Gun Control: Overview

Introduction

Gun control, or government regulation of firearms, has long been one of the most divisive social issues in the United States. Both federal and state laws exist to regulate firearm ownership and transfer. However, these laws have often drawn controversy, both from those who feel they go too far and from those who feel they do not go far enough. The issue is rooted in conflicting interpretations of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which states a "right of the people to keep and bear arms." It emerged as a major topic of public debate in the late twentieth century, as gun violence increased and new regulatory efforts appeared. The rising frequency of mass shootings in the early twenty-first century drew further attention to the issue of gun control, which also became increasingly politicized amid heightening partisan polarization.

Strong opinions exist on both sides of the debate. Those who favor stronger gun control generally argue that such measures would protect the public by preventing dangerous individuals from accessing firearms. They often champion provisions such as closing the "gun show loophole" that allows unlicensed individuals to sell firearms at gun shows without requiring background checks; banning the sale of semiautomatic firearms and related ammunition; and banning the sale of firearms to people on the suspected terrorist watch lists. Those who oppose additional regulation, meanwhile, often claim that such restrictions do little to actually improve public safety and also violate law-abiding citizens' rights.

Understanding the Discussion

ATF: Abbreviation for the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the government branch that regulates the possession and transfer of firearms.

Background check: A report containing an individual's public legal history, including criminal, financial, and mental health records.

Fully automatic firearm: A firearm that fires repeatedly while the trigger is pressed.

Handgun: A firearm designed to be held and fired with one hand, such as a revolver or pistol.

Red-flag law: Legislation allowing state authorities to temporarily confiscate firearms from a person legally determined to be a threat to themselves or others.

Semiautomatic firearm: A firearm that can fire repeatedly but requires releasing and then pressing the trigger for each shot.

History

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines a "mass shooting" as a shooting incident in which four or more people are wounded or killed. Using this definition, a 2016 study published in the journal Violence and Victims reported that 292 mass shooting incidents took place worldwide between 1966 and 2012; nearly one-third of these were in the United States. Many other studies have similarly found that the rate of gun violence in the US has historically far outstripped that of other developed nations.

These statistics suggest that the United States has a gun violence problem. However, there has long been significant debate over whether more gun control laws would help reduce incidents of gun violence in the United States, and whether such laws are even allowed under the US Constitution. The Second Amendment ratified in 1791 states that "a well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The ambiguous language of that sentence (further exacerbated by the omission of one or both commas in some versions officially ratified by individual states) has led to various interpretations and extrapolations. As firearms became easier to purchase and easier to use over the centuries, tension grew between those who believe that the "right to bear arms" should prohibit any government regulation of firearm ownership and those who believe that regulation is necessary to protect public safety.

At times, both the federal government and state governments have enacted gun control laws in response to specific tragic events or perceived public safety threats. One of the first major federal gun control laws, the National Firearms Act (NFA), was enacted in 1934 largely in response to mob-related gun violence. The NFA heavily regulated machine guns, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, silencers and suppressors, and concealable weapons, primarily through taxation. It also prohibited transporting these types of weapons across state lines without proper registration and reporting.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 required a Federal Firearms License (FFL) for anyone engaged in the business of selling firearms, and outlined several categories of individuals to whom transfer of firearms would be a felony. These categories included convicted felons, anyone who had been committed to a mental institution, and drug abusers. To enforce this provision, FFL holders were required to have prospective firearm purchasers fill out a form avowing that they did not belong to any of these categories. However, sellers were not required to verify the buyer's answers.

The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) became the federal agency responsible for enforcing firearm regulations. In the early 1980s, the ATF was accused of unfairly targeting certain FFL license holders for repeat inspections and prosecution. A 1982 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee report concluded that up to 75 percent of the prosecutions undertaken by the ATF may have been improper under the Second Amendment, and recommended reforms to the original GCA. This led to the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA), which removed some interstate firearm transfer restrictions and limited compliance inspections to once a year in the absence of prior record-keeping violations. FOPA also protected individuals from prosecution while traveling between states with differing laws, provided that the individual properly and securely stored the firearm. FOPA remained the primary source of federal firearm regulations over the subsequent decades.

After FOPA, the federal government and some state governments passed additional regulations addressing specific transfer and ownership situations. For example, the federal Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, passed with strong bipartisan support, banned most guns that could not be spotted by metal detectors. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 imposed a new requirement that FFL holders perform a background check on any prospective firearm purchaser before completing the transaction. If the individual failed to pass the background check, the transaction could not legally be completed. However, sales of firearms between a private seller and a buyer living in the same state were exempt from the federal background check requirement; this became known as the "gun show loophole."

