The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act A Policy Critique
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act
A Policy Critique
Analyze the Problem
Every program or policy starts with a problem in need of a solution, and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act is no different. The need for change was very simply justified: violent crimes are most often committed with a handgun. (DOJ, 1995) More outstanding however, in the case of the Brady act, was the specific assault against president Reagan and the crippling of James Brady. Similarly, the earlier Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968 was precipitated by the high-profile assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Against this justifiable backdrop the gun control activitists launched campaigns to help regulate firearms nationwide.
Gun crime has a long history. Regulating handguns, however, is a fairly recent proposition. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, along with the GCA before it, was one of the first major gun control policies enacted by the US government. This history of the problem however, is almost unfathomable. As soon as man invents a technology, he figures out a way to make it into a weapon to kill his fellow man with it. For the sake of amusement, the author attempted to find the first recorded handgun murder- unsuccessfully. The first murder, however, happened in the garden of Eden, perpetrated by the 3rd human to ever exist. This is important to the study of the Brady Act for one clear reason. The question remains: is handgun violence a result of the availability of weapons or of man's inclination to kill each other?
Examining the potential causes of man's violence towards each other is a far more philosophical endeavor than this paper. Suffice it to say that the causes of violence goes far beyond just the availability of a certain convenient method. This perhaps is one of the first, great oversights of the Brady Act: the idea that denying the sale of registered handguns to certain individuals deemed likely to misuse them is going
A Policy Critique
Analyze the Problem
Every program or policy starts with a problem in need of a solution, and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act is no different. The need for change was very simply justified: violent crimes are most often committed with a handgun. (DOJ, 1995) More outstanding however, in the case of the Brady act, was the specific assault against president Reagan and the crippling of James Brady. Similarly, the earlier Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968 was precipitated by the high-profile assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Against this justifiable backdrop the gun control activitists launched campaigns to help regulate firearms nationwide.
Gun crime has a long history. Regulating handguns, however, is a fairly recent proposition. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, along with the GCA before it, was one of the first major gun control policies enacted by the US government. This history of the problem however, is almost unfathomable. As soon as man invents a technology, he figures out a way to make it into a weapon to kill his fellow man with it. For the sake of amusement, the author attempted to find the first recorded handgun murder- unsuccessfully. The first murder, however, happened in the garden of Eden, perpetrated by the 3rd human to ever exist. This is important to the study of the Brady Act for one clear reason. The question remains: is handgun violence a result of the availability of weapons or of man's inclination to kill each other?
Examining the potential causes of man's violence towards each other is a far more philosophical endeavor than this paper. Suffice it to say that the causes of violence goes far beyond just the availability of a certain convenient method. This perhaps is one of the first, great oversights of the Brady Act: the idea that denying the sale of registered handguns to certain individuals deemed likely to misuse them is going