Yet More Gun Violence

In the past week in the United States, there have been three mass shootings, two in a 13-hour period taking at least 31 lives and wounding many others. These jump out because the news media reports them, as the news media should. The media do not report, except sometimes at local levels, acts of gun violence that happen every day. Every day, without exception.

On Monday, August 5, the president suggested that these mass shootings are mainly due to mental disorders and the violent video games. When we look at the gun violence statistics of all advanced nations (and likely all nations, advanced or not), we see that the incidence of gun violence in the United States is far greater than in any other nation. No other nation is even close.

In all those nations there is internet. In all those nations there are people with mental disorders. In all those nations there is ready access to violent video games. In all those nations there are people of religious faith and people of no faith. In all those nations there are criminals. In all those nations people are people.

What is the difference, then, between the United States and all those other nations, such that our incidence of gun violence is staggeringly higher? What do you think?

If the Second Amendment to the Constitution means that guns of all kinds, including horrendous weapons that can fire lethal rounds in a matter of seconds, are readily available to everyone, then the Second Amendment should be repealed. If the Second Amendment means that reasonable gun control actions cannot be legalized quickly, then the Second Amendment should be ripped out of the Constitution.

Just in case you haven’t read the Second Amendment recently, I include it here:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Does that amendment mean what we are experiencing today is necessary and normal?

I am a person of faith and pray daily. Prayer is being seriously misused and abused when it is an excuse not to act for the common good and safety of a free people. Prayer is not a partisan tool. Yes, I pray for the bereaved in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton (and that Sandy Hook elementary school in CT and that Baptist church in Sutherland TX and that synagogue in Pittsburgh PA and that public concert in Las Vegas NV—and on and on it goes). And I pray for our governing leaders to do something to stem this tide of gun violence that goes on day after day after day. The land of my birth, the land that I love, should not be known as the most gun violent nation on earth. No nation should boast about or tolerate the reality that it has more guns than people, which is the case in the United States, when people are being killed by those guns every day—every day!—on our streets, in our schools, in our houses of worship, in our stores, and in our homes.