Young Americans are 42 times more likely to be killed by guns than young people in other affluent countries, yet “Kim Kardashian” yields five times as many Google News results as “gun violence America” on a day without a major shooting story. Most days we are asleep on this issue, though 82 Americans die from gun violence daily – primarily young inner city African-American males whose stories receive no coverage at all.
Today we learned the horrific news of a mass slaughter of young children and adults in Connecticut. News organizations are ready to go with their predictable follow up: rounds of hand-wringing stories about this shooter, these victims, mental illness, why-did-he-do-it. And very few will talk about the root cause of this and so many other shootings in America: our gun laws, among the most lax in the developed world. Laws that could be changed if we had the political will, saving lives of our young people – those whose stories get covered, and those who die in silence.
At 270 million guns and growing annually, the United States boasts more firearms in private hands than anywhere else on earth. With 90 guns per 100 residents, we are well ahead of the second-most gun-yielding country on earth, Yemen, which has 61 guns per 100 residents. The proliferation of guns in America has not only led to frequent, predictable gun deaths and mass shootings but also to increasingly violent crimes perpetrated by angry young men with easy access to firearms.
The United States is now at epidemic levels of gun violence, which claims over thirty thousand lives annually, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (And for every gun death, two more are wounded.) The gun murder rate in the U.S. is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined. Every one of those nations has stricter gun control laws. Of all the gun deaths in the 23 wealthiest countries in the world, 80 percent are American deaths. Of all the children killed by guns in those nations, 87 percent are American kids.
While the sophisticated and politically savvy NRA wields enormous political power, more Americans favor than oppose background checks for gun buyers, banning semi-automatic weapons, high capacity clips, guns for felons and the mentally ill, and requiring gun registration.
We Arm Them
Every country has angry, crazy, violence-drunk young men. They will always be among us. They are not going away. The difference: we arm ours. Often, with automatic weapons, as was the case in the Colorado movie theater shooting, which allow the quick killing and maiming of large numbers of innocent people.
It’s mostly a waste of time to examine the shooter’s life, look for warning signs. In the case of last week’s Oregon shopping mall shooting, none have come to light. We must accept this as true: angry young men will always be among us, some mentally ill, some not. They will be drawn to firearms and explosions, sick revenge plots, going out in a twisted blaze of what they perceive as a burst of glory. Our decision as a nation is whether we will continue to arm these young men, or make real efforts to keep guns out of their hands – especially automatic weapons.
“This is happening all over our country,” a cable news anchorwoman said to me on a show the other day after the Oregon shopping mall shooting, in which the gunman killed “only” two people before his semiautomatic weapon jammed. Yes, but rarely in other first world countries, a fact rarely mentioned in news coverage of our never-ending mass shooting stories. They don’t rely on a shooter’s weapon malfunctioning to protect their citizens.
Most other developed nations enacted strict gun control laws decades ago, often after their own horrific mass shootings, as the UK did after a Scotland mass school shooting in 1996. UK gun deaths in 2011: 51. Not 51,000 or 5,100. 51. (Will determined killers just find another means? Sometimes. Not always. UK murders by crossbow in 2011: 2.)
Whether gun control works isn’t a matter of opinion. When a crazed fan attacked Beatle John Lennon with a firearm in gun-lax America, Lennon died. When a crazed fan attacked Beatle George Harrison with a knife in gun-controlled England, Harrison fought him off and survived. That’s the difference between a country that reins in guns and one that chooses not to.
Horrific gun crimes do occasionally happen abroad, such the Norway shooting at a camp for young people. Gun control does not reduce gun homicides to zero. But the perfect should never be the enemy of the good. America has had the majority of the world’s mass shootings, though we are but five percent of the world’s population. Wouldn’t halving this number be a worthy achievement?
The Second Amendment
What of the Second Amendment, and the US Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Americans’ gun rights (District of Columbia v. Heller)? In that case the Court ruled that the Second Amendment protected citizens’ right generally to keep handguns in their homes for self-defense, but still allowed for reasonable gun restrictions:
“Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
The court also added that military-type weapons, such as automatic and semi-automatic rifles, could be restricted. In short, no constitutional right is absolute. Since Heller, eighty lower courts have ruled on gun control measures such as bans on gun ownership by mentally ill persons, felons or domestic violence perpetrators, bans on machine guns and special attachments, and restrictions on where guns may be carried – and nearly all have been upheld.
