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• The Decline of American Federalism

Gun Violence in the States

Note one very important caveat before reading further. The terms homicide and murder are often used interchangeably in discussions on gun control. These two terms, however, are not exactly the same. Homicide simply means one individual killing another individual(s); this could be in self-defense. Conversely, murder means that an individual has killed another individual with premeditated intent. Statistics on the causes of homicide are not always cut and dry, so what is sometimes called a murder may actually be a self-defensive homicide.

There were roughly 11,501 people murdered in the United States in 2011 (Jacobson 2013). Of these 11,501 individuals, 8,583 people were killed with firearms (Jacobson 2013). In other words, roughly seventy-five percent of all murders were committed with a firearm in the United States in 2011. 985 people were murdered in the state of Florida in 2011. Of these 985 individuals, 691 were killed with a firearm (Florida Department of Law Enforcement 2012). Hence firearms were used in more than seventy-percent of all homicides in Florida in 2011; an almost equivalent to the national percentage. It’s obvious that guns are contributing to an increase in our overall homicide count, but it is not obvious that gun control is the solution to the problem, because this assumption is far too simplistic and ignores many of the complexities involved in the issue.

Few issues have created such vitriolic and ferocious contentions as the issue of gun violence in the United States. In the aftermath of two major shooting massacres in 2012, the Newtown Connecticut Elementary School shooting and the Colorado Cinema Massacre, President Barrack Obama, U.S. Senate leaders, and various state governments have brought forth an abundance of proposals in hopes of preventing such tragedies from ever occurring again. However, it seems that after every major shooting massacre there is an immediate reaction by legislators at all levels of government– possibly to express to their constituents and victims of mass shootings that they recognize the issue and are trying to do something about it –to propose new laws to rectify the problem. Fortunately, despite horrific school shootings, schools still remain one of the safest places for our children (Hemenway 2002; Simon 2013).

A lack of gun control, mental health issues, parental negligence, and various other “axioms” are purported to be the root causes of gun violence by pundits, legislators, and activists, from various political ideologies. Unfortunately, emotional reactions and their consequential ill thought proposals, often lead to stalemates, inaction of government, and the inevitable reoccurrence of another massacre, at which point the cycle repeats itself again. As David Hemenway explained in a 2002 academic journal, “In the wake of any gun tragedy, the response of one extreme faction in the American gun debate is to ban all guns; the response of the other extreme is to arm all citizens” (Hemenway 2002, 268). It is my goal with this paper to take a step back from the emotional responses to gun violence, dispel various posited myths about gun violence, and to objectively identify some of the complications of dealing with the issue. In the end, and to par with American federalism, individual states, such as Florida, should handle the issue of gun violence within their own borders and decide for themselves what is the best possible way to protect their citizens. I will propose a few possible solutions and how Florida, as a case study example, may enact them.
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