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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.
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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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 >.
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