Firearms in the US

Because of our discussion in class about the events in Ferguson, I decided to do my 6th blog post about firearms. I found a lot of statistics about firearms in the US and interesting facts about the topic. In the United States, 270 million to 310 million civilians own firearms. The defense of the US has approximately 2.7 millions firearms. There are various statistics that show what all these guns are used for. One statistic says that 200,000 times a year women use a gun to defend against sexual abuse.
Through out the years, professionals have been keeping track of how many deaths are caused by firearms. In 1998, 9,257 people were killed due to gun homicides and in 2012, 8,896 people were killed. In 1995, 657 people were killed as a result of justifiable gun homicides and in 2010, 617 people were. In 1999, 16,599 people were killed because of gun suicides and in 2011, 19,766 people were killed.
Even though the right to own a gun is guaranteed by the US Constitution, it can be limited by the government. According to the federal law an individual may purchase a long gun (rifle or shotgun) at age 18 and a handgun at age 21, as long as the purchaser is not any of the following:

• Anyone currently under indictment for a crime punishable by more than a year in prison
• Anyone who has been previously convicted of such a crime
• A fugitive
• User of any controlled substance
• Anyone who has been committed to a mental institution or deemed mentally defective
• An illegal alien
• Anyone who has been dishonorably discharged from the military
• Anyone who has renounced his or her U.S. citizenship
• Anyone who currently has a restraining order against him or her from an intimate partner or child of said partner
• Anyone who has been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor

There is a penalty of 10 years in prison for unlawful possession of firearms. After all, 88.8 per 100 residents of the United States owns a firearm. As you can see many people in the country own guns. Now even though it is scary to think how many firearms there are in people's houses, we can only hope that the restrictions the government puts on the people buying the guns helps prevent harmful situations. It's also scary to think that some people use their guns on themselves. Guns bring a lot of danger in the world, but it's hard to ban the use of gun because some citizens actually use guns for self defense and for the right reasons.