As part of a collaboration with the National Writing Project, this is the first in a series of teacher-created educator guides on key topical issues. Written by two NWP-affiliated high school English and media arts teachers – Kirsten Spall of Natomas Charter High School (Sacramento) and Chris Sloan of Judge Memorial Catholic School (Salt Lake City) – the guide helps teachers explore and navigate the highly-charged political and emotional issues behind the topic of gun control. Based on content featured on The Lowdown, the guide provides ideas for integrating the issues into English language arts and social studies curriculum. It includes Common Core Standards Alignment, a synopsis of key background information, integration tips, and lists of issue pros and cons, creative writing prompts and best classroom practices.

Download the entire guide here (PDF)

Source: Factcheck.org

Compared to other high-income nations in the world, America isn’t unusually violent; we’re just unusually lethal.

That’s according to David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He argues there is a direct connection between the U.S. being leaps and bounds ahead of any other industrialized country in terms of overall gun death rates and gun homicides — and the fact that we have the highest gun-ownership rates in the world

“We are a nation which does not have more crime or more violence,” Hemenway said during a forum on gun violence held shortly after the Newtown shooting. “We are an average nation in terms of assault, robbery, and (non-firearms) homicides.” What distinguishes the U.S., he notes, is our rate of gun violence: “The United States has a very horrific gun problem … 85 people a day dying from guns from all sorts of injury … Compared to the other developed countries, we are just doing terribly.”

Below are a handful of particularly striking gun homicide stats, based on 2010 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Scroll over the charts below for additional information.

*Note that stats on gun deaths vary depending on which government agency is reporting them.

The U.S. gun murder rate — which is now actually at its lowest level since the early 1980′s — is still more than double that of any other wealthy nation in the world.

Hemenway notes that a child in the U.S is about 13 times more likely to be a victim of a firearm-related homicide than children in most other industrialized nations.

Firearms were the third leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide in 2010, following poisoning and motor vehicle accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the sake of comparison, in 2010 there were more than twice as many firearms deaths in the U.S. than terrorism-related deaths worldwide.

The following visualization, produced by Periscopic, uses data from the F.B.I’s Uniform Crime Report (which reported 9,595 homicides for 2010, but did not include data from Florida and Alabama), in an attempt to calculate the years of life stolen from gun murder victims. Each strand in the graph below represents a person killed by gun violence. Visit their site to explore the data by sex, age group and region.

This map, produced by NBC News as part of its gun violence series, provides a sobering look at all the gun-related deaths (homicides, suicides, and accidental) that occurred over this year’s  Martin Luther King holiday weekend. Click on the image to view the map interactively on NBC’s site. Below that is a clip reporting the various instances of gun homicides over the course of that one bloody weekend.

Source: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Gun control advocates say yes. Gun rights folks beg to differ.

Big surprise on that one, huh?

Source: Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocacy group pushing for tougher regulations, assigned every state a grade based on 29 different policy approaches to regulating firearms and ammunition. California topped the list with an  A-. (New York – which now requires background checks for ammunition sales – has since surpassed California in the toughness of it’s gun laws. It’s the first state to enact such legislation following the Newtown shooting. And debates have begun in a handful of other states – including California and Colorado – to strengthen gun laws there.)

The Center points to 2010 statistics showing that seven out of 10 states with the strictest regulations also had that lowest gun homicide rates.

Click on image to explore interactively. Source: Guardian

But gun rights advocates opposed to tighter regulations argue that this correlation is inconclusive and misleading. A common counter argument is that stricter regulations don’t do anything to prevent  criminals from getting a hold of guns -  they just prevent law abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves. Many also point to states like Maine, which has some of the loosest regulations in the country (it received an F grade by gun control groups,  but also has among the lowest gun homicide rates in the country). On the contrary, they argue, the strict gun laws in cities like Chicago and Washington D.C. have  failed to prevent those rising homicide rates in those places.

“The gun laws in Chicago only restrict the law-abiding citizens and they’ve essentially made the citizens prey,” Richard A. Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association told the NY Times.

