Category: Unit 2 Final Draft (Page 4 of 7)

Final

Elan Samarin

“Can Guns Be ‘Safe’?”

Every year in the United States, there are hundreds of accounts of people dying or getting severely wounded from accidental gunshots. A cause of this is due to the lack of regulations for safety features for firearms sold in the US. All of these accidents include people from all walks of life, whether it’s a small child who has found a new “toy” to play with or an accident while hunting. By holding firearm manufacturers to a higher degree of safety just like we view our automotive manufacturers, we can prevent these accidental deaths from happening every year. By helping enact new laws where we can make the firearms sold in the US safe for people to use.

Did you know that the United States government requires no safety features new guns produced? This includes the basics, like a locking mechanism that prevents a firearm from being fired accidentally; or indicators which show whether a chamber is loaded from an exterior indictor on the gun to show it. There many types of firearms produced every single day, from a small handgun that’s designed to be carried every day, to a long rifle that’s designed for hunting, and every one of these companies are allowed to build their firearms with as many or as little safety features as the manufacturer desires.

Luckily, there are a few states that do mandate some sort of safety feature on the firearms legally registered in the state. New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, all require these safety features, and all these states apart from New York have an approved list of firearms which are deemed to be safe by these state governments and are permitted to be sold in those states. These firearms are proved to be safe by undergoing a test set up by government officials who proceed to fire the gun and ensure its safety features are operational before going on sale to the public. Any firearm that doesn’t meet these standards will not be able to be sold in that state.

Yet there are some states that do mandate safety features on firearms, it’s clear that gun manufacturers aren’t doing enough as there are still an estimated 430 accidental gun deaths a year in the United States. Manufacturers such as Remington are clearly not playing their role in keeping their customers safe; from 1962 to 2006, Remington sold more than 7.5 million 700 series rifles (a bolt-action hunting rifle). All these rifles had a flaw known to the manufacturer, where under certain conditions, the rifle could just fire by itself without the owner even touching the trigger. This of course led to many lawsuits towards Remington which forced them to create a recall for the 700 series rifle, yet in this recall it was stated that it was completely voluntary for the owner to complete the recall. This meant that not too many people decided to get their rifles repaired, it was estimated that only 25,000 out of the 7.5 million have been repaired so far.

Suing firearm manufacturers due to safety related issues did prove to be effective in some cases. Back in 1997, manufacturers of handguns were being sued as they did not have any safety locks on these guns in order to prevent accidental fire scenarios. This resulted in the accidental shootings of many people including children. All these deaths and lawsuits brought upon the major handgun manufacturers forced them into equipping their handguns with safety locking mechanisms. The cost of the increasing number of lawsuits began to get too expensive for some pistol manufacturers so they decided to add safeties to their handguns in order to help prevent these lawsuits from happening. Occurrences like this don’t happen often as this recorded one happened in 1997 and I could not find anything similar to this afterwards.

All this time it seems that the federal government has not done much to help mandate these safety features for the firearms produced and sold in the US. Due to the vagueness of the 2^nd Amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”, it becomes very difficult to pass laws in order to do with firearms at all due to the very aggressive lobbyist groups such as the NRA (National Rifle Association), and more Republican based states which generally oppose more gun restrictions such as Arizona and Texas. These lobbyist groups, help prevent cases from getting to judges and juries to decide upon.

“The gun lobby insists that these lawsuits are an improper use of the courts to resolve issues that should be decided by legislatures. If this argument justifies blocking suits against the gun industry, then it also would apply to lawsuits against manufacturers and sellers of all kinds of defective products. It is worth noting the hypocrisy of this argument.”

It’s truly baffling to see the lengths that firearm manufacturers are going to in order to prevent change. Some states are even aiding in the prevention of safety mandates being imposed by passing laws that grant immunity for these manufacturers. Laws for immunity for firearm manufacturers were also put in place in multiple states, preventing mandatory safety features on weapons. “Poorly constructed guns can fire even when the trigger hasn’t been pulled, or do not fire when the trigger has been pulled. Commonly referred to as ‘junk guns…’”, these firearms are horribly unsafe especially in the hands of the wrong person. If a child even drops one of these “junk guns” on the ground the gun has the possibility of shooting anyone in the room. The industry will be lazy to change as it requires time and money to make firearms safer, this same issue is even seen in automotive manufacturers where they try to leave out safety features for customers until they were mandated by the government to add these features. After the safety features were mandated, vehicles produced were still sold in large volumes and were a lot safer for their owners. Standards like these can be applied to the firearm industry to make firearms safer for people to use and can still be sold in the same volumes they are selling in today. These mandated features are updated often in order to keep automotive manufacturers constantly focused on not only the operation of the vehicles, but the safety of the people using them as well. These safety mandates are required in some states, and it is a great start to helping make firearms safer.

