Forget the Guns?

It shouldn't be a surprise to many that the United States has more guns on its soil than any other country in the world. CNN claims that "civilians in the United States own about 270 million guns". Two hundred and seventy million is higher than the population of some countries around the world. Throughout President Obama's Presidency, fifteen different times he was called to the podium to give a speech about gun violence after a major shooting CNN reports. The saddest part is, it doesn't seem that the gun laws in our country have made any progress and it doesn't look like they are going to change anytime soon.

With the amount of guns that are in the United States, one would think that the amount of deaths by fire arm would increase as well and that it has. The Washington Post stated that "for the first time in more than 60 years, firearms and automobiles are killing Americans at an identical rate, according to the new mortality data revealed this month by the center for Disease Control and Prevention". In addition, there are twenty one states in the United States where the number of those shot and killed by guns has out numbered those who die in car crash, as reported by the Washington Post. Among those states are Washington, Oregon and Hawaii. Eventually, gun violence will be the leading cause of death in the United States and in order to combat this issue we must look at how other countries and their police forces did with lethal force.


The United States needs to look to others around the world in order to combat police brutality. There are more than five countries throughout the world whose police officer do not carry guns when on duty. According to the Washington Post,  Britain, Ireland, Iceland and New Zealand are countries where officers do not carry guns. Some may argue that officers in the United States need to carry guns due to the fact that millions of people have guns in the United States. However, the Washington Post claims that "in Iceland, one-third of all citizens are armed but police officers are not most of the time". We also need to look at Ireland and see that in this country, when officers go to training they aren't even taught how to use a gun.  In addition, there was a survey done in Great Britian where about 82 percent of cops as reported by the Washington Post, stated that they didn't want to carry guns. One can imagine that if this survey was done in the United States the outcome would be vastly different due to the lack of trust we see between society and the American Police force.

So the question arises if cops don't carry guns how will they protect themselves? If the recent incidents that have been occurring all over the country with police brutality, some are proposing stun guns. The conflict with these stun guns is that they are just as deadly and the LA time claims that, " this type of gun would give off an electric shock, and officials have discovered that the use of this stun gone can lead to serious physical harm as well as causes some serious health issues".  In addition, a professor from Rutger University Police Institutes Wayne Fisher claims that, there is many technical problems with these stun guns. He explained to the  LA Times that, "there has to be time to deploy the stun gun and it's not always readily available". Also we must take into consideration that as Professor Wayne stated, " if an armed offender is closing in on the officer, it's necessary at that point to use the level of fore which is the highest opportunity for stopping the armed aggressor, and that would be a firearm".  These stun guns do not provide the highest means of force and leave police at a disadvantages when they are faced with criminal who have actually guns.

All and all, reforms for gun laws need to be made by the government first if we want to limit the amount of deaths we have by guns. It scary to think that car crashes and guns are killing people at the same rate. Other controls have led the way when it comes to using a gun, the bottom line is they don't use them. Many may argue that these countries in Europe that don't have officer carry guns are significantly smaller than the United States which is true, however, look at Iceland,  the Washington Post claims that, over 25 percent of its population carries guns, making it the 15 most armed country in the world and they have little to no gun violence. We must find an alternative beside stun guns, that when used do not cause serious harm and prevent health issues  and wouldn't put the cops at a disadvantage. If we are able to do all these things than we will be one step closer to combating police brutality here in the United States.