California vs. South Dakota: the toughest and loosest gun laws

Despite its  relatively low rate of gun homicides, South Dakota got smacked with an F grade by the Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which identified it as the state with the nation’s weakest gun laws. Here’s how the two states compare:.

99 ways states have loosened gun laws

Mother Jones magazine tracked 99 state laws passed since 2009 that have made guns easier to own and carry in public, and harder for the government to track. According to the report, these laws were pushed through by the National Rifle Association and allies in state capitols. More than two-thirds of them were passed by Republican-controlled legislatures, though often with bipartisan support.

Mother Jones highlighted some of the more striking laws it came across:

• Bullets and booze: In Missouri, law-abiding citizens can carry a gun while intoxicated and even fire it if “acting in self-defense.”
• Child-safety lock off: In Kansas, permit holders can carry concealed weapons inside K-12 schools and at school-sponsored activities.
• Short arm of the law: In Utah, a person under felony indictment can buy a gun, and a person charged with a violent crime may be able to retain a concealed weapon permit. Nebraskans who’ve pled guilty to a violent crime can get a permit to carry a gun.
• Sweet Jesus! In Louisiana, permit holders can carry concealed weapons inside houses of worship.
• Without a trace: Virginia not only repealed a law requiring handgun vendors to submit sales records, but the state also ordered the destruction of all such previous records.

The big players in the debate

source: thinkprogress.org

When it comes to gun laws in the U.S., we’re as far from united as it gets. Beyond the loose set of federal regulations that everyone must follow, there are 50 unique state laws and even more individual county and city rules. It’s resulted in a confusing tapestry of gun regulations that vary drastically depending on where you happen to be. There’s variation in anything from background checks and handgun permit requirements to the sale of semi-automatic weapons and waiting periods. Even rules on allowing firearms on college campuses, in bars, or even in churches can differ across certain state lines.

Federal Gun Law

Federal regulations apply to everyone. But due largely to the intense lobbying efforts and political influence of the gun industry and gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association, these laws have been significantly stripped over the last two decades (see our gun control timeline); they’re now far and away the loosest (and vaguest) of any industrialized country in the world. States must meet the basic requirements, and then have the option to enact some stricter regulations … if they choose to do so.

Federal law prohibits buying or transferring firearms across state lines, owning machine guns and other certain high capacity devices, and bringing guns onto school zones (“except as authorized”). Under the law, you also can’t buy or possess a gun if you’ve been convicted of domestic assault or other serious crimes, dishonorably discharged from the military, or if you have a restraining order against you. The prohibition also includes fugitives, drug users, illegal immigrants, and those deemed mentally ill or institutionalized.

And just as Congress has increasingly weakened federal gun regulations over the last two decades, it has also stripped the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms of much of its power to adequately enforce those laws, and even to compile comprehensive data on gun ownership rates and crimes. The bottom line is that federal gun laws, as they currently stand, are pretty lightweight. And that means it’s up to individual states to step it up if they want stricter regulations.

But that gets real tricky real quick …

The background check loophole

Advocates of strong gun laws often point to the many loopholes in federal gun law. One of the biggest is the lack of required background checks for private guns sales. Under the law, all licensed gun dealers throughout the country must conduct instant background checks (using a state or FBI database) on potential buyers. But federal law does not require those checks at gun shows and other private sales – including guns bought online- where as many as 40 percent of gun purchases reportedly occur. For these types of sales, it’s often no questions asked.

And while some states – like California and New York – have universal background check requirements extending to private sales, the majority of states do not. Closing that loophole was one of the major talking points to come out of the gun task force convened by Vice President Joe Biden earlier last month.

Advocates for stronger federal gun control laws argue that if one state has a strict gun policy but neighboring states don’t, then what’s to stop gun buyers from just going to wherever it’s easiest to buy what they’re looking for?

California is a perfect example. Even though It has some of the toughest gun regulations in the country, it borders Arizona and Nevada, both of which

have some of the loosest: they both allow the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons and don’t require waiting periods or background checks at gun shows.

The issue is of particular relevance in cities like Chicago and Oakland, which have alarmingly high gun homicide rates despite very strict local gun control measures. As one Chicago city official put it:

“Chicago is not an island. Were only as strong as the weakest gun law in surrounding states.”

