On January 17, 1989, a twenty-four year old man named Patrick Edward was in a station wagon near Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California. He had attended school there as a child. Edward carried an AK-47 assault rifle and a Taurus 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with him as he walked toward the playground, where about 400 children were playing. He began to fire with his assault rifle. Thirty-five people were struck by the bullets, twenty-nine were killed. Even though assault rifles are designed for modern warfare, they were still available in gun shops all across America. These guns fire as many as seventy-five rounds, very fast, without reloading. The law requires citizens to be twenty-one to buy one. Purdy, who had expressed his dislike for Asian immigrants and Asian-Americans, opened fire on an elementary schoolyard full of Asian-American children, firing 106 rounds, killing five and wounding thirty before taking his own life.
Gun control, as we know, consists of the government restricting the rights of citizens to purchase weapons. There are different types of gun controls. Gun laws differ from state to state or country to country. In some states, if a citizen wanted to purchase a gun he or she would have to fill out and application to have the right to own that gun. This waiting period can be from three to thirty days. Other states have no waiting period. For instance, a citizen can walk into a gun shop, buy the gun and turn around and walk out with it. Therefore, there are people called gunrunners, who go to a state and buy a gun that doesn't have a gun law. Then go sell the gun for two or three times the price they paid in another state. These people can make as much as drug dealers. .
Every aspect of American's gun control culture is geared toward men, from hunting magazines to TV cop shows to Rambo. The guns themselves are designed to accommodate the size and strength of a man's hand.
