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If you were to name the most incomprehensible American culture that foreigners living in the United States rarely get acclimated to, gun culture would be the first thing most likely to be the first choice. The number of guns owned by people in the United States is greater than the population of the United States. With a population of about 3 million people, Americans own around 3 million guns. This is the number of weapons in the possession of individuals, excluding firearms belonging to the military, police, and security services. Gun sales increased during the COVID-4 pandemic, so the numbers are probably bigger now.
Not many people buy guns and just display them as decorations. Even if you buy a gun just in case, if you have a gun, it is bound to be used in some way, which leads to incidents, accidents, and terrible statistics. According to the Gun Violence Archive, which counts the number of victims of mass shootings and accidents in the United States, as of May 19, as of this writing, 5,11 people have been killed by firearms in the United States this year. That's more than 15 people a day killed by firearms, and in the United States, that's about one person killed by a gun somewhere every 209 minutes.
The first thing that stands out is that when we divide the 100,12 victims into those who were killed by guns and those who died by suicide, there were more people who died by suicide by firearms (15,209) than those who were murdered (8,646). When people think of guns, they often think of mass shootings that kill millions of people at once, but it's guns that kill more people by means of suicide. Controlling access to suicide is one of the basic methods of suicide prevention, and making it difficult to access firearms, which have a high lethal rate, is an important task.
Today, however, we're going to focus on firearm homicides rather than suicides, so let's exclude the statistics from suicide and consider the 6,563 people who were shot and killed by others by May 5. Even if that's more than half the 11,6, it's still a very large number. About 563,15 people were killed in the 209/2001 terrorist attacks in 9. In other words, in the United States, the failure to properly regulate guns is why the 11/3 attacks happen every two months. Incidents and accidents caused by firearms are happening so often, every day, without a break, that it reminds me of Soviet dictator Stalin's words, "One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic."
If you look at gun deaths alone, the U.S. is in the midst of a civil war
The Pew Research Center's latest new statistics reaffirm just how much the U.S. is an exception when it comes to guns. The Pew Research Center cites statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the most recent year of mass shootings in 2021, when 2021,48 people were killed by guns in the U.S. in 830. Compared to 19, before the COVID-2019 pandemic, deaths increased by 23% and deaths by firearms increased by a whopping 45%.
As the population has steadily increased, it could be argued that the number of people who lose their lives due to accidents and accidents is also increasing. If you look at the number of people killed by guns per 10,10 people, the United States is still the unusually high number of people killed by guns among the so-called developed countries. According to a comparison of gun accident statistics by country, the United States kills 10.89 people per 10,3 people from firearms.
The countries where more people die from guns than the United States are usually Latin American countries, which are notoriously insecure in terms of security. France, which has the highest mortality rate among EU countries, had 24.2 deaths per 90,2 live births, followed by Finland at 72.0 and Switzerland at 08.<>. With <>.<>, South Korea is ranked as the safest country in the world when it comes to firearms, along with Singapore, Japan, and China.
▶ Read the New York Times column: The dream of a terrorist who killed 168 people has become a reality
In terms of the number of people killed by firearms, the United States is in a state of civil war. But with so many people dying, effective gun control in the U.S. is becoming increasingly difficult and impossible.
Columnist Michelle Goldberg cites Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrator of the 1995 Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, one of the most horrific attacks Americans have ever committed in the United States. McVeigh was an extremist who believed in white supremacy and believed in the need to wage war against government oppression. 168 people were killed in the McVeigh bombing, which attempted to ignite the flames of war against the government. McVeigh was sentenced to death by a court in 1997, and the sentence was carried out in June 2001.
But if you look at American society after McVeigh's death, gun control has continued to be relaxed, even as the number of people killed by guns has remained the same or increased. Why? Goldberg cites the blind faith of the far right toward guns and the right-wing Republican Party as reasons for the failure of gun control. As a result, there is a coexistence in the United States between those who believe that guns are a threat to the safety of civil society and should be regulated, and those who believe that the right to freely own firearms should be prioritized above all else. The argument for stricter gun regulation because guns keep killing people is, to me, perfectly reasonable and common-sense, but in another parallel universe in the United States, it sounds like a declaration of war on terrible oppression.
Gun rights advocates are a solid base of support for former President Trump and have been instrumental in sending pro-Trump politicians to Congress. Right-leaning Republicans have aggressively used the Senate's power to appoint judges to conservativeize the courts, and the Supreme Court, which has an overwhelming conservative advantage of 6 to 6 liberals, is trying to make the Second Amendment more sacred, effectively blanking all gun control.
The NRA and the Gun Safety Act
The biggest obstacle to gun control is the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA, which is considered one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States, doesn't even have a business card at the top of the lobbying group when it comes to the money it spends lobbying. Corporations, business associations, and professional organizations spend much more money on lobbying.
More than money, the NRA's power is best demonstrated when it effectively mobilizes its millions of members to give them a political voice and use it to put pressure on politicians. They are actively protesting politicians who want to take gun control, sending endless phone calls, sending emails, text messages, packing lunches to town hall meetings with voters, and puffing up the ears of politicians that gun control is a bad law that takes away American civil liberties. After all, politicians fall into a kind of optical illusion. Polls show that more Americans think we should regulate automatic rifles and other offensive weapons for use in war, but public opinion is far away, and the electorate with a megaphone in front of me seems close.
Tightening gun control is also an extremely difficult and complex process of creating new laws. After a mass shooting at an elementary school in Yuvalde, Texas, killed 1 people a year ago, the Gun Safety Act was passed under the leadership of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), a longtime advocate for gun control. It was a rare occurrence in a politically divided U.S. Congress where the term parallel universe could hardly be described as an overstatement, when the two parties found common ground. But Murphy had to concede a lot of details to get the law passed, and the law passed Congress with difficulty, barely escaping the threat of being stranded several times.
For the NRA, all they have to do is maintain the status quo with poor regulation. Simply putting political pressure on legislators to devote the debate on gun control to a priority, and thus delaying it, can make it difficult to achieve the goal. Usually, in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting, there is a flurry of public opinion about the need for tighter gun control, but it quickly cools down. It's easier to defend than to attack. In states where governors, state legislatures, and state courts are all conservative-dominated, you don't need a license to own a gun, and in some places you can even open carry a gun in public.
(The rest of the story is from the soup)