(Click here to view the timeline in full screen mode)

More on the gun control debate

For a primer on the debate over firearms, scroll the following interactive produced by the Associated Press, with multimedia analyses of the issues, the players, the terminology and public opinion.

That controversial cartoon we mentioned …

The following cartoon, produced by the creators of South Park, was featured in Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary film Bowling for Columbine. It presents a satirical perspective on America’s infatuation with guns, and has an obvious political bent. It does not represent the ideas or opinions of KQED, but is worth viewing to encourage debate on the issues it raises.

In 2011, the highest gun homicide rate (per 100,000 residents) in the nation was, ironically, in the city where the nation’s gun control laws are decided: Washington, D.C. The rate there was 12.4 (actually down from 2010). A close second was Louisiana, with a rate of 10, followed by Mississippi, with 7.4. California, the most populous state, has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country as well as the greatest number of overall homicides (1,790) and the most gun-related murders (1,220). In 2011, the state had a gun homicide rate of 3.25 (per 100,000 residents).

Sources:

National: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-20

Alabama: http://www.acjic.alabama.gov/

Florida: http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/Content/getdoc/332e1b3d-2648-4b06-8be5-d322f340c95d/1971_fwd_murder_firearms.aspx

Created by Simon Rogers at the Guardian (click to explore interactively)

And while America certainly does not have the highest firearms-related homicide rate in the world (it ranks 28th), our rate is more than four times that of any other industrialized country (including all of Europe, Japan, Australia, Turkey and India): in 2011,  there were well over 9,000 gun-related homicides (nearly 70 percent of all homicides committed), or roughly three per 100,000 population, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. That’s about 20 times the average rate of all other developed nations, according to the Washington Post.

Max Fisher_The Washington Post (source: UNODC; using 2010 data)

In contrast, Great Britain has a gun ownership rate of about 6 guns for every 100 civilians. Last year it had 41 gun-related homicides, or .07 per 100,000 population. Meanwhile, Finland, where there are 45 guns per 100 civilians, had only 24 gun homicides in 2011, a rate of .45 per 100,000 population.

Simon Rogers_The Guardian

The infographic below, produced by Good Magazine and Column Five, further illustrates America’s deep and exceptional love affair with the gun.

Editor’s Note: The U.S. rate of gun ownership was previously stated incorrectly: there are 89 guns for every 100 civilians (NOT: 89 out of 100 civilians own a gun).

Wikimedia Commons

When asked, during the second presidential debate, about their respective positions on assault weapons, both candidates gave only vague responses. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney offered any indication that they would would push for stronger gun control laws.

In case you haven’t been paying attention for the last, say, 40 years, gun control has long been a thorny issue in American politics, partly because of the ongoing heated debate over how the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted, and partly because of the National Rifle Association, a powerful lobbying group that has successfully dissuaded ranks of political leaders from pushing for more restrictive firearms legislation.

Nevertheless, it’s still surprising how little attention the issue’s received in this year’s presidential race, given the number of mass shootings this year, including one of the deadliest in U.S. history that happened just four months ago at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in which 12 people were killed and 70 injured. As with most mass shootings in the U.S., the guns used in the massacre had all been purchased legally.

And even though violent crime rates nationwide have fallen in recent years, the number of firearm deaths in the U.S. remains alarmingly high. Between 2006 and 2010, nearly 48,000 people were killed by gunshot wounds (including suicides). The firearms industry, meanwhile, is booming. According to a recent report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in 2010 there were close to 130,000 federally licensed firearms dealers in the U.S. In that year alone, nearly 5.5 million firearms were manufactured here, and roughly 3.3 million were imported.

The Guardian

That’s just about 9 million new firearms floating around the country!

Visit procon.org to read arguments for and against stricter gun laws, particularly regarding concealed handguns. And explore an interactive gun crime map of America, produced by The Guardian, a British-based publication (click on the image on the right).

This interactive map, created by WNYC (based on ATF trace data for 2011), shows where guns were originally sold and where they were recovered.