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American Gun Control

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Submitted By xiez
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Hello 1b,

My name is Sergen, today I’d like to speak about the gun control in the United States.

Gun control is difficult subject matter, and has many grey areas.

Many aspects of the gun control issue are best measured and sometimes can only be measured through surveys, but the accuracy of such surveys depends upon respondents providing truthful answers to questions that are sometimes controversial and potentially incriminating. Thus, Just Facts uses such data critically, citing the best-designed surveys we find, detailing their inner workings in our footnotes, and using the most cautious plausible interpretations of the results. Particularly, when statistics are involved, the determination of what constitutes a credible fact (and what does not) can contain elements of personal subjectivity.

General facts: * Firearms are generally classified into three broad types: (1) handguns, (2) rifles, and (3) shotguns. Rifles and shotguns are both considered "long guns." * * A semi-automatic firearm fires one bullet each time the trigger is pulled, ejects the shell of the fired bullet, and automatically loads another bullet for the next pull of the trigger. A fully automatic firearm (sometimes called a "machine gun") fires multiple bullets with the single pull of the trigger. * As of 2009, the United States has a population of 307 million people. There are roughly 300 million firearms owned by civilians in the United States as of 2010. Of these, about 100 million are handguns * Nationwide in 2008, law enforcement agencies reported that 55% of aggravated assaults, 27% of robberies, 40% of rapes, and 64% of murders that were reported to police resulted in an alleged offender being arrested and turned over for prosecution. * Of 1,662 murders committed in New York City during 2003-2005, people with criminal records committed more than 90% of the

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