Gun Control and The Constitution

              Over-regulation could essentially create the same types of black markets that the current prohibition on drugs has, an approximated 40 billion dollars of unregulated sales. As the article stated, private gun sales and bartering, as well as licensed dealer corruption is incredibly hard to track and enforce. If gun regulation eventually reaches the extreme of becoming too difficult to understand the process would probably be circumvented similarly to the failed policy of alcohol prohibition from 1920 to 1933.

              It has also been statistically shown that in areas which seemingly “over-regulate” handguns, the crime rate tends to skyrocket. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, states which have heavily regulated handguns (California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington D.C.) have had murder rates 8% higher than the rest of the country.  Other cities have shown the same trends of upwards of gun crime. One noted example is from the Chicago Homicide Dataset, where the city of Chicago from the time it enforced a D.C. styled handgun ban in 1983 it had shown a double in the murder rate over the next decade.

              Since guns remain legal within the United States, another issue forms− how does the police effectively deter crime? There are many different strategies in order to deter gun crime, but there seems there is no panacea for the problem of crime. This leaves a culmination of preventative measures to be the best course of action to deter gun-related crime. The principle of loose gun regulation has been shown to effectively provide lower crime rates in areas compared to where handguns are strictly regulated.  Other measures such as increasing penalties for illegally possessing firearms have proven rather successful when tried. One example of its reported success is Project Exile, a project originally led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office which cut the firearm murder rate by nearly 40% in Richmond, Virginia. Alternate methods such as mandatory gun education for owners and harsher penalties for criminal ignorance of standard regulation procedures of firearms would also help reduce crime.

              Despite what is a highly debated issue, there are multiple grounds on which people who fervently support and vehemently deny gun regulation can compromise on. If our society can find this balance we should be able to reduce crime and also maintain the liberties that the founding fathers originally passed under the Bill of Rights in 1791. After all, that is the one thing that has made our society possible─ compromise.