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Camilla Cook
Jamie McBeth-Smith
English 1010
Section 43
10/30/2015

Annotated Bibliography

For the last 50 years gun control has been a hot button political debate in the United
States of America. Guns are persistently in the news regardless of whether there is a mass
shooting or not, because guns kill people. There are 3 distinct positions on gun control, you are
either for, against or indifferent. Through my research I will look at what the arguments are
either being for or against gun control. Also what is the state of gun control today, and why no
decisions are being made.
I grew up around guns and was taught to respect them along with knowing how to use
them, I loved going out with my family to practice shooting my dads many guns. Then
something happened in my early teen years that made me afraid of guns, I wouldnt go near
them, touch them, or let alone own one. Guns were also prevalent in my husbands life since the
age of 5, he was also a gun owner when we met. A year ago I decided this was a fear that I
wanted, and needed to overcome. Through trying to work out my fear of guns I have found the
debates on gun control very interesting and can understand both sides. Will stricter gun laws help
against gun violence or will it make things worse?

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CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 30 September 2015. Web Page. 20 November
2015. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm >.

The CDC or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention carries a lot of
stastical data needed for my research, such as how many sucide by firearm deaths
were the in the United States last year.
The CDC help promote healthy and safe behaviors, communities and
enviroments. The CDC mission statement is: CDC works 24/7 to protect
America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S.
Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or
preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports
communities and citizens to do the same. CDC increases the health security of our
nation. As the nations health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects
people from health threats. To accomplish our mission, CDC conducts critical
science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive
and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.
((http://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/mission.htm))
The CDC is a great source to receive statistics on how many firearm
suicides there were in a certain peroid of time. While looking for gun related
deaths I was interested to see how many deaths there were by firearms and then to
delve further into how many were suicides. I wouldnt have thought to use them
as a source, as I think of them only covering diseases, until I was searching for
information and the Centers for Dsease Control and Prevention popped up.

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Fox, James Alan, et al. "BJS: Bureau of Justice Statistics ." n.d. BJS: Bureau of Justice
Statistics . PDF. 23 November 2015. <http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htius.pdf>.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics or BJS for short, contains a series of charts
that describe homicide patterns and trends in the United States since 1976. With
this site I was able to look into gun violence statistics through the years and
compare to see if they are trending up or down. The information was gathered
using the FBI, Supplementary Homicide Reports.
BJS has established a Criminal Justice Working Papers (CJWP) series,
which provides preliminary analysis of substantive, technical, and methodological
issues. (http://www.bjs.gov/) The author James Alan Fox has served as a visiting
fellow with the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice, and
an NBC News Analyst. James Alan Fox is a professor
of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United
States. He is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminal Justice and former dean at
Northeastern University. He has published 15 books and dozens of journal and
magazine articles and newspaper columns. Fox holds a bachelor's degree
in sociology (1972), a master's degree in criminology (1974), a master's degree
in statistics (1975), and a Ph.D. in sociology (1976), all from the University of
Pennsylvania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Alan_Fox)
The Bureau of Justice Statistics is celebrating 35 years and is a trusted site
to gain statistical information from. I was able to gather past information and see

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how things have changed over the years in regards to gun violence. Looking
through the statistical information was informative and interesting to read. James
Alan Fox has written many books and articles on Gun Control, and gun related
issues. He is also mentioned in articles written by others as a reference.

Prez-Pea, Richard. "Gun Control Explained." (2015). Article. November 2015.

<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/07/us/gun-control-explained.html?_r=0>.

The New York Times article, Gun Control Explained by Richard PrezPea was a needed and welcome source. Reading through his article opened my
eyes on where I wanted my synthesis to go, and some of the gun control sore
spots I wanted to touch on. Prez-Pea hit on a few different topics such as: What
is gun control? What is the state of gun control today? What are the arguments
against gun control? to name a few.
Richard Prez-Pea (born 1963) has been a journalist with the New York
Times since 1992.He has covered Albany, New Jersey, healthcare, the media, and
is currently reporting on higher education. He was featured in the film Page One:
Inside the New York Times. Prez-Pea was born in Santiago, Cuba and raised in
Southern California. He studied European History at Pomona College. In 1987,
Prez-Pea appeared on Jeopardy! And became a 5-time champion, later
appearing in the show's first reunion invitational, Super Jeopardy! in 1990. In
2005, he was asked to participate in the show's Ultimate Tournament of

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Champions but ended up not appearing in the tournament.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_P%C3%A9rez-Pe%C3%B1a)
The article by Prez-Pea was very insightful, helping me to better
understand the major topics surrounding gun control. Some of them being about
background checks, conceal and carry laws, and the state of those laws today. I
was able to develop my paper using the topics that are a main concern for the
public today, rather than touching on other subjects that are not as relevent in
todays society. Prez-Pea also helped me gain knowledge in other areas of gun
control issues that I wasnt aware of. For example the Gun Show Loophole, I
thought that no matter where you went to purchase a firearm you would have to
go through a background check. Looking into that clause I was able to see that the
government has been working to correct this issue which is wonderful to see.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. February 2015. Web Page. 2015 November 2015.
<http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-by-raceethnicity/#note-1 >.

This website helped to pull together information regarding firearm deaths

by race, helping me determine if race could be a controlling factor in gun related
deaths in the United States. I was able to look at race specific and also State
specific data, involving gun related deaths for a specific year.
Their History and Mission Since we began in 1991, our goal has been to
build an institution that plays a special role as a trusted source of information in

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a health care world dominated by vested interests. That institution-building

process continues today. Drew Altman, Ph.D. President and CEO
One of Henry Kaisers favorite sayings was find a need and fill it, and
thats what the Foundation has tried to do. While the Foundation was established
in 1948, it is in a sense a relatively young organization. Under the leadership of
CEO Drew Altman, Kaiser was completely remade from the ground up beginning
in 1991, with the mission, staff expertise, programs, operating foundation legal
status and operating style it is known for today. (http://kff.org/history-andmission/)

This website gives a better viewpoint on the Number of

Deaths Due to Firearms per 100,000 Population
by Race/Ethnicity. The site was very well organized and easy to
access the information I was looking for. I enjoyed that I could
distribute the information by race/state/year to find the most
accurate data in recent years. With that I could see if gun deaths
could be related through culture or even state. Would one state
that has stricter gun laws have fewer deaths? These are some of
the statistics I viewed.

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Without the use of these websites/Authors it would have been very

difficult to write my paper. This made it easy when I needed to gather
direction, statistics, or views on the most controversial gun laws. I am very
grateful the have all this fountain of information at my fingertips, I dont
know how I would have gotten through something like this back before the
internet. Just a lot of hours at the library I guess. The sources I used were
well respected sights, or an opinion on gun control that would allow me to
form my own thought around theirs, whether I agreed or not. Through my
research I have become more aware of some of the gun control laws in our
state and others, I find the differences very interesting. As stated in my
Synthesis there is a vast difference between purchasing a gun in Utah as
opposed to purchasing a gun in Chicago. The topic on gun control will remain
an ongoing issue as long as there are gun related deaths.