Executive summary best practices and structure
According to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and published in a report titled Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008, “the sharp increase in homicides from the mid-1980s through the early 1990 … is attributable to gun violence by teens and young adults” (Cooper & Smith, 2011). This trend suggests that the pervasiveness of firearms in American today has inordinately affected young people, with the current generation having become desensitized to the realities of gun-related violence. The same report revealed that “in 2008, three-quarters (77.2%) of multiple victim homicides involved guns while two-thirds (65.7%) of single victim homicides involved guns” (Cooper & Smith, 2011), facts which confirm the role of guns in school shootings and other mass casualty events. Data compiled by the National Crime Victimization Survey observed that “467,321 persons were victims of a crime committed with a firearm in 2011,” while in the same year data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) showed that “that firearms were used in 68 percent of murders, 41 percent of robbery offenses and 21 percent of aggravated assaults nationwide” (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011). An investigative inquiry reported to the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Institute of Justice concluded that “with an estimated 258 million guns in private hands and millions more produced each year, there are many sources and means through which offenders can obtain firearms despite legal restrictions on gun purchasing and ownership by convicted felons, juveniles, and other high-risk groups” (Koper, 2007).