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 banned assault weapons (including semiautomatic firearms designed to look like fully automatic firearms). However, the so-called Federal Assault Weapons Ban was subject to a sunset provision and expired in September 2004. While gun control activists called for a renewed assault weapons ban, such a measure was blocked by gun rights advocates. Another narrower regulation, the 1996 Gun Ban for Individuals Convicted of a Misdemeanor Crime of Domestic Violence, banned individuals convicted of, or under a restraining order for, misdemeanor domestic violence offenses from owning firearms.

Several later attempts at federal gun control legislation were ultimately unsuccessful. For example, in 2013 congressional leaders proposed bills to tighten firearm ownership and transfer regulations, including broader requirements for background checks, as well as tighter regulations on sales of firearms and ammunition. Several of these bills, including the Sandy Hook Elementary School Violence Reduction Act and the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act of 2013, were sent to Senate committees but were stalled or blocked by lack of political support. In general, the Democratic Party was more supportive of gun control while the Republican Party favored gun rights. As Congress tended to be closely divided along partisan lines, a handful of moderate lawmakers across both parties often had outsize influence on the fate of firearms-related legislation.

Although federal and state governments have proposed and enacted gun control laws fairly regularly, such legislation is subject to challenge under the Second Amendment. Typically, the US Supreme Court has supported the idea that some firearm regulations are permissible, but nonetheless it often struck down specific laws for violating the Second Amendment—especially as the court tilted to the conservative side in the early twenty-first century. For example, in the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in Washington, DC; this notably represented the first time that the right to bear arms was officially ruled to apply to individuals for personal use, rather than only as part of a "well regulated militia." The Supreme Court also struck down a similar ban in the city of Chicago in the 2010 case McDonald v. Chicago, confirming that its interpretation of the Second Amendment applied to state and local governments.

Debate over gun control laws often spiked in the wake of high-profile mass shootings. The 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, which killed thirteen people, greatly raised public attention to the issue. There was a marked increase in such tragedies in the late 2000s and through the mid-2010s, a period that saw many of the deadliest shootings in US history. These included the shootings at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia (April 16, 2007, thirty-two killed); at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut (December 14, 2012, twenty-seven killed); and at . Using the FBI's definition of "mass shooting," there were 136 mass shootings in the United States during the first half of 2016 alone.

Following these tragedies, proponents of gun control legislation often suggested measures such as closing the "gun show loophole" by requiring private sellers at gun shows to conduct background checks on potential purchasers, banning the sale of semiautomatic firearms, and banning the sale of firearms to people on suspected terrorist watch lists. In response, opponents of additional legislation frequently countered that creating more laws only burdens law-abiding gun owners and does little to deter those set on committing violent crimes using a firearm. Firearm sales also tended to spike after mass shootings, which researchers linked to fears that the government might crack down on legal gun purchases.

Amid this ongoing debate, federal and state legislatures continued to propose additional gun control regulations. For example, in 2016 California governor Jerry Brown signed a comprehensive gun law package that included a requirement for background checks to purchase ammunition and bans on certain types of semiautomatic rifles. Similarly, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner signed a law imposing stiff penalties on those who purchase guns in states with less restrictive gun laws and bring them into Illinois to sell illegally. The same year, the US Supreme Court ruled on several gun control cases for the first time since McDonald. One such ruling was Voisine v. United States (2016), which upheld the 1996 Gun Ban for Individuals Convicted of a Misdemeanor Crime of Domestic Violence. The federal law was challenged by two men convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence charges; the court clarified that "recklessness" resulting in a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction was sufficient to warrant the loss of the right to own a firearm.

