Gun Violence: A Uniquely American Disease Devouring Our Soul

January 26th, 2023 by Tom Lynch

America suffered through 647 mass shootings in 2022, which is just a little better than the worst year on record, 2021, a year in which we saw 692 of them. In the last nine days, three mass shootings happened in California, killing 18 people. Thus far, in the first 26 days of 2023 there have been 40, which is more than any other January on record.

The 40 mass shootings in the the first 26 days of January resulted in 86 deaths. Although any death from gun violence is tragic, deaths from mass shootings make up a small percentage of all gun violence deaths. In 2022, there were more than 44,000 of them, 20,138 if you exclude suicides.  Through the first 26 days of January, there have already been 3,030 gun violence deaths nationally.   Here’s a map from the Gun Violence Archive* showing where all those deaths happened. Remember: It’s only 26 days.

If you extrapolate this for the full year, you’ll project more than 45,000 deaths. Now, mass shootings are not proxies for overall gun violence, but it could be instructive (and scary) to realize January is an historically low mass shooting month (relatively speaking).

How does America react to this continuing carnage? It yawns.

Oh, we hear from the politicians with their “thoughts and prayers” routine and go through the required few hours of television coverage (TV’s Mantra: “If it bleeds, it leads”), but after that we slip back into our desensitized cocoons. Most of the mass shootings go unnoticed. At 1.77 per day, who can keep up?

Beginning in 1959, and as it has every year since, the Gallup organization polled Americans with this question: “Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?”  When Gallup asked that question in 1959, 60% of Americans said “Yes, there should be such a law.” Thirty-two years later, in 1991, the “Yes” group had decreased to 43%, and thirty years after that, in 2021, only 19% of Americans were still saying “Yes.” A whopping 80% now said “No.” Credit the NRA. It has done a magnificent marketing job.

Since 1959, when Gallup also reported 78% of Americans believed laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, the decline in support for banning guns has been inversely proportional to the 63-year steady, linear rise in gun ownership and violence. The result is what we have today. Forty-five percent of all households now own at least one handgun. US gun owners possess 393.3 million weapons, according to a 2018 report by the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based organization. That is at least 60 million more guns than there are people. It is no surprise gun deaths routinely exceed the number of deaths due to auto accidents.

And it only got worse after Americans went on a gun buying spree beginning in 2020. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which the FBI collects, is a significant indicator of firearms purchases. It is noteworthy that background checks jumped 40% in 2020 from the previous year to 39.7 million checks. The frenzy only cooled slightly to 38.9 million checks in 2021.

Where do all those guns come from? Why, from the 71,600 federally licensed gun dealers operating nationwide, of course. That’s more than 1,400 per state.

It may interest you to know that the proposition reflected in Gallup’s question precisely mirrors the law in the UK. No one is allowed to own a gun except “police and other authorized persons.” Exceptions are made for hunting and target shooting, but these are highly regulated and controlled by government. There is very little handgun violence in the UK. To this, you may say, “Without guns, people will just find another way to kill.” To which I reply, “I’d rather try to outrun a knife than a bullet.”

I, like many others smarter than I, have written about this often. It almost seems as if it’s an annual requirement in which we fulfill Albert Einstein’s (possibly misattributed) definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”

A University of Washington 2015 study found three million Americans carried a loaded handgun daily; nine million did so at least once a month. Since then, 19 states have passed permitless carry laws, which allow residents to carry concealed handguns in public without a license. There are now 25 states that allow this. If all this weren’t bad enough, only 18 states require “live-fire training” for people carrying concealed firearms.

Is gun violence evenly distributed around the country? Actually, no. It is far more prevalent in red states. These are the states with “stand your ground” statutes and permitless concealed carry laws. Once again, Mississippi leads the way with 28.6 gun violence deaths per 100,000 persons.

Firearm Mortality by State

Compared to the rest of the developed world, every one of our firearm statistics are staggeringly out of whack. As I reported in May of 2022, the US dwarfs the 28 most economically developed countries in the 38-member OECD** in deaths by firearms. Not only is our firearm death rate nearly 25 times higher than our OECD companions, our total homicide rate is eight times higher. Can’t get away from it. We are a violent society.

It’s not much, but there is one ever so tiny glimmer of light invading the darkness of firearm carnage in America. That would be the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, signed into law by President Biden in June, 2022. This is the first major gun reform law in three decades. It includes $750 million in funding for states to improve or enact red flag laws and other crisis intervention programs, $250 million for community-based violence intervention initiatives, and $200 million for improving the national background check system. Millions more will go to school safety, police, and mental health programs.

Gun violence is a cancer eating away the heart and soul of America. It is amazing to realize that, despite the never-ending bloodbath, the country has managed to survive, prosper, thrive, and lead the world in so many areas.

Amazing, indeed.

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*The Gun Violence Archive is a nonprofit research group that tracks shootings and their characteristics in the United States. It defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrator(s), are shot in one location at roughly the same time.

**The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, founded by the US and it allies shortly after the close of the Second World War. Its members are the most economically developed countries.

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