It's the Guns, Stupid

Tom Kando

It happened again - May 14: Ten  innocent civilians (mostly black) mowed down by a racist lunatic. This time it happened  in Buffalo. Eleven  days earlier  it was  my hometown, Sacramento: Six dead - half of them women, half people of color.

American mass murder will never stop. We are moving in the wrong direction. After every  mass shooting, thousands more  add to their arsenal. There are  four hundred million fire arms in private hands in this country, and the number is growing. An increasing proportion of these weapons are rapid-fire automatic, capable of firing dozens to hundreds of rounds per minute. They are created for mass murder and nothing else.

Public opinion is also moving in the wrong direction - with ever lower levels of support for gun control legislation.

Judicial decisions increasingly favor out-of-control gun ownership of any kind by anybody.

First, there was the 2^nd Amendment It stated that Aa well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.@ Over time,  the first half of this amendment became ignored. Judges came to misinterpret the amendment, ignoring the vast differences between the eighteenth century and current conditions. 

In  District of Columbia vs. Heller (2008),  the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to possess firearms independent of service in a state militia and to use firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, including self‑defense within the home.

The powerful NRA lobby  had done its job. Many additional judicial decisions at all levels confirmed the new interpretation  of the 2^nd amendment.  A recent example occurred on May 11, 2022, when a US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California=s  law banning the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under twenty-one  is unconstitutional. And so the 2^nd amendment, which was questionable to begin with, morphed into a sacrosanct protection of one of the few constitutionally enumerated  rights placed above all else. Presciently, Chief Supreme Court  Justice Warren Burger had declared  in 1991 that the Second Amendment is a fraud.  True: the amendment=s current interpretation is most certainly fraudulent.

Together, the NRA and Republican judges appointed by Trump,  George W. Bush and  Reagan  have  solidified this country=s suicidal  gun policies.

As a result, the US has far and away the highest rate of gun deaths among all western countries.

Consider the statistics  in the table below: Our rate of gun ownership is the highest in the world. It is three times  those of  Canada, France and Germany, nine  times higher than Australia=s and Italy=s, eighteen  times higher than Japan=s and twenty-eight times higher than that of the Dutch.

Our homicide rate is the highest of  all western countries. It is three times higher than in Canada, five times higher than in the United Kingdom and France, seven times higher than in Australia, eight times higher than Germany=s, eleven times higher than in Holland, thirteen times higher than that of Italy and twenty-one times higher than Japan=s. 

In the  US, about 80% of all homicides are by  firearm: 16,786

Add to this suicides: 46,000, of which 60% by gun = 27,600

Add to that  accidental gun deaths each year: 130

Total: annual deaths by gun: 44,500

America=s numbers are  by far the highest among all Western countries, both in absolute and relative terms.

Country	homicide rates per 100,000 (2020)	homicide counts (2020)	gun ownership rates per 100	suicide rates per 100,000 (2020)
US	6.3	20,982	112.6	16.1   (46,000)
Canada	2.0	743	30.8	10.3
United Kingdom	1.20	809	?	11.2
France	1.20	779	31.2	9.7
Australia	0.9	221	15	11.3
Germany	0.8	782	30.3	8.3
Netherlands	0.6	107	3.9	9.3
Italy	0.5	285	11.9	4.3
Japan	0.3	334	6	12.2

homicide rates  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

guns per 100,000  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_guns_and_homicide)                  

Suicide rates per 100,000  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)                                                    

This country is uniquely unable to recognize one simple fact: That the ONE cause of America=s epidemic of  gun deaths  is the astronomical number of guns in private hands. So much for our vaunted AAmerican exceptionalism@!

After every mass murder, pundits and politicians resume the same old conversation, ad nauseam: What can be done? What causes this national disease? Experts go over one possible predictive factor after another. 

I taught this stuff for decades at the university. My lectures and the literature discussed  many of the same things fifty years ago  as they do now: What about cultural causes, such as violent  movies, video games and the Internet? What about psychological factors? Should we not try  to pre-identify (profile)  psychopathic individuals likely to commit mass murder? Do poverty, oppression and deprivation drive some to crime and violence, including murder? On and on. Nothing ever changes.

A concept introduced  fairly recently (although the phenomenon has  existed throughout our history) is white domestic terrorism. Racial hate crimes committed by white Americans. Certainly the event in Buffalo on May 14 was such a case.

With the exception of this last factor - hate - most of the causes pundits have been talking about are cop-outs, often  proposed by the NRA and by Fox News in order to avoid facing the ONE TRUE cause: the proliferation of guns.    Psychological profiling (and then preventive incapacitation)   of bad guys is pie in the sky, not to mention illegal.

What about racist hatred, as a cause of mass murder?

This is a huge and growing problem. People on the right - like Tucker Carlson and the rest at  Fox News  - are contributing to this heavily. They subscribe to the vile   Areplacement theory,@ The fear that America=s  white majority is being replaced by people of color and third world immigrants.

However, most deaths-by-guns are not the result of white terrorism. So I must return to the simplest and most basic cause of our country=s murder epidemic: guns. Study after study has shown that if you own a gun, you and members of your family are more likely to die by a gun.  Guns are used far more frequently by household  members to kill each other than to ward off  burglars.  Case after case overseas  has proven that the total   prohibition of rapid-fire weapons AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL reduces or practically  eliminates all mass murder.

The rest of the western world understands this. All comparable countries restrict  firearm use, except the US.  In Canada, for example,  the 1977 Federal Criminal Law Amendment Act prohibits possession of automatic weapons for anyone, except police and the military. The constitution does not contain any protection for gun owners.

Western Europe and Japan all enjoy similar or even stronger  restrictions. As a result, none of these countries suffers from  the homicide and mass murder  epidemic plaguing the US.

The best evidence comes from Australia: In 1996, that country had a massacre that killed 35 people. In the eighteen  years preceding that, the country had suffered THIRTEEN mass shootings. In response to the 1996 massacre, Australia immediately passed the National Firearms Agreement. It stipulated tight control over automatic and semi-automatic weapons, limiting their possession to  a few licensed individuals who need them for a purpose OTHER than personal protection. It also held several  massive gun  buybacks. During the decade following passage of this act, Australia experienced ZERO mass shootings.

Only one thing will put an end to the nightmare: A nationwide  federal prohibition on the possession and  use  of any rapid-fire weapon,  any weapon of mass murder, applying to the entire civilian population.

Solution:

Don=t pray.

Don=t cry.

Don=t debate the issue and run in circles wondering what=s to be done...

Just vote the bastard toadies of the NRA out of Congress.

Pass a FEDERAL law forbidding the private possession of ANY rapid-fire (semi)automatic firearm by ANY civilian in ALL states and US jurisdictions..

Repeal the 2^nd amendment. It can be done: We repealed the 18^th Amendment and the Volstead Act (Prohibition).

Or else: Continue to live in a country that loses 50,000 lives to firearms each year, a country  where you risk your life every time  you go to school,  the supermarket,  the movies, the subway or anywhere else. It=s simple. It=s not rocket science. Most western  countries have done it.

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