The gun control debate saw a fresh wave of attention following a spate of further mass shootings in the late 2010s. These included a shooting in Las Vegas in October 2017 that surpassed the Pulse nightclub incident as the deadliest mass shooting in US history, with fifty-eight people killed; a shooting at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in November 2017 that left twenty-six people dead; and a school shooting involving a semiautomatic rifle in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018 that killed seventeen. A main goal of gun control activists during this period was to ban bump stocks, as used by the Las Vegas shooter, which allow semiautomatic weapons to fire at a rate similar to automatic weapons, and potentially to ban semiautomatic rifles altogether. While even some conservatives, including President Donald Trump, supported a bump stock ban, and the ATF instituted a new rule in 2019 that federally banned bump stocks by classifying firearms using bump stocks as machine guns, the Florida state legislature rejected a motion to take up a bill on banning assault rifles days after the Parkland shooting. However, a Quinnipiac University poll published in February 2018 found that support for gun control among the general populace had reached an all-time high, with 66 percent of those polled supporting stricter gun legislation; 97 percent of those polled supported universal background checks, 67 percent supported an assault weapons ban, and 83 percent supported a mandatory waiting period for gun purchases. Among gun owners, 50 percent supported stricter gun legislation, and support for universal background checks was the same as among the general population.

Gun Control Today

The COVID-19 pandemic that began spreading around the world in early 2020 further impacted the gun control debate. The pandemic had a significant impact on gun violence in the US, with reports showing an increase in both homicides and unintentional shootings in 2020 to levels not seen in decades. For instance, the number of lives lost to gun homicides and non-suicide-related shootings rose 25 percent from 2019 to 2020. Experts correlated these increases to pandemic-related factors such as economic hardships, social isolation, and children home from school. Broader social and economic inequities that were exacerbated during the pandemic, especially among communities of color, also fueled gun violence.

Moreover, gun sales increased dramatically during the pandemic. According to estimates by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group, gun purchases increased by 64 percent between 2019 and 2020, to approximately 22 million guns. The rise in gun sales was seen even more acutely in Black communities, as sales of guns to Black Americans increased nearly 60 percent in 2020 and continued to grow over the next few years, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Many Black Americans amid a significant increase in racially motivated hate crimes.

Amid this surge in gun violence, some surveys indicated that public support for gun control waned. In November 2021 a Quinnipiac University poll found that 45 percent of Americans supported stricter gun laws—the lowest level of support for gun regulation since 2005. Gun control advocates continued to call for a nationwide mandate on background checks, but there was little progress at the federal level despite support for reform from the administration of President Joe Biden. Some state legislatures did pass gun control and community violence-related laws in 2021, including on issues such as background checks and police reform, but other states passed legislation loosening gun laws. Texas, in particular, made national headlines as Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill in 2021 that eliminated most restrictions on the ability to carry handguns in the state. This action was highlighted by critics after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022 in which nineteen children and two teachers were killed. However, high-profile mass shootings also continued even in states with strong gun legislation, for example when ten people were killed in a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in May 2022. Democratic leaders continued to call for increased gun control legislation in the wake of such incidents, including legislation to raise the minimum age of those allowed to purchase guns to twenty-one.

In June 2022, the US Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen that a New York state law that made it illegal to carry concealed weapons in public places without a license was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. Though the ruling applied specifically to the New York state law, it threatened the existence of similar laws in several other states. Bruen was widely seen as a substantial expansion of gun rights, particularly in public spaces, and therefore a major setback for gun control activists.

Supporters of stronger gun control did claim a victory of their own in June 2022, as President Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law following months of negotiations in Congress. Considered the first significant federal gun control legislation since the 1990s, the law included expanded background check requirements and incentives to states to implement red-flag laws. However, many activists continued to call for stronger federal action. President Biden was among those to reiterate support for an assault weapons ban, including after an outbreak of at least twenty-two mass shootings over the July 4 holiday weekend in 2023. By that time, several national polls indicated that overall public support for gun control had grown, although there was still much disagreement over types of reform and regulation. The issue also remained highly polarized along partisan political lines, even as deadly shootings like one in Lewiston, Maine, in October 2023 regularly brought fresh scrutiny of gun violence.

In April 2024 the Biden administration announced a finalized rule expanding background checks under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The new policy aimed to close the gun show loophole (and similar loopholes involving online sales), forcing many unlicensed firearms sellers to register with the federal government and conduct background checks on prospective buyers. However, the rule immediately faced sharp criticism from congressional Republicans and gun rights activists. At the same time, gun rights cases continued to appear before the Supreme Court with mixed results. While one June 2024 ruling went in favor of gun rights proponents when the court struck down the ATF's national ban on bump stocks, another June decision saw the court uphold the law prohibiting ownership of firearms by anyone subject to a restraining order for domestic violence.

These essays and any opinions, information, or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

Bibliography

Alfonseca, Kiara. "How Mass Shootings Have Historically Prompted Changes in Gun Laws." ABC News, 5 Nov. 2023, abcnews.go.com/US/mass-shootings-historically-prompted-gun-laws/story?id=104382663. Accessed 13 Dec. 2023.

