law while eventually was influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689 by Sir William Blackstone who described gun right as an auxiliary right, supporting the natural privileges of self-defense and resistance to coercion, and the civic duty to conduct in concert with defense of the state diversity.
Violent events such as the Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and Las Vegas are some of the phrases of America’s violence that have become common justifications for the citizens to believe violence of this magnitude is beyond straightforward sporadic, hence calling for a fundamental solution. Between the spectrum of liberal gun ownership and complete outlaw, there are many solutions majority politically and economically motivated. Among some of the lesser politically driven solutions, one can find those like; buying a firearm should be like buying a car; Pass gun laws that certainly curtail gun violence; Physicians can assist curb gun violence; Investment in smart gun technology is essential; Eliminate sponsoring constraints on gun violence research; End legal protection for gun industry.
Many studies have been in support of some form of gun restraint and a cluster of statutes or strategies that govern the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians. Jurisdictions that oversee access to firearms generally place restrictions on the permit to merely particular classes of guns. They also prohibit the group of individuals who will be awarded permission to a weapon. In some nations, including the United States, firearm supervision may be regulated at either the federal level or local state status. But- Is Across the board Prohibition of guns going to take arms off the streets or even reduce crime? Or will it merely shift the varieties in the criminality of actions from one domain and minority group to another? Or save the Populous and abandon the minority?
I don’t believe we can discredit the fact that taking the knife out of the toddler’s the hand will keep the child from harm’s way, or getting the firearm off the hands of a person with a borderline personality disorder will help keep society safe but does it mean solutions to reduce violence must be at the expense of throwing the sociopolitical stance between government and republic off balance is the right way to go?
There is overwhelming evidence that Firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens enhance civil protection. Mass embargoes of guns invite a reduplication of the tragedy of alcohol prohibition, which in the 1920s bred enormous boosts in state power and vast violations of the Bill of Rights, resulting in another domestic war against the millions of Americans who are determined to possess a very crucial property. Firearms in the evil hands, on the other hand, menace everyone. Responsible firearms policies focus on hindering hazardous people and do not attempt to violate the constitutional privileges of respectable individuals. Background checks on firearms sales can be improved by including more records on persons who have mental disorders that they are a real menace to themselves or others. Broadening nationwide firearm restraint to private intrastate sales between individuals and firearms loans among friends and family is constitutionally controversial, and potentially inflicts limitations for no practical benefit. Such a system is ineffective without the registration of all guns. Gun owners have justifiably resisted gun enrollment because it has promoted gun appropriation in the United States and other nations. It is continuously argued that it is false to assert that popular firearms labeled as being incursion weapons, and it is therefore inaccurate to allege that popular magazines are high capacity. Banning conventional guns and their magazines deprive honest scapegoats of the arms that may be best suited for their protection. It is also stipulated that most productive routes to curbing mass shootings are expanding access to mental care and eliminating obstacles to rightful self-defense and defense of others. The opposition defends their position by exemplifying the British firearm legislation of 1987, claiming that the prohibition reduced mass murders. But, Britain is, in some ways safer, and more ways more dangerous than the United States. The UK homicide rate tends to fluctuate between one and two per 100,000 populations in the U.S. As of 2011 homicide rate is 4.7.
The real problem
Irrespective of the means, violence is wrongful, but unfortunately, parallels the path of humanity. Many times it is convenient to take short cuts towards quick fixes like prohibition; nonetheless, almost always they represent the kind of radical measures that makes the long term consequences of such a decision even more destructive, hence costly!, Such as inducing a vicious circle of prohibition, infringing on personal liberty, commuting public dependency on a set of the inflexible ordinance, promoting black market, and diversifying the already prerequisite for more criminal deeds.
Unfortunately, the current awful acts of aggression against the public are being reflected on Gun ownership and mental disorder, where the problem, in reality, is beyond the words of magniloquence. It is merely the outgrowth of the centuries-old administrative concept of trying to unite citizens behind its ambitions with one problem threatening the government in the United States; that is its ability to unite everyone under the populist notion of national patriotism (federalism). It is a concept that has utterly failed to unify people because the US population is unduly diverse and too vast with myriads of minorities within the structure. Since the concept of the white plurality is essentially becoming obsolete, the frustration of receiving secondary attention is serving as a facet for violence, particularly in the mug of government and media brainwashing of society in virtue of patriotic slogans.
Solution
Solution for any problem, entailing insult and gun violence, always logically rests within the context of the circumstance. For instance, violence among the Black community is never the same as the crime committed by a white supremacist. The former does not typically commit mass shootings as with the white equivalent. Instead, a disturbed ethnic person’s logic is more apt to form in the context of Gang or insurgency with the intention to score individual distinction or security interest. The solution to gun violence is within the roots of the problem, as paring the branches of the dying tree will fail to help unravel the dilemma. Identifying, treating, and preventing triggers are consequential to restoring the public sanctuary. Eliminating one lethal Weapon will be eventually replaced by another while cultivating an illicit black market for the forbidden commodity. Responsible laws are just as vital as the accountable use of firearms. Moderate but rigorous accountability, along with transparency, is necessary to conform to that voyage. Respecting Individual rights and recognizing their stance irrespective of their dogma and profile is also essential to reduce frustration and violence.
Recognition of similarities and differences within grassroots; reading up to them; Listen no matter how unbearable it is is fundamental to breaking the Vicious circle of hate, violence, crime, and prohibition. The truth will invariably prevail no matter how awful composers, as heeding to their opinion will help prevent violence and aid citizens in concoct the right choice.