The rest of the world is appalled at our regular mass shootings, our daily gun homicides, and our paralysis in the face of even our children being slaughtered. Many of my European friends have told me they are afraid to visit America, as they might get shot.
What should I tell them? That we tough cowboys can’t muster the courage to change laws to protect our own kids?
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not necessarily those of Avvo.com.
6 comments
Surflaunch Overlord
Remove the gun restrictions that create the gun free zones
in the first place.
At best, they don't work and actually tend to create a
magnate that draws criminals to the path of least resistance where law abiding
people are known to be defenseless.
Nothing can deter crime more effectively than the common
knowledge that there might be someone there that will resist and you cannot
predict who that will be.
It is the not knowing who that distributes crime evenly over
the public domain. Gun free zones are nothing more that victim rich areas
primed for criminal KAOS.
Scott D. Camassar
As a parent of a school-aged child, husband of a teacher and NRA life member, I say this: tell me a new "gun control" law that will prevent school shootings, and I'll support it. Every time I ask a well-meaning gun-hater this question they either have no response or offer up the same tried-and-failed ideas that do nothing to prevent these horrific crimes. Guns for felons and the mentally ill? Already illegal. So is murder.
Traje Desastre
And yet I'll bet your European friends wouldn't bat an eye at going to Mexico, Costa Rica, or Barbados who all have statistically much higher per capita firearm homicides. Nor do I suspect they would mention other countries with a history of mass shootings like Azerbaijan, Finland, Canada, China (ironic), the Philippines, Russia, and even the UK after over a century of increasingly strict gun laws. Just because we air our dirty laundry in a worldwide 24/7 news cycle don't think that we're somehow more violent than the rest of the world.
And don't go thinking that gun violence is somehow more awful than all other forms of violence. The UK may have a relatively low firearm homicide rate, but they've also been declared the "Violent Crime Capital of Europe", having a worse rate of violent crime than the US and South Africa. That's likely gone down since 2009, but it's hard to tell because the government intentionally under reports violent crime by only counting convictions.
The FBI numbers include EVERYTHING, even if the accused turns out to be innocent. We over report, they under report. They took away freedoms (including that of self-defense WITHOUT a firearm, or with a fake one), we treat our citizens like adults that can manage some responsibility. And they do. Police chiefs all over the country have been quoted as saying that they were proven totally wrong as concealed carry permits went way up and violent crime went down or at worst stayed the same.
The problems of mass killings is as old as humanity. The Malay word "amoq" that we've adopted as "amok" describes this very phenomenon, where a man would with little warning grab a knife and start killing people until he was overpowered by bystanders. To say we would be better off focusing on the tools these people use rather than dealing realistically and honestly with the problem itself is the same as saying "just a few dead children is okay". Even if you COULD get rid of all guns and keep them out of the country (which the drug war shows is impossible) these people would go back to knives, swords, axes, or worse bombs like the Bath, Michigan bombing. Even a gallon of gas could be used to devastating effect, and would NEVER be regulated.
The reality is not that we can't protect our children, it's that we WON'T. We won't face the fact that evil people who want to kill children exist. It's so much easier to blame an inanimate object.
Luke Simpson
"The difference: we arm ours. Often, with automatic weapons, as was the case in the Colorado movie theater shooting, which allow the quick killing and maiming of large numbers of innocent people."
"Our decision as a nation is whether we will continue to arm these young men, or make real efforts to keep guns out of their hands – especially automatic weapons."
This is misinformation. You are a lawyer? Stop spreading this false information. Automatic weapons are NOT easy to buy in this country. They require a class III firearms license, and acquiring one is an extensive process. Having a class III firearms license also subjects your home to random inspection by law enforcement. Automatic weapons were not used in the Aurora shooting, nor were they used in the Clackamas mall shooting. In fact, they were not used in any recent mass shooting. Educate yourself a little more before you write a piece like this.
Donna@MummyCentral
I was a young journalist who had just moved to Scotland when a crazed gunman entered a primary school in Dunblane and killed 16 children and their teacher in 1996. The Government responded by banning the private ownership of handguns. A national amnesty saw 160,000 weapons surrendered. I admit I was sceptical - thinking anyone who wanted to commit a crime would find a way to get a gun. But we haven't had a repeat of this sort of crime since. God willing we never will.
Slammer321
I remember that particular act. You are comparing apples to oranges. We have a true democracy, not a socialist republic. The power that decided this particular bit of legislation did not have to jump through the hoops of our type of government. Thank God. Take away the guns and you are nothing but a slave, to the thugs that have brought you Gitmo and blackwater.