Booker, Brakkton, and Martin Kaste. "House Passes Second Gun Background Check Bill in as Many Days." National Public Radio, 28 Feb. 2019, www.npr.org/2019/02/28/698990518/house-passes-second-gun-background-check-bill-in-as-many-days. Accessed 14 Oct. 2019.

"Bump Stocks." ATF, 27 June 2024, www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/bump-stocks. Accessed 28 June 2024.

Bunn, Curtis. "Why More Black People Are Looking for Safety in Gun Ownership." NBC News, 14 June 2022, www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-people-are-looking-safety-gun-ownership-rcna32150. Accessed 2 Aug. 2022.

"CBS News Poll: Will Gun Violence Increase in the Next Decade?" CBS News, 13 Mar 2016, www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-will-gun-violence-increase-in-the-next-decade. Accessed 21 Dec. 2016.

Durkee, Alison. "Support for Stricter Gun Laws Drops Under 50%, Poll Finds—Lowest Rate in 16 Years." Forbes, 19 Nov. 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/11/19/support-for-stricter-gun-laws-drops-under-50-poll-finds---lowest-rate-in-16-years/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2022.

Edwards-Levy, Ariel. "CNN Poll: Most Americans Want Stricter Gun Control, But They're Divided On Whether Guns Make Public Places Safer." CNN, 26 May 2023, www.cnn.com/2023/05/26/politics/cnn-poll-gun-laws/index.html. Accessed 1 Aug. 2023.

Fritze, John. "Supreme Court Upholds Law Barring Domestic Abusers from Owning Guns in Major Second Amendment Ruling." CNN, 21 June 2024, www.cnn.com/2024/06/21/politics/supreme-court-guns-rahimi/index.html. Accessed 28 June 2024.

"Gun Violence and COVID-19 in 2020." Everytown for Gun Safety, 7 May 2021, everytownresearch.org/report/gun-violence-and-covid-19-in-2020-a-year-of-colliding-crises/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2022.

Johnson, Carrie. "Supreme Court Rules Domestic Abusers Can Lose Their Gun-Ownership Rights." The Two-Way, NPR, 27 June 2016, www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/27/483714423/supreme-court-rules-domestic-abusers-can-lose-their-gun-ownership-rights. Accessed 21 Dec. 2016.

Knutson, Jacob. "Biden Administration Expands Background Checks for Gun Sales." Axios, 11 Apr. 2024, www.axios.com/2024/04/11/biden-administration-gun-purchases-background-check. Accessed 16 May 2024.

Liptak, Adam. "Supreme Court Strikes Down New York Law Limiting Guns in Public." The New York Times, 23 June 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/supreme-court-ny-open-carry-gun-law.html. Accessed 2 Aug. 2022.

McCormick, Grace. "22 Mass Shootings in 17 States Over July 4 Holiday Weekend." ABC 33 40 News, 5 July 2023, abc3340.com/news/nation-world/22-mass-shootings-in-17-states-over-july-4-holiday-weekend-gun-violence-red-flag-law-second-amendment-philadelphia-highland-park-nashville-school-congress-biden. Accessed 1 August 2023.

Smith, Aaron. "New Gun Control Law Targets Chicago Violence." CNN Money, 24 Aug 2016, money.cnn.com/2016/08/24/news/chicago-gun-control. Accessed 21 Dec. 2016.

Sparber, Sami. "Texans Can Carry Handguns Without a License or Training Starting Sept. 1, after Gov. Greg Abbott Signs Permitless Carry Bill into Law." The Texas Tribune, 16 June 2021, www.texastribune.org/2021/06/16/texas-constitutional-carry-greg-abbott/. Accessed 25 May 2022.

"Supreme Court Upholds Wide Reach of US Gun Ban for Domestic Violence." NBC News, 27 June 2016, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/supreme-court-upholds-wide-reach-u-s-gun-ban-domestic-n599816. Accessed 21 Dec. 2016.

Turkewitz, Julie, and Anemona Hartocollis. "Highlights: Students Call for Action Across Nation; Florida Lawmakers Fail to Take Up Assault Rifle Bill." The New York Times, 20 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/us/gun-control-florida-shooting.html. Accessed 23 Feb. 2018.

"US Support for Gun Control Tops 2–1, Highest Ever, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds." Quinnipiac University Poll, 20 Feb. 2018, poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2521. Accessed 23 Feb. 2018.