Written with
Sadness - Mass Shooting of the Week
Another shooting
with 8 dead at a crowded mall on a Saturday afternoon, close to home this time
in Allen, Texas, a few miles up the road.
Loud, uninformed left-wing voices will blame the tool, the gun,
particularly if it is of the ubiquitous AR-15 variety, and not blame the
obviously disturbed shooter.
Also, murder by
car in Brownsville, Texas, with 7 dead.
Yes, we have a
lot of guns in this country, and in Texas, and we have a “gun culture” from
taming our wild country and providing food and protection for over several
hundred years. We also have a lot of
cars and a “car culture” from our vast spaces, and a lot of knives and other
dangerous tools that can kill people.
The United
States is the third most populous country in the world, after China and
India. As of 2023, we have over 336
million people in the country.
Recent estimates
show that there are between 436 and 466 million firearms in the U.S., and between
77 and 81 million legal gun owners. Over
20 million guns per year have been bought in recent years, primarily for
protection, in response to increased crime rates caused by defunding the police and other efforts by the “woke”
left-wing to weaken our law enforcement.
There were
21,000 willful gun deaths or homicides in 2021 and 26,000 suicides by gun. Total car deaths in 2021 were comparable at 43,000. This may be somewhat misleading, since cars
are normally not used as instruments of suicide.
The controversy continues. Activists from the political left with
virtually no knowledge of firearms scream for confiscation and control of all
civilian firearms, while they emasculate law enforcement and thereby increase
crime rates. The public responds by
buying more guns to protect themselves, and thus increase the number of guns in
circulation, and the chance that a gun will fall into some disturbed person’s
hands, like the shooter in Allen, Texas this Saturday.
It has to be
obvious from the sheer weight of numbers, that gun control is not going to work
is the U.S. in the manner that the uninformed left keeps hammering. There are simply too many guns and too many
legal gun owners, and the Second Amendment concept of “the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms” is too deeply ingrained in the American psyche.
It is
unfortunate that we have rushed head-long, into a “woke”, “social justice”,
“politically correct”, weakening of the morals and ethics that traditionally
have supported our societal fiber. This
is particularly true in this extreme left-wing administration where what was
once aberrant is now considered the norm.
We have emptied our asylums and prisons, and the inmates are running the
country and shooting it up.
So, the question
becomes “how do we keep the guns away from the crazies?” And unfortunately, the
answer is not by banning the “one shot at a time AR-15, (Armalite Rifle -15),
which the uninformed left terms an “assault rifle”. We already (since 1934) ban automatics
(machine gun type) weapons. The answer
is not by throwing away our tools.
Unfortunately, the answer, that the “crazies” are not learning, is how
to use the tools safely, and not mis-use them.
And that, folks,
is a societal, educational, psychological, psychiatric, religious morass that
we have allowed ourselves to get into, and from which there is no easy, modernistic,
one size fits all, exit.
So, we have the
“active shooter and killing of the week”, by an addled and disgruntled
malcontent, one of the 336 million people in the country that got their hands
on a gun, and went on to commit mayhem with it.
And, there’s not a whole hell of a lot that anybody can do about it,
save about 50 years of education that includes a revamp of our basic morals,
ethics and behavioral characteristics.
Some statistics:
https://www.marineapproved.com/gun-ownership-statistics-in-america/
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-ownership-by-country
https://americangunfacts.com/gun-ownership-statistics/
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/09/13/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
https://usafacts.org/data/topics/security-safety/crime-and-justice/firearms/firearm-deaths/
Ray Gruszecki
May 7, 2023
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