States such as New York, Maryland, and California were able to pass laws in order to mandate safety features and approve firearms to be sold in that state. This is remarkably similar to the automotive industry where California forced automakers to sell only emissions and safety compliant vehicles in their state, so automakers decided it was cheaper to produce the same cars for all 50 states instead of making California specific cars. Legislative pushes like the one seen in the automotive industry could help to be adapted to the firearm industry. The addition of more safety features on a firearm, or any at all is a great deterrent of accidental shootings that very often turn fatal. By being able to keep the weapons that we produce safe for the public to use, we can decrease the number of accidental shootings. People shouldn’t have to suffer rom the negligence of these manufacturers just so they can save some money. Safe firearm sales and usage can really help this nation reduce the number of accidental gun deaths we have every year. By taking a similar initiative by states such as California and Massachusetts on a larger scale, firearm manufacturers will still be able to prosper in the US as long as what they are selling is safe for the people to use.

Works Cited

• Green, Ronald M. “Legally Targeting Gun Makers: Lessons for Business Ethics.” Business Ethics Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2000, pp. 203–210. EBSCOhost, doi:10.2307/3857706.
• Henigan, Dennis. “Should Cities Be Allowed to Sue Gun Manufacturers?” Spectrum: Journal of State Government, vol. 72, no. 3, July 1999, p. 20. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=511121735&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
• “Pros & Cons of Gun Violence Research: Gun Safety versus Second Amendment Rights.” Congressional Digest, vol. 99, no. 5, May 2020, p. 30. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=142699365&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
• William F. Godbold IV, Constitutional Law—Shooting Blanks: Smart Gun Mandates and their Concomitant Constitutional, Regulatory, Public Policy, and Practical Issues, 37 U. ARK. LITTLE ROCK L. REV. 167 (2014). Available at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview/vol37/iss1/7
• Witkin, Gordon. “Childproofing Guns.” U.S. News & World Report, vol. 124, no. 24, June 1998, p. 24. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=710522&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

The Rough Reality of Being Homeless in NYC

            They say that it takes 15-21 days for something to become a habit. But it took me almost 2 years to realize that waving at someone hi & bye or just occasionally giving someone a dollar  had become a habit for me. Ever since I moved to Woodhaven, Queens there was always this homeless man camped in the corner of 91th street. He would be there in the morning on my way to school and on my way back home. But one day out of nowhere the street corner looked empty and wider, the man that stayed there had passed away according to the deli corner store owner. That’s when I realized that I was so used to seeing him there that it had become a routine of seeing each other. So this got me thinking why he didn’t get help before or why didn’t he go to a shelter. On the news you hear that the city is creating new programs for homelessness but then residents of NY go out to the street and see a lot of homeless people, so then the questions start, are the programs really real and efficient.

In movies they portray NYC as a  luxurious city where dreams come true and for some reason everyone can afford an apartment in Manhattan and they have a fancy life, but the cameras hide the ugly truth which is homelessness throughout NY. And the homeless rate is only increasing and with the rates increasing it becomes very difficult for every homeless person to get help since the city can’t help everyone. According to a Fox News article written by Nick Givas it states that “Issues with New York’s homeless population have made headlines over the past two years, with many incidents occurring on the subways or near underpasses, where encampments have emerged”. This shows that the rates are increasing and there aren’t enough shelters around so people have to find shelter in the MTA. Also, it shows that whatever programs the state creates is not as helpful as they say it is. So with poverty and homelessness increasing in NYC,what are the city’s programs really doing to help control the increase and help people get back to stability? 

