Since the 1960's the crime rate has continued to rise, resulting in an increase in the number of inmates in federal and state prisons.
             Because many crimes that occur in the USA go unreported, the crime rate statistics are restricted to those incidents that are actually reported to law enforcement and thus can only be considered an estimate.
             Firearms are the second leading cause of traumatic death related to a consumer product in the United States and are the second most frequent cause of death overall for Americans aged fifteen to twenty-four (Violence Policy Center, 1999). Since 1960, more than a million Americans have died in firearm suicides, homicides, and unintentional injuries. In 2001 alone, 29,573 Americans died by gunfire: 16,869 in firearm suicides, 11,671 in firearm homicides, 802 in unintentional shootings, and 231 in firearm deaths of unknown intent, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
             Restrictive firearm legislation has now reduced gun violence in the United States. Many believe that violent crime is driven by the availability of guns, and that criminal violence in general may be reduced by limiting access to firearms. Since this legislation, the Unites States has witnessed a dramatic drop in criminal violence over the past decade. The homicide rate in the US has fallen forty-two percent since 1991. This is particularly significant when compared with the rest of the world – in eighteen of the twenty-five countries surveyed by the British Home Office, violent crime increased during the 1990's (Mauser, 2003).
             As more and more people were being incarcerated for non-violent offenses, African Americans and Latinos comprised a growing percentage of the people imprisoned. By the end of 1996, there were one hundred and ninety-three white American prison inmates per one hundred thousand whites, six hundred and eighty-eight Hispanic prison inmates per one hundred thousand Hispan...