LUKE'S

GUN  CONTROL  WEBSITE

Until 1969, virtually every public high school in New York City had a shooting club and the federal government even gave students rifles and paid for their ammunition. Students would carry guns to school on subways, entrust them to an adult while classes were in session, they retrieve them after school for target practice. Since the 1960s, however, the growth of gun controls has been dramatic. Gun-control laws have noticeably reduced gun ownership in some states, experts report, with the result that for each 1 percent reduction in gun ownership there has been a 3 percent increase in violent crime.

Guns in Schools

Children in the United States are at far greater risk of homicide death than their counterparts in other countries. According to a 1997 survey by the Centers for Disease Control, the rate of firearm deaths among American children aged 14 and under is nearly 12 times higher than among children in the other 25 ndustrialized countries combined.Every day in America, 14 children aged 19 and under are killed in gun homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings. For every child killed by a gun, four more are wounded. Each year, nearly 1,500 children are rushed to hospital emergency rooms with accidental gun injuries. In 1994, nearly 200 children died from such wounds In 1994, approximately 70 percent of the murder victims aged 15 to 17 years old were killed with a handgun.

 The U.S. Compared to Other Nations

 The United States has the highest rates of childhood homicide, suicide, and firearms-related death among all of the industrialized countries. The overall firearms-related death rate among U.S. children aged 15 years or less is nearly 12 times higher than among children in the other 25 countries combined.

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DOES GUN CONTROL REDUCE CRIME ?

Russia, Estonia, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Canada and Hungary all have high rates of homicide and/or suicide despite restrictive gun control laws, and low rates of suicide are found in relatively well-armed jurisdictions like Israel and New Zealand

Gun control laws are uniform throughout the United

Kingdom, but murder rates are not -- in 1989 the

murder rate per 100,000 people was 0.6 in England

and Wales, 3.3 in Scotland and 7 in Northern

Ireland.

When Canadian provinces and adjoining U.S. states are compared, threefold-to-tenfold differences in the prevalence of handguns have not resulted in consistently different rates of criminal homicide.

Perhaps the most powerful example that gun control

does not equal crime control is the United States. Prior

to the enactment of federal gun controls in 1968, guns

could be bought virtually anywhere by any adult, but

the national murder rate then was half what it is now.

In fact, evidence suggests that guns are an effective crime deterrent in the hands of legal owners. A study published by the University of Chicago found that crime rates are lower when civilians are allowed to carry concealed weapons. Murder rates in the District of Columbia and

Chicago actually went up after each jurisdiction passed restrictive gun control laws.

Burglaries of occupied dwellings in the gun-free

U.K. are much more frequent than in the United

States.

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