Gun Violence Run Amok

The statistics we have seen are grim enough.

We are told that "reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that from 1993-1998, on average, 115,000 firearm-related injuries occurred annually, resulting in 35,200 deaths per year. In 1998, firearm-related injuries followed motor-vehicle-related deaths as the second leading cause of injury-related death in the United States. Each year, more than 70 percent of homicides are committed with a firearm. Just having a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home and increases the risk of suicide five times."

And so it is that we continue this commentary with the recitation of a truism to the effect that "the sole purpose of a gun is to kill or injure or to threaten to kill or injure." It would therefore follow that "unregulated ownership or possession of such a dangerous object in a country with high crime rates is a disastrous combination."

In this regard, we would suggest that the truth today is that such is the terrible mix in today’s United States of America, that land where the gun seems to run things.

The recounted information had it then "that three children are dead and at least seven other girls are critically wounded after an attack on an Amish school in Lancaster County, Pa."

We have been told that "the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV of nearby Bart, Pa., parked a pickup outside the door of the one-room West Nickle Mines Amish school Monday morning. Officials say that after he entered the school, Roberts sent the adults and boys outside and then barricaded himself in with the female students."

By way of blunt report and bloody denouement, we are told that "authorities say Roberts began shooting the hostages as police prepared to storm the building. By the time police entered the building, the shooter had killed himself."

It has been said that violence is as American as apple pie. If ever there was any doubt about the truthfulness in this proposition, one need only take a half-glance at the news that continues its assault on the senses.

Here reference is to all those truly nasty stories about this or that school has been fired upon by this or that student who has decided to settle scores with this or that person or the other.

The victims –as in the case of the Amish kids in Pennsylvania- are some times students. At other times, school principals are the intended victims. What is also important to note that the weapon of choice is invariably that quintessential weapon of choice –the gun.

This is due to the fact that guns are widely available. Some of these are of course used for hunting. But truth is that most of the guns that Americans say that they have a right to bear are obviously intended for their very best uses, namely to maim and kill any and all, inclusive of man, woman, child or beast.

In truth, this is what is happening as Americans maim and kill each other at a rate that today so staggers the imagination that some people are now suggesting that it has reached epidemic proportions.

Our research reveals that "The United States far exceeds other nations in the number of firearm-related mortalities. In 1996, handguns were used to murder two people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada and 9,390 in the United States."

It is also to be noted that "firearms continue to be readily available, with few regulations controlling secondhand purchasing and hundreds of thousands of firearm thefts each year. The presence of firearms in the home has contributed to numerous tragedies that have had extensive media coverage".

And as if this was not bad enough, consider well that there is another school that suggests that things have gotten so far out of hand concerning guns and gun violence world wide that it would be more truthful were one to talk about a pandemic.

The conclusion to the matter at hand is that the world is today in the grip of a species of gun violence that is made in America and sanctioned in the same America that swears by the proposition that Americans have a right to bear arms.

And so they do.