Gun Violence
and the Numbing Response of America
This was about 50 years ago, I had been waiting for my now ex-wife to come home and it was around 2 in the morning and I was seething because she was so late so I decided to see if she was still at the bar where she and a friend had gone and I arrived to see her talking, I would say mutual flirting, with a guy at the bar and I lost it, like most spouses would. I grabbed, or rather, tugged my wife’s arm and got in the face of the now, frightened guy and told him that he was messing with my wife and we left. It was just the latest event in a marriage that had been unraveling for months but fortunately never reaching the point of physical violence. If I had a gun, I might have used it that night, but I didn’t and the worst (or best) thing to happen was a short time later, I got divorced.
I am actually in the minority of Americans who has never experienced gun violence, directly or for someone they cared for.
The gun control lobbying group, Everytown for Gun Safety, reported that in a recent national poll, 58 percent of adult respondents said that they or someone they care for had experienced gun violence in their lifetime. Not to bury you in an avalanche of numbers but these findings deserve repeating:
* More than 22,000 Americans die of firearm suicide every year.
* In the cities, gun homicides are most prevalent in racially segregated neighborhoods with high rates of poverty and low educational attainment. As a result, homicides disproportionately affect people of color.
* Every year, around 100,000 Americans survive a gunshot wound and are faced with a life-long process of physical and emotional healing, as well as heavy economic costs for both survivors, communities, and society as a whole.
* Firearms are the second leading cause of death for children and teens and the first leading cause of death for Black children and teens in the U.S. Every year, nearly 3,000 children and teens are shot and killed and around 15,600 are shot and injured.
* An estimated 4.5 million American women have been threatened with a gun by an intimate partner.
* In an average year, more than 10,300 violent hate crimes involve a gun, more than 28 each day.
Anger and jealousy are the most common, strongest and most dangerous of human emotions but the ramifications are much less lethal in countries with strict gun control laws. Fortunately we don’t all have guns although many Americans do own one or more firearms, and you don’t need to get lost in the numbers to understand. A 2017 survey by the Switzerland-based, Small Arms Survey (SAS) showed that the U.S. is the only nation in the world where civilian guns outnumber people. There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the survey, while, for comparison, there were 4.9 guns for every 100 residents of the United Kingdom. About 44 percent of U.S. adults live in a household with a gun, and about one-third own one personally, according to an October 2020 Gallup survey.
And it’s no brilliant deduction to conclude that people who are upset are likely to act out and if they have a gun, they are more likely to use a gun. And younger people are less likely to think with their heads and more with their hearts.
The younger you are the more likely you will get angry and potentially act on that anger, according to Gallup’s 2019 Global Emotions Report. Almost a third of respondents in the U.S. between the ages of 15 to 29 reported feeling stressed, and exactly half reported worry in their daily life. Among those 15 to 29 years old, 74 percent reported stress, 50 percent had worries and 32 percent, anger; among those 30 to 49 years old, 65 percent cited stress; 52 percent had worry and 25 percent anger; and for those 50 and older, 44 percent, stress; 38 percent, worry; 16 percent, anger.
Gallup surveyed 1,000 adults in 143 nations, and one good finding, for Americans, anyway, was that anger tends to manifest itself more often in certain parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East. For example, 45 percent of people in Armenia experienced “a lot of anger yesterday,” the highest rate recorded anywhere in the world. For obvious reasons, Iraq had the second highest levels of anger in the polling at 44 percent.
There are many reasons to be angry and a lot of things have triggered my anger, feeling that I am not appreciated either at work or at home; being passed over for a raise when another less competent worker gets a pay boost; feeling that people have talked behind my back, especially people who I thought liked me; not being invited to a party where it included people I thought were my friends; being ignored; a truck that tailgates me, with high beams blinding me, then cuts me off, while the driver blasts his horn; waiting two hours on line at the motor vehicles office only to find I don’t have the proper documents for a duplicate title and having the worker not even look up to tell me the news politely; people who make obscene amounts of money for doing very little. I have had very dark periods in my life but fortunately I had the emotional tools to find light but many never see the light and they turn to violence as a final solution.
For many people, anger is a fact of life in growing up in families with abusive parents or parents whose inability to handle their rage leads to prison. Some people are biologically prone to violence and many were taught that the only way to deal with anger is through violence. There are more angry people around than before and more people with weapons, just look at the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and more people have guns. Even before the attempted insurrection, a 2017 survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 46 percent of adults who live in rural areas said they owned a gun, versus 28 percent of adults who live in the suburbs and just 19 percent in urban areas. It is no surprise that 44 percent of Republicans and independents who lean to the Republican Party said they owned a gun, and only 20 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners said the same.
Most gun owners, 67 percent, said they have guns for self-protection, that means two out of three of your neighbors say they have guns for self-protection. About 38 percent have guns for hunting and 30 percent said they are into sport shooting. More jaw dropping statistics: 66 percent of gun owners said they own more than one firearm; roughly 29 percent said they had five or more guns.
Most gun owners cite that personal freedom to have guns is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution but there is a greater right than owning a gun and that is the right to live. The gun owners’ beliefs are wrapped around a warped view of racism, the America of the wild west and a constant campaign of propaganda by the gun lobby and gun market.
Those who hide behind some phantom god-given American right to have a gun should do some soul searching and realize the part they are playing in a country that continues to barrel down to a very bad place.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) has continued to increase in membership, growing by around 225,000 members since January, the Associated Press reported. The NRA boasts more than 5 million dues-paying members and in 2016, the organization spent more than $30 million to support trump’s campaign.
About 38 percent of gun owners said they kept a gun loaded and easily accessible all of the time when they are at home. And about a quarter of handgun owners said they carry a gun outside of their home all or most of the time. In January, there was a 60 percent increase in the number of people requesting federal background checks so they can buy guns.
Gun violence is rampant. Around 44 percent of Americans said they personally knew someone who has been shot, either accidentally or intentionally. In 2019, the number of U.S. deaths from gun violence was about 4 per 100,000 people. That’s 18 times the average rate in other developed countries.
The availability of guns is tragically a part of many suicides. The U.S. had 23,365 suicides by firearms in 2019, 44 percent of the world total. In Russia, 1,953 used a gun to kill themselves and in China, there were 467 reported suicides by guns. If you’re looking for sanity, American Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Brunei, Cook Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Sao Tome and Principe reported no gun suicides in 2019, all according to the United Nations Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.