20 Feb 2018 How Do I Feel About Guns And Gun Violence?

How Do You Feel About Guns And Gun Violence?

How many people have to be killed and in what timeframe do they have to be killed for it to become not only national news but round-the-clock national news? Are gun deaths tragic, absolutely and unequivocally.  If 5 are killed it is one day story nationally.  If 50 are killed it is round the clock for days.

I am not a member of the National Rifle Association. I am not a gun advocate or detractor of guns. Do I feel strongly in support of the Second Amendment, yes. Do I think people have a right to assault rifles, that I am not so supportive of.

There is a lot of moral indignation about guns. The enraged side wants to see much stricter gun laws. The other side wants to see enforcement of current laws. One side wants to go after the guns, the other the people who use them.

I’m not trying to take aside on this. Both have merits that I can support. I don’t believe it is in either/or proposition.

Here is the statistic that may surprise some. Gun violence kills an average of 13,000 per year in the USA. In 1998 they were approximately 240 million guns in the USA. Today it is over 360 million. So, there is over a 50% increase in the number of guns but not a similar percentage increase in gun violence.

Not only did the number of guns go up so did the population from 276 million to over 320 million. Gun numbers go up, population goes up, but numbers killed by guns does not change as much.

Of the 13,000 homicides over 7,500 were blacks.  Blacks make up 13% of the population.  Black males make up 6% of the population, however, every 5 days more of them are killed than in the Orlando Night Club tragedy (which was categorized as a terrorism attack).  You don’t see that broadcast each week.  In 2016, of the thousands of blacks killed: police were responsible for 233 and non-blacks under 300.  In no way do I want to minimize this number.  I am not making a political statement. There are serious debates that need to be had on police conduct. I want to see more national reporting and debate on who is killing who.  I am not blind to the socio-economic and drug reasons for the number of black deaths.  I also know that once race and gun killing becomes part of the debate, it can quickly degenerate into an ugly situation.

There are proposals to increase the time it takes to register and license a firearm.  I don’t know of any statistics that would show how many killings would have been prevented.  Do I support longer registration time, yes.  How long, I think a week is reasonable.  The Orlando nightclub shooter had every right under current laws to purchase guns used. Even with increased registration time it would not have prevented that attack.

I do not see where the gun debate will end and common ground can be found. However, the debate must continue. We can’t just have things continue as normal. Too many lives are lost. We can have responsible gun laws. People can own guns responsibly. The much broader issue is how we limit the actions of those who use the guns for killing people.