When walking down the streets of NYC or taking the train (MTA) there are people laying in the street asking for change. So when a new yorker sees this so often, the only question that comes to mind is who is helping them. What is the city/state doing to help them out of their situation. According to an article by Politico ‘The city has several existing programs to help tenants on the brink of eviction’. This shows that the city wants to avoid more homelessness which is good because the homeless rate will decrease, but the city needs to help the people that are currently homeless to make our city better. NYC is great at creating programs for the less fortunate, like free education for all, many public and free parks and pools, free lunches for children during the summer, public housing for people with low income etc. so what exactly do these programs or aids provide to the homeless? According to the ACE a program for the homeless, they provide people with jobs by giving them job training and work experience. In the article “Why Some New Yorkers Choose Streets Over Shelters” by Greg B. Smith, the writer interviews a homeless man on what it’s like to be homeless. During the interview the homeless man mentions that he has to wait a whole year in the street because a homeless aid worker had to observe him for a long time in order for him to qualify for help. This comes to show that it’s difficult for people living in the street to get aid because the process of approval takes time and work. So, Yes the city’s programs are efficient but if the homeless rates are going up every year and it takes a year to help one person at some point the amount of homeless people in the streets get too out of hand for the city. And the city’s answer to stopping homelessness is creating anti-homelessness architecture. When walking in a public place in NYC like Central Park or Grand Central Station for example, did you notice that all the benches there have armrests now? The armrests that divide a bench into four seats are not for you to have personal space from the other person or for your arm to rest, but to avoid homeless people from laying there and occupying the space, because according to small business owners it makes them look bad. When a problem has become so big that people use spikes on their floor to avoid homeless people, its makes me question how the whole homelessness outburst starts. And if it could have been avoided.    

Some people might be wondering what leads a person to becoming homeless or living out in the streets. There’s actually a lot of ways a person could lose everything but being homeless doesn’t always mean that the person is poor or a drug addict. For example women escaping domestic violence only way out is to go to a shelter. Other contributions that add to the homeless rates is the lack of affordable housing, rents in NYC are too expensive, and I think that we all agree with that. Also the fact that there aren’t enough jobs and the jobs that are available pay minimum wage which is difficult to make a living with $15 an hour and pay $1,800 monthly rents. People also end up homeless because they are bankrupt, either it’s because medical bills got out of hand or the credit card bill was too much. So when society labels homeless people as drug users and addicts, it’s a bit unfair to look at them as less, because it could happen to anyone. 

One downside of public shelters is that they are unsafe and people don’t feel comfortable enough to spend the night there. During the interview in “Why Some New Yorkers Choose Streets Over Shelters” by Greg B. Smith, it states that “Three of four people questioned had spent some time in shelters, with 38% saying the main reason they left was their concerns about personal safety”, this leads to more people living in the streets and in the subway stations, one can say that the whole system is messed up because no matter what kind of help homeless people get there’s always going to a disadvantage side. The good side of this is that there’s shelters in every borough throughout NYC and if communities come together and help out the homeless rates will probably decrease. What NYC lacks is their residents giving back to the community and volunteering. As New Yorkers we are considered rude, ignorant, self centered and always rushing. But if a few people go and volunteer at the shelters just for a few hours, it could make a difference. Also donating food to your local shelter and clothes also help out with the changes of seasons, for example during winter there’s the coat drive where people donate their coat for the poor. It’s the small things that matter and that make a big difference.  Even though helping out and advocating for the homeless isn’t going to be enough, when we face reality NYC is a rich city that is only growing economically. So poverty and homeless people living out in the street are here to stay, yes we could contain the rates and numbers low but there’s always going to be homelessness.

At the end of the day, there’s always going to be little things that make up New York City, and that make up a New Yorkers daily routine. And maybe for me it was seeing that homeless man in the corner of my street or maybe for someone it’s that other homeless person in the same train station. But they are still part of our community and we have to help them in order to see changes.  Also by signing petitions, and avocading for the homeless and pressuring the government for more budgets for shelters and more aid, will help nyc look better and feel safer. If anyone wants to help there’s a lot of websites that give information about how to help or how to seek help. 

Work Cited 

Smith, Greg B. “Sleeping Behind The Bronx Zoo: Why Some New Yorkers Choose Streets Over Shelters.” THE CITY, THE CITY, 5 Apr. 2021, 

Chadha, Janaki. “New York Is Facing a Potential Explosion in Homelessness.” Politico PRO. 30 June 2020. Web. 06 Apr. 2021.

Givas, Nick. “Homelessness in New York City: Here Are the Statistics.” Fox News. FOX News Network, 21 Feb. 2020. Web. 06 Apr. 2021.