Comments
ACCORDING TO LIZ - Columbine, Sandy Hook, Kenosha, Uvalde.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Adam Lanza, Kyle Rittenhouse, Salvador Ramos.
When anyone can buy a gun, of course, people are scared; the cops are, too.
Profits make perfect: The $28 billion gun industry relentlessly promotes the fantasy of the American gunslinger achieving heroic stature by defending his wife and his property from evil-doers.
On April 13th after going to the wrong address to pick up his younger brothers, 16-year-old black honor student Ralph Yarl was shot and injured in Kansas City, Missouri, by the white homeowner, 84-year-old Andrew Lester. According to a grandson, Lester had become radicalized by the paranoid ranting of Fox News and opened the door carrying his gun.
On April 15th, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed in Hebron, New York after the car she was riding in mistakenly turned into the wrong property while looking for a friend’s house. They were turning the car around to leave when the 65-year-old homeowner, Kevin Monahan, came out with a gun and fired twice from his porch. Monahan has a history of aggressive behavior prone to exaggeration and, according to a neighbor, had become increasingly upset with people turning into his unmarked rural driveway.
The same day, four people ages 17 to 23 were killed and 28 others were injured, some critically, at a Sweet 16 celebration in Dadeville, AL, an hour's drive from the state capital of Montgomery. In 2020, gun violence overtook car accidents as the leading cause of death in people 19 years old or younger. Five suspects ages 16 to 20 had been rounded up by April 21st.
On April 18th, Robert Louis Singletary unloaded his gun at his North Carolina neighbors after a basketball rolled into his yard from a group of local children playing in the street, injuring a 6-year-old girl, her parents and an another man.
Singletary was a felon with a history of violence; why did he have a gun?
Later that day, Heather Roth and Payton Washington teenage cheerleaders were shot last week in an Elgin, Texas supermarket parking lot this week. In the dark, Heather had opened the driver’s side door of a car she thought was her own, only to find a stranger in the passenger seat. She returned to Payton’s car but the stranger pursued her and, when she rolled the down window to apologize, the man pulled a gun and opened fire, hitting both the girls.
On April 13th Deja Taylor was booked on recklessly leaving a firearm so as to endanger a child after her disturbed 6-year-old son who had a history of aggressive behavior took his mother’s legally purchased 9 mm Taurus pistol to Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, VA on January 6th. He then shot and wounded his 25-year-old first grade teacher Abigail Zwerner in her classroom.
And on April 20th, Malachi Robinson was sentenced under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. After meeting a LGBTQ+ at the Kansas City Public Library in Missouri in May of 2019, Robinson pursued and lured the 16-year-old into a wooded area while texting his girlfriend that he “might shoot this boy” because of his sexual orientation. He then pulled out a Taurus 9mm pistol and shot the defenseless teen eight times.
Why was he carrying a gun in the first place?
What do these stories have in common? Other than their headline potential, guns, and their proximity in time?
It’s the underlying pervasive acceptance of them as behavior that can be changed but politicians choose to ignore.
It’s the pervasiveness of the image of the inalienable right for every American to live the fantasy of the American West, defending their property and perspective from the evils perpetrated by everyone else.
Fanned by Fox News and other reactionary talk-show hosts, by Trump and the echo-chambers of social media, the malignancy of right-wing extremism in the United States has become a conflagration.
The pervasiveness of guns is a clear and present danger, but access alone is not action.
Norway has guns, Canada has guns, Switzerland has guns. Maybe not as many per capita but the consequences of gun ownership is infinitesimal in these countries as compared to the societal ravages in the United States.
On the other hand, access to guns is a significant contributor to their use in suicides – almost two-thirds of American gun deaths. Another aberration on which to cogitate since worldwide over 70% of gun deaths are homicides, about 21% suicides, with the remaining ruled unintentional or accidents.
On one hand, as Nicholas Kristof pointed out in the New York Times, Americans “suffer from a mass delusion that a gun in the home makes us safer” with 450 million of them, 60 million bought since 2020 alone.
On the other, people in the United States live in a darker and more dangerous world than even countries where there is marked civil unrest because too many of their fellow Americans are armed with guns and could be coming for them.
Again and again firearms advocates trot out stories about guns averting crimes but their numbers are magnified by repetition while research has resoundingly shown that having a gun in the house puts the occupants at greater risk of being murdered.
Still, as Kristof also points out, bear spray would be a more effective deterrent than a gun at stopping home invader, and the consequences would be far less deadly.
It’s easier to purchase guns and ammo in most states than to obtain a driver’s license or adopt a pet. And, as a former head of the Fish and Wildlife Service has pointed out, with its controls on guns used to hunt waterfowl, the government does a better job of protecting ducks than it does protecting children and teachers.
People have accepted the need for seatbelts and child car seats, consumer regulation on fireproofing, toxic chemicals and toy safety so why not double down on background checks, safe storage requirements, gun safety locks and a ban on possession of guns by people with a history of violence and mental health issues?
California has led the way on firearms safety regulations and now has a death-by-gun rate almost 40% below the national average, six of the seven states that do better – Hawai’i, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island – also have strong gun laws and are considered ‘unfriendly’ by Guns and Ammo.
To quote a speech President Clinton made in the days following the Oklahoma City bombing: “We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other. They spread hate. They leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.”
To improve the image of the United States its residents need to change.
Instead of focusing on the narrative of gun ownership, Americans in every state and around the world must reboot relationships, moving from a foundation of fear and hatred to one of tolerance and friendship.
Step out of bubbles of isolation and reach out a helping hand. Improve people’s sense of self-worth so they don’t feel they have to prove themselves by hurting others. Anyone can buy a gun but only great people can choose not to use them.
Who is the better man – Putin or Pope Francis? A Hitler or a Gandhi? Napoleon or Jesus Christ?
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
