Gun violence is on the news media everyday and yet nothing is happening. Why do our politicians think that the guns laws are not tough enough and would making them tougher prevent what has been happening?
But first here are some facts from the Brady Campaign:
Every Day on Average (all ages)
Every day, 315 people in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides & suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, and police intervention.
Every day, 93 people die from gun violence:
- 32 are murdered
- 58 die from suicide
- 1 killed unintentionally
- 1 killed by legal intervention
- 1 died but was intent unknown
Every day, 222 people are shot and survive:
- 164 injured in an attack
- 10 survive a suicide attempt
- 45 shot unintentionally
- 3 are shot in a legal intervention
These numbers are quite eye opening, at least for me if not you.
The following map is from the Gun Violence Archive–
This shows where mass shootings have taken place for this year. Here is a link from the same organization that is a little more informative and is a little more scary, at least for me.
My point is that gun violence is a lot more than it should be, but what are the causes? Well it seems to many politicians that the gun laws we now have need to be strengthened. But how they do not agree on and for me are they even looking at realistic solutions that will actually fix this set of problems.
Point one that we can never totally outlaw guns. The right to bear arms is in our Constitution, the 2nd Amendment and also guns culture are thoroughly ingrained in our culture. The Supreme Court has ruled that Americans most emphatically have a right to own guns and no state, local or federal law can take that away. Yet with all the killing going on by those using guns (illegal owned mostly) there has been no agreement on exactly what would work. Read this article by The Atlantic, it is very informative and it talks about solutions.
Some politicians want to use technology to make it impossible to fire a gun if you are not its owner and others want to use computer databases to make sure that guns do not get into the hands of those who should never have them. I am in favor of the latter because I can not see how all the guns already out there could be retrofitted.
Would making the guns laws tougher help, yes and no. It would make it harder for those who want to own a gun legally and yet it would make no difference to the criminals ( and mentally ill) who can find guns easily enough.
What I think is needed is to enforce the laws already on the books with vastly better interactive communication between the federal law enforcement agencies and local authorities. For example the shootings in a Texas church have put a spotlight on the fact that the Navy did not tell the FBI about the shooter’s conviction which should have prevented him from buying the rifle he used to kill 26 people. This must be fixed and better oversight is desperately needed.
That is my opinion- Jumpin Jersey Mike
