Essay Instructions: Assignment - The literature review should include subheadings and citations of at least five (5) sources outlining factors/reasons/objectives related to the issues of each student's project. The source of information should academic journals.
My topic is on Gun Control and the effects of Crime In the Black Community
Below is the statement of the problem that I have already submitted.
Statement of Problem
Since the expiration of the Brady Bill back in 2004, the homicide rate among young African-American males is at an epidemic level. According to the FBI, the NAACP, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms, in the United States, is the leading cause of death for Black males between the ages of 15 and 34. The magnitude of this problem, the mortality rate of American Black males, by illegal guns, is unconscionable in a free society.
This national trend (mortality rate) started seven (7) years ago when Congress failed to reenact the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. From the very beginning, the Brady Bill was a controversial issue which took several years before it finally passed and was signed in to law by then Democratic President, Bill Clinton. The controversy, at that time, as it does currently, centered on the Second Amendment, and the interpretation of the “right to bear arms,” by the Supreme Court.
The Brady Bill, enacted on February 28, 1994, was designed to ensure that background checks were done before any guns could be sold by licensed dealers, to the public. The bill was aimed at restricting the sale of guns to felons and a host of other criminally misfit citizens.
Prior to the Brady Bill, the first major gun control laws were put in place by Congress in 1934. This legislation mainly focused on the sale of fully automatic rifles and machine guns. It wasn’t until public outrage over the deaths/assassinations of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., that gun control was again addressed. In 1968 Congress passed the 1968 Gun Control Act.
In the meantime, somewhere in the midst of the madness, the Black Community was infiltrated with a ton of illegal fire arms; and the impact is killing young Black Men. There are so many variables that have contributed to the rise in crime committed by and against Black People, by Black People (better known as “Black on Black Crime.”) Some of the variables include: racism, black self-hatred, broken families, poverty, the lack of role male models, the lack of education, voter apathy, and the availability of guns. The gangster imagines displayed on television and the violent music played over the air waves only adds to our demise as a race of people.
The lack of strict gun control legislation will only continue to destroy our community, by first eliminating our young black men. The use of illegal guns in the Black Community has become a public health issue. This problem needs our immediate attention.
The action needed to address and to correct this problem must be through the legislative process. There must be a major dialogue between the stakeholders. As President Obama recently stated in an op-ed article, “We must seek agreement on gun reforms.”
Can the reenactment of the Brady Bill curtail the number of illegal firearms that are readily available in the African-American Community, thereby reducing the high homicide rate among young African-American males? Or will White America continue to cowardly hide behind the Second Amendment.