History of gun violence
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Geneva County, Ala.
Carthage, NC Binghamton, NY Fort Hood, Texas Parkland, WA Manchester, Conn. Tucson, Ariz. Seal Beach, CA Norcross, GA Oakland, CA Seattle, WA Aurora, CO Oak Creek, Wis. Minneapolis, MN Newtown, CT Herkimer County, NY Federal Way, WA Manchester, IL Santa Monica, CA Hialeah, FL Washington, D.C. |
March 10, 2009
March 29, 2009 April 3, 2009 November 5, 2009 November 29, 2009 August 3, 2010 January 8, 2011 October 12, 2011 February 22, 2012 April 2, 2012 May 31, 2012 July 20, 2012 August 5, 2012 September 27, 2012 December 14, 2012 March 13, 2013 April 21, 2013 April 24, 2013 June 7, 2013 July 26, 2013 September 16, 2013 |
11 dead
8 dead 14 dead 13 dead 5 dead 9 dead 6 dead 8 dead 5 dead 7 dead 6 dead 12 dead 7 dead 7 dead 27 dead 6 dead 5 dead 5 dead 6 dead 7 dead 13 dead |
6 injured
3 injured 4 injured 30 injured 2 injured 14 injured 1 injured 59 injured 4 injured 2 injured 8 injured |
The Brady Law
James Brady, the press secretary of President Ronald Reagan, was shot in the head during an attempt to assassinate Reagan and was left partially paralyzed. On November 30, 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act into law. Essentially, the law requires background checks before a firearm can be purchased. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is maintained by the FBI, is how the background checks are performed. It only realistically impacts felons and fugitives of the law. Even if the law is ignored, prosecution and conviction of the criminal is unlikely. In the year after the act was passed, 250 cases were brought forward regarding the law being broken, and 217 of those cases were thrown out.
National rifle association (NRA) and the brady law
In 1987, after the Brady Law was first proposed, the NRA lobbied, spending millions of dollars, to keep the bill from passing. Although the bill did ultimately pass, the waiting period for handgun sales went from five days to not existing. Once the bill became law, the NRA funded lawsuits in 9 states, claiming that it was unconstitutional on the grounds that it could not force the chief law enforcement officer to conduct background checks while waiting for the NICS to go online. After being struck down as unconstitutional, local and state law enforcement kept doing the onsite background checks anyway.
