Guns legislation and information

Gun control has become a growingly controversial topic within national politics. Both gun control and gun rights advocacies have utilized and applied different rhetoric in explaining their platform. Gun control legislation has evolved during the past two decades, in some states restrictions have increased while in others restrictions have been decreased. In either case, gun legislation has been challenged by special interest groups in an attempt to justify their various positions. The following analysis will go into detail and analyze the specific strengths and weaknesses of gun policy and their impact upon society. After a close scrutiny on the impacts of guns on society in both their use and actual impact upon society, it is evident that information on the dangers of gun abuse are over exaggerated within the media to manipulate gun legislation in favor or against specific policies.

Information presented through special advocacy groups are frequently exaggerated in their claims. One of the keys to influencing legislation within gun control is to use information that dramatizes their cause. Both sides of the gun advocacy sides use misinformation in order to direct public sentiment. For instance, one of the chief arguments of gun control advocates is that gun violence thousands of people every year. However, in actuality many of those deaths results from suicides rather than homicides. The Brady Campaign states as fact that almost 30,000 people are killed from gun related incidents. However, almost 20% of those individuals die as a result of suicide. Gary Mauser of Simon Fraser University argues that gun control has very little to do with unavoidable deaths such as suicide. He uses international data to show that gun control will have little to know actual impact upon death rates as related to suicide. In effect, gun control groups use a collection of data that oftentimes are misleading. As a result, they dramatize the actual impact of their legislative actions. This problem is not limited to gun control groups; gun right organizations also use dramatization and misinformation to spread their campaign. One of the principle arguments of this group is that gun rights has been a foundation of American democracy, with its use during the colonial and pre-Civil War era was crucial for the defense and expansion of this country. However, as historian Randolph Roth notes, gun ownership within the United States was very limited during the pre-Civil War era. Less than one in five men had access to a gun during this period, the majority of them local militia men. In reality, guns have been a rather minor part of the American social and cultural tradition until the modern era. The purported "historical" and "cultural" value of gun ownership and gun rights are both highly exaggerated. It is evident that both sides of the conflict use hyperbole and dramatization as one of their strategies for influencing public opinion.

Another important tactic of misinformation for gun control advocacies is to establish a link between crime and gun ownership. Through the use of both grassroots and national media outlets, gun control groups have imprinted the understanding that gun ownership has influenced crime and high crime rates. The Brady campaign states that compared to other nations with stringent gun control policies the United States has a much higher rate of crime and specifically murder. The problem with this statement however, is that these statistics are manipulated through both population and crime confusion. The United States has a much larger population, and thus their overall crime rates would be substantial. When compared at per capita gun related violence, the results are much more comparable with other nations. In fact, John J. Donohue, who has conducted extended research within this arena, argues that guns have an almost negligible impact upon crime rates within the United States. The majority of crimes that involve guns are violence related crimes, which statistically compared with other nations are almost identical. The presence of guns within the United States only means that other weapons are less likely to be used; Great Britain for instance has many more cases of secondary weapons violence than the United States. Crime rates do not drop with restrictions on gun control because crimes have been shown to be intent driven rather than means driven. Which simply means that those who are interested in committing crimes will usually do so given any access or restrictions standards? It is evident from this analysis that guns have little impact upon crime rates. However, gun control advocacies use misinformation to present a dangerous position to the public.

Another important factor in media manipulation is the use of specific misinformation to influence public opinion to support severity within gun legislation. Popular gun control advocacies use strong statistics to influence the public into perceiving that gun control is not only needed, but that gun violence is an escalating crime that needs to provide greater security mandates. Oftentimes they use deceiving statistics as a means to manipulate public opinion on the prevalence of firearms. For instance, the Brady campaign, a gun control advocacy argues that 192 million American owned a firearm. This statistic would suggest that the majority of Americans, since the total population of the United States is less than 400 million have owned a gun. However, as Sarah Beale notes in her analysis of Media influences no criminal justice, in actuality gun ownership within the United States is below the 30% marker. These statistics while valid are presented in a misleading fashion since it accounts for gun ownership within the past five years. At the same time, position of firearms for recreational purposes are also counted within ownership despite a different validation and checking procedure for hunting related weaponry. Beale argues that gun control groups skew public perception by increasing the dramatization of the scope of problems. Gun related deaths is in actuality one of the less severe criminal problems within the United States, much less prevalent than drug related crimes. However, it is prosecuted much more severely than possession with the intent to sell of certain narcotics. The implication of this analysis is simple. Gun control advocacies utilize hyperbole and misleading media campaigns to influence public opinion on the dangers of gun related crimes and deaths. Dramatization has an adverse impact upon legislation by increasing the number of legislations related to gun control and increase of gun scrutiny within state and national legislation.