Solutions
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Short Cuts - What Can Be Done? - Conclusion

What can be done?:

In America to buy guns at most stores you will need to have a background check done and some states now ban gun ownership to people convicted of misdemeanours involving violence, alcohol, or drugs (Sherman, 2001, p14). However this is ironic when we consider that in 1992, two thirds of felony weapons offenders had no prior convictions (Greenfeld and Zawitz, cited in Sherman, 2001, p14). In England handguns are banned and yet gun crime seems to be rising. So is there anything that can be done to try and reduce gun crime in either the USA or the UK?



Geoffrey Canada had some achievable proposals which could be addressed in both countries: (1995, p160)
1. Reduce the demand for drugs
2. Reduce domestic violence, child abuse and neglect
3. Reduce the amount of violent T.V and movies
4. Reduce and regulate the possession of handguns.

Sherman (2001) suggests a few tried methods of reducing gun violence:
1. More police working on seizing illegal guns and on enforcing the gun laws.
2. More thourgh criminal history background checks.
3. Gun buyback programs (guns are bought from anyone willing to turn them in) these have been tried in both England and America with only limited success.
4. Gun Bans (England has one, America doesn’t).
5. Personnel Weapons that only work for one owner
6. More serial numbers on guns so they can be traced
7. Firearms finger printing – this way police could trace guns back to their owners
8. External or internal trigger locks (this would prevent children having accidents.
Sherman (2001, p15) says the key point is to reduce gun availability (Sherman, 2001, p15).

Conclusion

There are a number of things that have been tried and tested to reduce gun violence but with only limited success. The UK shows even gun bans don’t stop gun violence, this just creates an illegal market. It seems the only thing that really could work has not been tried (and probably will not be tried) which is ammunition control. Chris Tucker (comedian) (cited in Moore, 2002) suggests that we get rid of the all the bullets or make them cost $5,000 then people will really have to think about it before they shoot someone. Kleck 1991 also concedes that an end to ammunition would cause an end to gun violence (Cited in Sherman, 2001, 23).