Today, October 1, 2015, there was another school shooting in the USA, this time at a community college in Oregon. I read in one news report that this makes 40 school shootings in 2015 alone and 142 school shootings since Sandy Hook in 2012. Do my friends on Facebook think, as I do, that the only acceptable number of school shootings per year is zero?
We all know how the news coverage of this shooting is going to play out: A flurry of angry arguments from both sides of the gun control issue and then, all-too-quickly, the incident will fade from the public dialogue to be replaced with some other hot topic – like a celebrity drug or sex scandal.
In the coming days we will be hearing the suggestion from a lot of people that the answer to public massacres is to have students and teachers, and movie goers, and grocery shoppers, and joggers, and golfers, and basically everybody carry a gun in the classroom, or wherever they go, so they can shoot back when a maladjusted jerk with a gun shows up. I want to go on record as saying that when our political leaders talk about ideas like this as if they really make sense, we are all just f—king screwed.
In spite of all the catchy slogans about people, guns, and who or what is responsible for the killing, one truth is clear: Nobody can shoot anybody unless they have a gun.
See the chart of gun-related homicides (this data does not include gun-related suicides and accidental gun deaths) in the USA versus terrorism deaths in the attached article.
Consider that of these 10,000 – 13,000 gun homicides occurring every year in the USA the victims are usually, if not always, innocent people – not bad guys. Guns kill.
Read this article which contains an excellent graphic comparing annual gun homicide deaths in the USA to annual terrorism deaths in the USA.
Monte