There is more gun violence in America than in any other developed nation. The prevalence of gun homicides is due to at least three factors: the high availability of firearms, ethnic tension, and powerful defensive legislation against gun control. These three factors influence each other. Ethnic conflict increases the perceived need for self-defense and leads to violence, which heightens people’s perceived for self-defense, which encourages gun buying. The issue of gun ownership has been disputed for about a century and remains legally ambiguous. Politicians and lobby groups like the NRA thus have a great deal of influence over gun laws. In addition, it is unclear whether or not current gun laws adequately regulate either gun availability or cut down on gun violence. This essay could be plagiarized. Get your custom essay “Dirty Pretty Things” Acts of Desperation: The State of Being Desperate 126 writers ready to help you now Get Original Paper Without paying upfront Hoskin tested the hypothesis that greater access to firearms “produces higher levels of lethal violence” (Hoskin 587). He examined data from 36 nations measuring firearm availability and homicide rates. He found that countries with more privately owned guns had higher homicide and lethal violence rates. Nations that were ethnically diverse had more cases of lethal violence. The United States has the “highest homicide rate in the developed world, almost 4 times higher than that of the average industrialized nation.” In addition to the high homicide rate, there is more gun violence and gun possession in America than in the developed world: “The United States surpasses other countries by much a greater margin in gun homicides than in non-gun homicides. […] The non-gun homicide rate in the United States is 2.5 times higher than the average for other countries; the U.S. gun homicide rate is 7.6 times higher than the combined rates of other nations (Killias 1993)” (Hoskin 570-571). America also has far greater numbers of firearms and availability of firearms than other countries; Hoskin implies that this gun availability is correlated with the increase in acts of lethal violence. Hoskin’s study implies that the United States in fact has three factors that might create greater violence. One of the factors is its ethnic diversity, which his study shows is linked to increased violence (both gun violence and non-gun violence) across all 361 countries he studied. Another factor is the country’s light spending on social programs relative to nations that have more welfare programs, which is similarly linked. Finally, America is the number one country of private firearm possession in the world. Obviously, more guns available for use contributes to great use of guns in violent crime. To understand America’s gun violence, studying longitudinal changes in violent crime based on firearm availability could be helpful. Hoskin only looked at differences between nations at one point in time. It would be useful to examine fluctuations in violent crime across a period of time. We can then compare this data to the data that Hoskin collected. This suggested study would help to explore the potential effects of firearm regulation on actual firearm ability, and also on gun violence. In other words, it would help us to measure whether or not stricter gun laws do in fact reduce gun violence over time