It's difficult for me to get my head around the amount of people killed by gunfire in the USA. If we get one shooting it's major news country wide for a fortnight.
Any way to get a bit of context I tried googling some numbers of people shot so far in 2023 and this website came up....
American deaths get even weirder when you look at the statistics! I did my high school senior research paper on car safety back in the day...the number of people we lose in car accidents EVERY YEARS is absolutely STAGGERING! In 2021, we lost an estimated 42,915 people in America alone!
“The overall numbers are still moving in the wrong direction. Now is the time for all states to double down on traffic safety,” said Steven Cliff, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
www.nbcnews.com
The solution to mitigating literally tens of thousands of deaths was pretty simple:
1. Require seat belts, airbags, and crumple zones on all roadworthy vehicles. Government buyback of old models like Cash 4 Clunkers.
2. Limit maximum speeds to 20 MPH. A head-on collision at a combined 40 MPH with safety equipment is
largely survivable.
3. Require a breathalyzer device test for the driver for start the vehicle, as 25% of ALL traffic fatalities are a direct result of alcohol impairment.
So why not implement it & save FORTY THOUSAND LIVES per year EVERY year!? To quote Heath Ledger's Joker character:
“I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds. Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!”
The problem is that it requires
change:
1. Enough people don't care enough
2. The economic cost would be pretty bad (cross-country road trips, semi-truck trips, etc.)
With guns:
1. People
don't want to give up their guns, even if it's just the semi-automatic ones like Australia, which would statistically put a large dent in the annual fatality numbers
2. The U.S. firearm industry contributes over
$50 billion annually to the American economy
It's hard to create real change when people don't want to change & when the government isn't forcing anyone to do so. Also, the statistics get murky. "The U.S. accounts for nearly 46% of all civilian-held firearms in the world", however, "mass shootings committed with assault weapons draw national media attention, those crimes are quite rare", as "people who die in mass shootings represent a small fraction of the number who die from gun injuries in the U.S.":
We teamed up with two reporters who know a lot about firearms to create a tip sheet to help journalists avoid errors when covering gun issues.
live-journalists-resource.pantheonsite.io
Statistically:
* "In 2020, 45,222 people died from injuries caused by firearms, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
* "Most gun deaths — 54% in 2020 — are suicides."
* "Almost 43% of people killed by guns in 2020 were homicide victims."
Quote:
* “What makes guns the most common mode of suicide in this country? The answer: They are both
lethal and
accessible,” writes Madeline Drexler, editor of Harvard Public Health and the report’s author.
This is a good article on what the research says about gun buybacks:
*
https://journalistsresource.org/health/gun-buybacks-what-the-research-says/
In America,
we have more guns (393+ million)
than people (331+ million):
*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership
Throw in vintage unregistered weapons, "ghost guns" (ex. homemade 3D-printed guns), illegal weapons from over the border, etc. & it becomes an
incredibly difficult problem to solve, especially when the country remains so divided on gun control opinions:
The partisan divide that for years has defined public opinion about the nation’s gun policies remains firmly in place. Yet there continue to be several specific policy proposals that draw broad support from both Republicans and Democrats.The partisan divide that for years has defined public...
www.pewresearch.org
Very difficult problem to solve in practice. I don't see a clear solution that will unite everyone in the near future & actually work in
realistic practice unfortunately. Hopefully they will figure something out because mass shootings are intolerable!