Another week, another deranged guy shooting up another store. When will this stuff end?
A week ago, a nutjob in the Atlanta, Georgia area went on a killing spree, pumping three massage parlors with bullets, killing eight people. Six of the victims were Asian women. The perpetrator was apprehended and confessed to the murders but excused his behavior by noting that he had a “sex addiction” and he needed to reduce the “temptation” that these facilities represented.
That’s a new one: I wouldn’t want to be the defense lawyer who tries to sell that horseshit excuse. (Of course, I wouldn’t have believed that O.J. would have walked, so who am I to judge?)
A week later, in Boulder, Colorado, another sicko gunned town 9 customers and one heroic police officer in a grocery store because…he was unhappy, I guess. We will hear more about this guy’s mental state as time goes by, but people who know him say that he has temper and behavior issues galore. One of the tragic aspects of this incident is that the fellow bought the assault rifle used in the massacre just six days before the event. The rampage occurred just ten days after a judge blocked a ban on assault rifles passed by the City of Boulder in 2018. (That judge had better hope that he’s not up for re-election any time in the near future. He’s got a lot of explaining to do to the loved ones of the deceased.)
These events have again stirred the partisan political debate over gun control: Democrats want some and Republicans want none. In the past five years, there have been 29 incidents in the United States where four or more persons were victims of gun violence. Despite this carnage, nothing has been done by our political leaders to address the problem. I don’t expect anything this time, either. Problem-solving is not in a politicians job description, I guess.
I have a gun and I would prefer to keep it in my bureau, ready to defend my home from bad guys. However, I’m an adult with no record of domestic violence, criminal activity, or mental defect. The problem in America is that virtually anyone can obtain a gun legally and that weapon can be military grade. An assault weapon can do a lot of damage very fast, particularly in the hands of deranged individuals.
Do average citizens need such weapons? Did our Founding Fathers anticipate this type of weaponry in the hands of regular folk when they instituted the Second Amendment? Back in those days, killing was a very deliberate act (load, shoot, reload), and the purpose of the Amendment (“a well-regulated militia being necessary…”) essentially became moot with the advent of a standing army and National Guard units in each State.
The Founding Fathers would be aghast at the idea of a pimply-faced teenager gunning down a couple of dozen high schoolers in a few minutes with a military assault weapon that he could legally possess because…some of his school mates called him a booger eater.
I think the argument in favor of total Second Amendment authority to secure, possess, and use weapons of all types is mainly driven by the U.S. arms industry and its stooges within our citizenry. Their answer to virtually every problem concerning society involves putting more weapons in people’s homes, in schools, and in holsters (“open carry”)…for protection.
The guns per capita rate in the United States currently stands at 1.2, which means that there are more guns in civilian possession than there are citizens. That is six times the rate in France and Germany, 24 times the rate in the United Kingdom, and 400 times the rate in Japan.
If the “more guns the better” type of thinking actually worked, the gun violence carnage in our country would be much lower than it is. The homicide rate (deaths per 100,000) in the United States was 5.30 in 2017, compared to 1.30 in France, 1.20 in the United Kingdom, 1.00 in Germany, and 0.20 in Japan. Violent gun deaths in 2017 (per 100,000 population) were 0.04 in Japan, 0.06 in the United Kingdom, and a whopping 4.43 in the United States.
The conclusion is inescapable: more guns in society beget more violence, which begets more gun deaths.
Why does this country, which many people like to think of as a “world leader”, allow this to occur? How did we allow the arms industry to determine behavior in our society? We are leading the world in being stupid about guns.
I don’t have a clue how that happened. And yet, it happened on my generations’ watch!
When I was young, most people didn’t have guns in the home, certainly no one (except the military) had assault weapons, and firearms were more difficult to obtain. Mass killings by deranged individuals using firearms were unheard of. Back then, police walked a “beat” with a nightstick and a .38 Special, and most cops rarely used those weapons.
Nowadays, the first response of police arriving on scene is to draw their weapon, anticipating trouble. (Who can blame them: there are so many guns out there in the civilian world!) This escalation, due to the possibility of gun violence, is partially to blame for many of the police/minority encounters that go bad quickly.
I blame the glut of weaponry for the spike of violence in our country. The statistics are irrefutable. Disagreements, when guns aren’t present, tend to be resolved by less serious means. Hurt feelings, a few bruises, or a black eye can be overcome; a gunshot wound, maybe not.
If that doofus who attacked the massage parlor had done so with his fists, it is likely that all eight of the victims would have survived. Similarly, if the berserk Boulder shopper had been armed with a club or a knife, it is likely that the damage would have been markedly less.
Other countries haven’t used “thoughts and prayers” to solve this societal problem. They’ve either banned deadly weaponry entirely or made the acquisition and possession of such things difficult, particularly for felons, the mentally ill, and testosterone-charged youth.
One would think that the Greatest Nation on Earth could do better.
But we won’t.