The Gun Gridlock

We know two things about guns in the United States: that we have a gun violence problem in America and that the United States Congress has done very little to address it. “The Gun Gridlock” examines this phenomenon, seeking to visualize this problem and finding solutions to better address gun violence in the future.

Molly Reed (she/her): Hello everyone, my name is Molly Reed, I am a senior in the Schar School of Policy majoring in government international politics, and this is my presentation on my project entitled The Gun Gridlock.

2
00:00:14.790 –> 00:00:21.480
Molly Reed (she/her): Going into this project I knew two main things first is that I know that we have a gun violence problem in the United States.

3
00:00:22.170 –> 00:00:32.190
Molly Reed (she/her): Brady estimates that on average 100 Americans are shot and killed every single day in the United States because of gun violence and an additional 100,000 Americans are shot and survive every single year.

4
00:00:32.850 –> 00:00:46.950
Molly Reed (she/her): We know that the United States is a huge outlier among other countries with our gun violence statistics in fact we make up over one fifth of the daily gun deaths around the globe, and the second thing I knew, is that the US has done very little to prevent gun violence.

5
00:00:48.060 –> 00:00:55.830
Molly Reed (she/her): Throughout the last 75 years we have only seen three bills in the United States Congress that have effectively introduced and been passed.

6
00:00:56.250 –> 00:01:05.610
Molly Reed (she/her): That address the gun violence problem in the United States, whether they have increased or decreased throughout the years the passage rate has remained consistent.

7
00:01:06.540 –> 00:01:17.250
Molly Reed (she/her): And this brought me to my question, what is the phenomenon we are seeing with gun related legislation and their perceived failure to be passing United States Congress and why does this phenomenon exist.

8
00:01:18.510 –> 00:01:28.290
Molly Reed (she/her): to effectively address this question i’ve created a plan with two separate parts, the first part hopes to visualize gun related legislation, similar to the graph that we saw earlier.

9
00:01:29.490 –> 00:01:43.860
Molly Reed (she/her): To do this, I will find gun related legislation by combing through each piece of legislation from the United States Congress from 1992 Now I will then identify each bills progress in the United States Congress and visualize this on a graph.

10
00:01:44.880 –> 00:02:00.870
Molly Reed (she/her): The second part will hope to explain why this phenomenon exists from Part one. I will translate the graph we see in Part one and find key patterns and places that I should examine further, then I will do some research and help explain why this phenomenon exists.

11
00:02:03.420 –> 00:02:11.130
Molly Reed (she/her): I hope to contribute to the gun related narrative that we’re seeing in political science that has been increasing in the last decade.

12
00:02:11.700 –> 00:02:17.700
Molly Reed (she/her): I hope to help fill the gaps of confusion about gun related legislation and raise awareness to this problem.

13
00:02:18.450 –> 00:02:24.990
Molly Reed (she/her): I hope that I can help confront the challenges that allow for this problem to exist and embolden solutions.

14
00:02:25.980 –> 00:02:35.970
Molly Reed (she/her): I look forward to hearing any feedback or comments on my paper and welcome any emails about this project to my email right here at [email protected].

15
00:02:36.450 –> 00:02:44.610
Molly Reed (she/her): And I look forward to this next semester, where I can better analyze this problem and also become a better political science student and researcher in the process.

16
00:02:45.630 –> 00:02:54.630
Molly Reed (she/her): Here are some citations or the information and the graphics that I use today and I look forward to hearing back from you all thank you so much.