By Brandon Luper
All the reader will get by reading this short article are some facts and figures about gun violence in the United States. My hope is that, having crammed all these calculations and statistics into her brain, the reader’s picture of what America’s gun culture is really like will go from snowy screen analog to crisp, digital high definition.
If the reader is up for such a journey, let’s
get started. During the 2013-2014 school year, there were 47 school shootings
in the United States. That’s one every
four school days. 31 people have been killed in these shootings, many more
injured. And, despite Eliot Rodgers’ misogynistic rampage at University of
California Santa Barbara on May 23, it should be noted that this is a down year.
Last school year Adam Lanza killed
26 people including 20 six and seven year-olds at Sandy Hook Elementary School
in Newtown, Connecticut. The year before
that One Goh killed seven college students in Oakland. The year before that a
professor shot three of her colleagues to death during a faculty meeting at the
University of Alabama. The year before that a student was shot dead in a
residence hall at, of all places, Harvard. The year before that a graduate
student in, yes, social work entered an auditorium at the University of
Northern Illinois and shot 25 people. The year before that at Virginia Tech,
Seung-Hui Cho killed 33 people in two separate attacks on April 16. Other than
the incident at Harvard, all these shooters were mentally ill, but were easily
able to obtain at least one gun.
Of course, even if schools do possess
an aura of inviolability which makes these shootings all the more unsettling,
we should recall that schools are just one place in our society in which gun
deaths occur. They also occur in homes, restaurants, and businesses. On several
occasions recently, they have occurred in churches. This shouldn’t be all that
surprising since in the U.S. approximately 10,000 homicides are committed with
a firearm annually. That’s more than
twice the number of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen killed during the entirety
of the Iraq War. According to the Iraq Body Count Project, 174,000 Iraq
civilians and combatants died from 2003-2013. Back in the United States, we
eclipsed the ignominious 100,000 mark with gun homicides alone. Perhaps, then,
it’s not surprising that the United States’ general homicide rate of 4.8 per
100,000 is nearly twice that of the next highest Western nation, Liechtenstein,
and almost five times that of any major Western power.
Perhaps a few facts about American
gun laws are also apropos: five U.S. states (Vermont, Arkansas, Wyoming,
Arizona, and Alaska) require no permit at all to carry a gun. Most other states
are “Shall-issue” states, which means that the state must give a Conceal Carry
permit to any qualified candidate. Only nine states have any other restrictions
on Conceal Carry, and every state in the union allows it. Because of Printz v.
United States, state and local police departments are not required to enforce
federal gun law. A bill to renew the ban on assault weapons was introduced by
Senator Diane Feinstein after the Sandy Hook massacre, but the Senate voted
60-40 against on April 17, 2013. Only six states require any sort of
registration for any sort of firearm.
On
May 24th, outside the courthouse in Santa Barbara, CA, Richard Martinez
spoke with the media about his son Chris, who was killed by Eliot
Rodgers at UCSB the night before.
"Why
did Chris die?” he asked. “Chris died because of craven, irresponsible
politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris'
right to live?...When will this insanity stop?"
While
right-wing media outlets have quietly seethed at Martinez, the facts
outlined above have, no doubt, left the rest of us asking the same
question.
