We have a problem with guns
On Thursday, a 26-year-old man later identified as Chris Harper Mercer shot more than 30 people at Umpqua Community College, resulting in 9 deaths and at least 20 injuries. The victims of this last shooting were college students like us. They had friends and crushes. They had hobbies and passions. They had favorite classes and tests that they stressed over. They probably had a favorite show to binge watch on Netflix. They had plans for their future. Now they’re gone.
This brings the total (confirmed) mass shootings this year to 45, according to the FBI database’s definition of mass shooting, which describes a mass shooting as four or more people murdered in a single event. According to the Mass Shooting Tracker’s definition, which ignores death toll and only counts based on the number of individuals shot in a single event, there have been 294 mass shootings since Jan. 1. Bear in mind that by the time this article runs on Monday, there will only have been 278 days since the beginning of the year. This brings the total deaths from gun violence this year to 8,512 (as noted by President Obama, that number is dramatically higher than the number of Americans killed by terrorists in the past forty years, even including the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which totals at 3,512).
So far, this story has run through the same motions as every other mass shooting, and in all likelihood will continue to do so. The news reports start coming in. The killer is identified. If he’s alive (and make no mistake, it is almost always a he, according to the Political Research Associates), the authorities drag a motive out of him. If he’s dead, the media speculates until they come up with a believable motive (Mercer was killed by authorities at the scene. His motive is, as of this writing, still uncertain).
Our nation mourns. The President gives a press release mourning the victims, and usually attends their funerals. Some ideas like more gun control, more mental health care, or less violent media are thrown out, but never result in any actual policy change. The families and friends of the victims continue to grieve as the rest of the country moves on. Eventually, your friend asks if you remember that horrible shooting back in 2015 and you reply, “Which one?”
We as a society find something to blame. Maybe we blame poor parenting. Maybe we blame bad schooling. Maybe we blame the victims for not having enough security. Maybe we blame our violent media. Maybe we blame mental illness. Maybe we blame figureheads that use too fiery of rhetoric. If we’re really desperate, we might even allow ourselves to accept the realities of rampant misogyny and racism so that we can blame them.
We don’t blame these things because we actually intend to do anything about them, of course, otherwise we would be pouring resources into mental health programs, race and gender education programs, or even funds to sponsor non-violent media. We blame these things because they are abstract “facts” about the world. Complicated systems that we might as well consider forces of nature. We blame these things because it means that we can rationalize these kinds of mass shootings as a simple fact of life, or at least a fact of American life.
In other words, we just accept that the mass killing of innocents, while absolutely tragic, is simply something that we have to learn to live with.
Except, that objectively isn’t true. We know that other developed nations simply don’t have this problem. The United States has a firearm-related fatality rate of 10.4 per 100,000 people. That’s higher than all but a few countries in Africa, Central America and South America. It’s also almost five times higher than every single country in Europe, all of whom have stricter gun and ammunition laws than we do (yes, even Switzerland).
We know, objectively, that most mass shootings are perpetrated by individuals who, under the current laws, acquired their firearm legally. We know objectively that states within the US that have stricter gun laws have a significantly lower firearm-related fatality rate than states that don’t. We know objectively that places with fewer guns have fewer homicides (so no, the mass killers of the world will not just do their dirty work with knives).
We know how to prevent a big part of this problem, and we choose not to. We choose to obfuscate the issue by blaming some external force that we can’t possibly control. We choose to wait before acting because it’s still too soon to “politicize” this issue, then never actually get around to addressing it. We choose to pretend that we could have prevented this tragedy if we had had even more guns with which to defend ourselves, even though there are already almost as many guns in this country as people.
We as a nation have decided that this situation — a situation where college students and movie-goers and church attendees and young children are gunned down — is a one we can live with.
— austinlabonty@gmail.com
I can hear the pleading in your voice. Take the instruments of these tragedies away and the violence goes away you say. Let me help muddy the water even more with a few facts that you have wrong. Cities in America with the highest crime rates also have the strictest gun laws. Take Chicago for instance. Overnight 25 murders happened in that city, yet there were no speeches, no president standing at a podium, no discussion. Its the same in Baltimore, Detroit, Miami,… (all cities controlled by a single political party, I might add). This particular tragedy happened in Oregon, a state with some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. It happened in a gun free zone. It happened in a state where background checks are mandatory etc, etc, etc. Europe has violence too. To say that we’re more prone to gun violence is like saying Italians are more likely to eat Pasta. Of course we are, that’s what’s available. But it doesn’t mean that other crimes aren’t more likely in Europe because of their culture (I’m part Italian and my family knew all about the Mafia in Sicily). This isn’t a problem about the tools available to us, its a problem with who we are internally. Its about poor families, bad schools, and a terrible economy. You’re right, we can’t control it. Get that out of your head. You’ll never be able to control choice. You can be Stalin or Hitler in your totality of control and you can’t stop this kind of behavior. No matter how controlling you get, you’ll never stop it. All gun control will do, is limit the freedom of the average person and enhance the power of the government. Nothing else. I choose to trust the American people and let the “great experiment” in self rule continue.
Your comment of : “We know, objectively, that most mass shootings are perpetrated by individuals who, under the current laws, acquired their firearm legally. We know objectively that states within the US that have stricter gun laws have a significantly lower firearm-related fatality rate than states that don’t. We know objectively that places with fewer guns have fewer homicides (so no, the mass killers of the world will not just do their dirty work with knives).” I don’t know where you got your statistics but anywhere I looked the opposite is true. Forbes/Opinion, “more people are buying firearms, while firearm-related homicides and suicides are steadily diminishing. ” and… “According to DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. gun-related homicides dropped 39 percent over the course of 18 years, from 18,253 during 1993, to 11,101 in 2011. During the same period, non-fatal firearm crimes decreased even more, a whopping 69 percent. The majority of those declines in both categories occurred during the first 10 years of that time frame. Firearm homicides declined from 1993 to 1999, rose through 2006, and then declined again through 2011. Non-fatal firearm violence declined from 1993 through 2004, then fluctuated in the mid-to-late 2000s.” Also You are incorrect about where most of the “bad guys” got their firearms, “And where did the bad people who did the shooting get most of their guns? Were those gun show “loopholes” responsible? Nope. According to surveys DOJ conducted of state prison inmates during 2004 (the most recent year of data available), only two percent who owned a gun at the time of their offense bought it at either a gun show or flea market. About 10 percent said they purchased their gun from a retail shop or pawnshop, 37 percent obtained it from family or friends, and another 40 percent obtained it from an illegal source.” So sorry just about everything you quoted was very much wrong. Another source “Guns in America” is quoted as saying: “Nations with strict gun control laws have substantially higher murder rates than those who do not in general. In fact, the 9 European nations with the lowest gun ownership rate have a combined murder rate 3x that of the 9 European nations with the highest gun ownership rate!” and another “Fact Check.org” states, “there has been a massive increase in gun sales. Some things are not so clear — such as whether there is causation between more guns and more violent crimes. And some are contrary to the general impression — for example, the rate of gun murders is down, not up.” I can go on and one… I am sorry sir , but it does seem to me that you need to search more before you quote something that apparently is NOT true