A law that requires a background check for gun and ammunition buyers can greatly reduce gun deaths in the United States, according to a study. The requirements will make the gun as well as the ammunition traceable making each gun owner accountable to the law.
According to Dean Sandro Galea of the School of Public health at Boston University, there are very few existing firearms law that is associated with gun mortality and this undermines the importance of focusing on relevant and effective firearms legislations. He added that implementing a universal background check among people who purchase firearms in a national scale can reduce mortality in the country, as per Daily Mail.
As reported by CNN, Bindu Kalesan, an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University, said they wanted to see which restrictive gun law is effective as against to what others say that restrictive laws work. They also wanted to figure out if they are really pushing for a law that really works.
In the United States, an estimated 90 deaths are connected to gun-related injuries which include homicide and suicide every single day. The study, however, found out that implementing this background checks will make it easier for the authorities to track the ammunition back to the gun that fired it and eventually pinpoints the owner who used it. This procedure is said to reduce gun-related deaths by as much as 80 percent.
The research also looked at deaths that were influenced by gun laws that were put in place in 25 states the year before 2010. In Minnesota, Representative Dan Schoen and Senator Ron Latz proposed a bill that would require private sellers to run background checks on potential buyers before completing a gun sale, according to MPR News.
The Republican-led US Congress has a very strong opposition though to gun regulations. They have been constantly resisting measures pushed by President Barrack Obama after the mass shooting that happened in Connecticut in 2012. Obama, however, passed an executive order last January to impose gun control measures which also require buyers to go into background checks.
