Letter: More guns in more places does not make us safer

Posted 10/9/17

To the editor:

We are a nation enthralled by our guns and by our embrace of Second Amendment “freedoms.”

The 2007 “Small Arms Survey” found that the U.S. has the highest gun ownership …

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Letter: More guns in more places does not make us safer

Posted

To the editor:

We are a nation enthralled by our guns and by our embrace of Second Amendment “freedoms.”

The 2007 “Small Arms Survey” found that the U.S. has the highest gun ownership rate worldwide, with 88 guns for every 100 Americans, as compared with 6 guns per 100 people in England. The number two country was Yemen with 54.8 guns per 100 people. A Pew Research Center study from 2013 showed that the number of firearms in the U.S. has increased by more than 60 percent since 1994. The latest estimate of the number of guns owned by private citizens in the U.S. is approximately 310 million, close to one firearm for every man, woman, and child in our country.

Between 2010 and 2103, the number of guns manufactured in the U.S. essentially doubled, from roughly 5.5 million to nearly 10.9 million. Of the 10.9 million guns manufactured, only 4 percent were exported, while the remaining 10.4 million stayed in the U.S.

In 2014 there were 15,872 murders in the U.S., of which 11,008 were caused by firearms. Over the past 16 months, there have been 521 mass shootings in America, beginning with the record-setting Orlando nightclub shooting on 6/12/16, killing 49 people and wounding 58 others, and ending on 10/2/17, with the record-breaking shooting in Las Vegas, where 59 people were killed and over 500 wounded. The Las Vegas shooting was remarkable in that a lone untrained gunman, cloistered in a hotel room with an arsenal of high-powered modern weaponry, fired indiscriminately into a crowd of 22,000 concert-goers for no apparent purpose other than to kill as many people as quickly possible.

Massachusetts has enacted some of the toughest gun laws in the country. A CDC study ranked it as the state with the fewest gun deaths per capita. Data from a 2013 FBI study found a Massachusetts homicide rate of 2.0 per 100,000 people, as compared with the national average of 4.5 per 100,000. That same study found that Nevada, which boasts of having the most liberal gun laws in the nation, had a homicide rate of 14.7 per 100,000, exceeding the rate of deaths from motor vehicle accidents. Tellingly, England has a mere 0.06 gun-related homicides per 100,000 population.

In response to the tragedy in Las Vegas, President Trump offered his “warmest condolences and sympathies” to the victims and their families, declaring the shooting “an act of pure violence,” but went on to assert that at present “it is premature to talk gun control in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American History.” In a tone-deaf move, the House of Representatives is scheduled to resume hearings on whether or not to legalize silencers on guns — a sobering metaphor for the stranglehold that the gun industry has on the legislature. Jimmy Kimmel responded by stating that “they should be praying to God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country.”

Contrary to what many gun proponents attest, it is a fallacy that if more people are armed, fewer people will be killed. “Thoughts and prayer” are insufficient without a genuine commitment to pursue gun control reforms. Gun violence constitutes a grave public health crisis in this nation. Continued acquiescence to the status quo is unacceptable. It is long past time for passage of meaningful Congressional legislation to address this crisis. If not now, then when?

Mary Bandura, Ph.D.

Harton Smith, M.D.

Tiverton

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