The Summer of Guns
With today’s shooting, in New York City, this summer has seen deaths from violence clamor to new heights. Just last night, in the city of Chicago, there were 19 gun deaths. July 20th saw a horrific gun slaughter in the quiet community of Aurora Colorado. August 5th saw the gun murders of seven people in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek Wisconsin, and the two deaths today. Today, August 24, 2012, America has lost more than SEVEN DOZEN of its citizens to gun violence in just three months.
The United States has had the ‘Right to Bear Arms’ since our Republic began, and I am not here to question that right (today) or (today) advocate the repeal of said right. Today I am going to talk about guns, and gun deaths. For me, at least, it would be irresponsible to talk about this violent summer without talking about guns in America and gun deaths, in America. That is the great thing, about America and our Constitution, that is it s ‘Living Document’. The idea that our Constitution is a ‘Living Document’ has been furthered by greats such as; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Woodrow Wilson and SCOTUS Justice John Marshall.
America, and Americans, owns 275 million guns, or the 875 million known firearms (this was from ‘The Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies’). There are seven billion people on this planet, and America has 310 million. We make up 1/20 of the population but posses 1/3 of all the firearms on the planet. (This figure based on ‘personal firearms’ and military and law enforcement guns are not counted). [found here:http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/28/us-world-firearms-idUSL2834893820070828]
Americans hold one-in-three personal firearms and yet only one-in-twenty people on the planet live in America this is an untenable situation. IT is no wonder that America leads the planet in gun violence. We lead; Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel the entire Middle East. Honestly, when I started this article I was concerned. How could I make my case if America was not the most gun violent country on the planet? I worried needlessly.
“So what, we own the most guns of any nation on the planet.”
That is a viable, if not simplistic, viewpoint. These guns do not exist in isolation. Americans own them, and right now it is obvious that America is a little hostile, right now. There is political hostility and anger and social/racial hostility growing in our nation. Hate crimes, in America, have risen by 50% in just the past two years, and the deaths show no sign of abating. This; racial, political anger has begun to combine with the number of guns in our great nation. You have the red-hot fire of prejudice and racism flowing through he veins of gun owning Americans. Yet, somehow, we expect a different result? This isn’t rocket science, people. This is simple reasoning, that I am sure we all posses. There are millions of Americans whose hearts are, for whatever reason, filled with racial hatred, and most of them are armed. [http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map]
Right now, this day, in America there will be (a projected amount of) Eighty-One gun deaths in America. Eighty-one Americans struck down, today, due to gun violence. In just one year 31,000 Americans loose their lives to gun violence. One in one thousand Americans die each year due to gun violence. One in one thousand is worse (better) odds than getting AIDS at its height! America did something about AIDS…
Then, if the cost of human life just doesn’t seem to break through, how about the cost to our society in dollars? Will that get you?
In America, each and every year, gun violence costs our nation $100 billion dollars. Now, that is just the cost of the violence. The cost of loss of life, loss of productivity, the human costs well, they cannot be calculated. If I had to put a number on that, it would be in the billions of dollars each and every year. Billions of dollars of personal and property loss each and every year, due to gun violence, and yet we no longer have an ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ because the N.R.A. spends tens of million of dollars on Republican campaigns each and every year. However, it hasn’t always been this way.
In 1977 a fringe group (sound familiar?) within the NRA held a hostile takeover of the National Rifle Association. Before that hostile takeover, the NRA actually WORKED WITH THE US GOVERNMENT to write gun legislation. They worked to monitor their members, being (Then) a responsible group more interested in guns for recreation than guns for gun violence and political gain. That all died in a torrid and ugly convention of the NRA in 1977. The NRA that worked with; President, Congressmen, Senators to write sensible gun legislation now believes that there is no such thing as ‘sensible gun legislation’. They have their ardent members all ginned up that any gun laws are “bad gun laws”. They are the organization behind the delusional conspiracies of the Clinton administration about “black helicopters coming in the dark of night to steal your guns.” ROFLMAO Honest, do they even understand how expensive it is to run one of those helicopters? [http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/active-patriot-groups-in-the-united-states]
Now, we (America) have a chance. A chance to have a healthy and reasoned debate about the place for guns in our lives and in our society, he have tried one. We have tried the whole; let anyone that can carry a gun have one! It is the wish of our Founding Fathers! Drivel, the Founding Fathers put the Second Amendment in the Constitution because of the Revolutionary War. Drop Washington, Franklin, or Adams into today. Show them, our Founding Fathers, the scenes of gun violence of just the past three months. Do that and I am certain that they would share a different opinion. It is time to talk about guns, again, America.
It is time, now, to start the conversation. Not rhetoric. Not partisan. Not hyperbole. How about facts? There are 90 guns, in America, for every 100 citizens. 31,000 Americans DIE each year because of gun violence. IT costs our nation billions of dollars is damage and lost revenues. Moreover, most important, this will spill over and start killing our children. Why wait? Let us start acting now, to improve gun laws, limit if not stop assault weapon sales, limit or stop the sale of ‘banana clips’ and ammunition that can not be used in hunting.
We can make America a safer place to live, for our posterity and ourselves. Join me.
We Are Better Than This - Stop Gun Violence
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