Sunday, May 7, 2023

Written with Sadness - Mass Shooting of the Week

 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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