Gun violence defined literally means the use of a firearm to threaten or inflict violence or harm. Gun violence may be broadly defined as a category of violence and crime committed with the use of a firearm; it may or may not include actions ruled as self-defense, actions for law enforcement, or the safe lawful use of firearms for sport, hunting, and target practice. Gun violence encompasses intentional crime characterized as homicide (although not all homicide is automatically a crime) and assault with a deadly weapon, as well as unintentional injury and death resulting from the misuse of firearms, sometimes by children and adolescents. Gun violence statistics also may include self-inflicted gunshot wounds (both suicide, attempted suicide and suicide/homicide combinations sometimes seen within families).
The phrase "gun crime" is consistently used by both gun-control and gun-rights policy advocates, with differing emphases: the former group advocates reducing gun violence by enacting and enforcing regulations on guns, gun owners, and the gun industry, while the latter group advocates education on how to be a responsible gun owner.
Levels of gun violence vary greatly across the world, with very high rates in Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, South Africa, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Jamaica, as well as high levels in Russia, The Philippines, Thailand, and some other underdeveloped countries, Levels of gun violence are low in Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and many other countries. The United States has the highest rate of gun related injuries (not deaths per capita) among developed countries, though it also has the highest rate of gun ownership and the highest rate of officers.
Read more about Gun Violence: Suicide, Homicide, Robbery and Assault, Costs of Violence Committed With Guns
Famous quotes containing the words gun and/or violence:
“As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)