I recently read that during the first six years of President Obama’s administration, tragically over sixteen thousand children were shot and killed. In Chicago alone, Obama’s home town, the number of shootings added up to more than one a day. On April 15th, a gunman killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. It is the latest in a harrowing string of mass shootings in the U.S. Last month alone, eight people were fatally shot at massage businesses across the Atlanta area, and 10 died in gunfire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. President Biden, who has had the flag lowered to half mast three times in his first hundred days in office, has called the situation a “national embarrassment”. I would add that it is an embarrassment that will not go away for a long time, if ever.
Just take 2020’s final statistics for gun violence. Gun violence killed nearly 20,000 Americans, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, more than any other year in at least two decades. An additional 24,000 people died by suicide with a gun. Gunshot injuries also rose dramatically, to nearly 40,000, over 8,000 more than in 2017. According to Archive data, nearly 300 children were shot and killed in 2020, a 50% increase over the previous year. More than 5,100 kids and teens 17 and younger were killed or injured last year — over 1,000 more than any other year since 2014. However, these are simply statistics. Unfortunately, each and every one represents a human being who was or is someone’s father, mother, son, daughter, etc., etc.
The U.S. is the only country where there are more guns than people. Recent surveys find that about 40% of adult Americans own a gun or live with someone who does. According to 2018 estimates from the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey, American civilians own 393 million guns, ranking the U.S. number one in firearms per capita. We’re not just talking about single-shot weapons, but also automatic and semi-automatic handguns and military-style rifles capable of horrendously killing many people in a very short time. In 2020, people purchased about 23 million guns, a 64% increase over 2019 sales. Surveys continue to find that a majority of gun owners believe they are safer with a gun in their homes. And many gun rights activists, supported by a long-standing narrative from the National Rifle Association (NRA), continue to argue that “a good guy with a gun” can save people from gun violence. But numerous studies have found that self-defensive gun use to prevent or combat violence is rare. For example, a 2015 Harvard study found that people defended themselves with a gun in less than 1% of 14,000 crimes from 2007 to 2011.
How often have we heard the NRA declare that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” However, it would seem to most rational persons that the ready and widespread availability of guns greatly contributes to these tragedies. There is no way in getting around the evidence! The easy access to guns, even by persons with mental health conditions or with a history of violence, contributes to the above outcomes. Ratified in 1791, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been deemed by American courts to protect the right to keep and bear arms. Aimed to facilitate the formation of militias to defend a young country at the time, this antiquated and perverse notion continues to plague the country. Recent events and the unquestionable statistics prove it. Sadly, despite all the prayers, the scourge of gun violence in America is here to stay.
FROLITICKS 
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