Traditionally, Americans considered each person responsible both for self-protection and for the defense of the state. Well into the nineteenth century, people needed guns to protect themselves against hostile Indians. In addition, hunting was a major source of food. People legally carried guns as a matter of course, a practice accepted as both necessary and politically desirable (Edward 477).

The federal government and all U.S. states have some gun control laws. These laws are based on several strategies: forbidding certain types of people from obtaining any firearms; prohibiting anyone other than the police, the military, and persons with special needs from acquiring certain types of guns; and requiring purchasers to wait some period of time before purchasing a gun or gun license.

The most common gun control strategy attempts to prohibit unreliable people from obtaining guns. Federal and state laws prohibit people who have been convicted of

It is instructive to examine who kills whom. The FBI's crime statistics show that nearly 60 percent or murders in 1985 were "crimes of passion", committed against husbands, wives, parents, children, lovers, love rivals, friends, and argumentative drinking partners (Dudley 195).

Most attempts to reduce gun proliferation have relied on governmental regulation. However, in the late 1990s gun control advocates attempted to use financial sanctions, rather than regulation, to minimize gun violence. Several cities filed lawsuits against gun manufacturers and distributors, arguing that gun dealers should pay for the cities' increased cost of law enforcement and health care resulting from gun violence.

About half of all U.S. families own at least one gun. The most frequent motives for gun ownership are protecting the home, hunting or target shooting, and collecting. Gun control laws aim to reduce the criminal use of guns as much as possible while not putting large burdens on legitimate gun users (Encarta).

Chaatham, New Jersey. 1995. 72

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