Eats Shoots and Leaves

 To say that gun violence is out of control in the US is to say that water is wet. We know it and, yet, at every turn, we see it get worse. Add to it that lawmakers pass even more laws (e.g., open carry and stand your ground laws) that make it more likely that someone you know will be harmed at some point in their lives by an armed person. As it stands four-in-ten U.S. adults say they live in a household with a gun, including 30% who say they personally own one, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2021. So, with 40% of households possessing a gun, it is logical that accidents and murder will happen. It may be a shooting of a child like this. It may be someone standing their ground like this. It may be a mass shooting like this. Or a cry for help that ends up like this. Whatever the means or circumstances, a lot of innocent people are likely going to die by someone else's hand.

If we wring our hands, offer thoughts and/or prayers, nothing changes. If lawmakers choose to not legislate for reforms (or worse, legislate for fewer gun safety laws), we will become a country that claims to value life while ignoring the hypocrisy of pre-authorizing the wholesale distribution of the very tools that end it. We ultimately will have to face the idea that armed insurrection could be in our future because, really, if we continue to believe that we need guns like the 63% who say they have them for personal safety and protection, why do we even need a police force? 

Here is the possible silver lining. In 2019 Congress authorized funding so that both the CDC and the NIH can study firearm injury prevention and currently the agencies are now financing nearly two dozen studies. Ironically, the wife of former Arkansas congressman and NRA "point-person" Jay Dickey and the doctor whose studies he defunded in 1996 through the infamous Dickey Amendment made the case, and $25 million dollars was awarded to do this in 2021. While these studies won't save lives today, they may well in the future. Whether you or I will be here or not to know may rely on a whole lot of luck and a good zip code. The shooting and killing don't happen everywhere as the GunViolenceArchive.org map above shows, but in many places, it is a sea of red.