So, I've written about gun violence a number of times on this blog, here, here, and here. It seems that our understanding of what motivates these terrorists is no better than it was before. Right, terrorists. A term that is immediately identified in the press when a brown person does it, but is extremely muted when a white person does it. That's a problem for many reasons. But, most importantly, it furthers deeply embedded racist stereotypes unnecessarily, all the way to the highest office in the land. Note, when it was London and Manchester, the Prez was lightning fast to denounce Islamic Extremism. When it was San Francisco and Washington D. C., the Prez is strangely silent.
Because of these biases, gun violence isn't being addressed in this country. At all. Literally, legally, nothing has changed. Not only that, but politicians bringing up the Capital's recent incident as a possible catalyst for gun safety legislation have been dismissed by the far right as trying to politically capitalize on the tragedy.
Me? I say, if not now, when?
Have you been to www.gunviolencearchive.org? They're a nonprofit that tracks all firearm related incidents in the US, plots them on a map, and separates them by "type." Take a look at what has happened in the first half of 2017. It's sickening. Just taking into account "Mass Shootings" there were 154 incidents across the United States resulting in 189 deaths and 589 injuries. That's in 6 months. The total number of children (ages between 0-11) dead because of gun violence (unintentional and intentional) is 301...so far this year. The most ridiculous number is that there are clear over 27,900 separate incidents, both intentional and accidental between January 1 and June 15, 2017, resulting 6,900 deaths and 13,558 injuries. Now, if we round that up, and estimate that, in 2017, 55,800 gun incidents will be tallied before the year is out, that's comparable with the number of new pancreatic cancer patients or new thyroid cancer patients, or new liver cancer patients according to the National Cancer Institute.
You've heard of those, right?
I would suggest that, our government, by dragging their political feet, is essentially providing a death sentence to Americans akin to pulling all treatments for the aforementioned cancers. Unthinkable, right? Could you imagine being diagnosed with a disease and then your congressmen, because they get a crap-load of money from the "pro-cancer lobby," decide to turn a blind eye on making legal changes so that you can't get the treatment you need to get better?
I know it's a ridiculous hypothetical, although, with the current ACA vs. ACHA tug-of-war going on, it's not that far fetched. Still, we have a national epidemic that, because of political lack of will, will go on and on unaddressed because of money and lobbying.
And, we're getting numb to these types of events. Media coverage on these types of even focus on the wrong things, misleading the public and allowing general apathy to fog the seriousness of each event. This article by the non-profit Century Foundation gets it right: we spend so much energy on big profile mass shootings that the balance of gun-related incidents go uncovered, or, at best, underreported.
What do we do? We make this our thing again. Put it on the list about why we need to have a political sea-change in our Federal, State and local governments. We need to treat this disease, and the only way to do that is by putting like-minded individuals in office. Gun Violence, especially here in the Northeast, should not be a way of life. I'm not saying to take away people's right to bear arms, but common-sense gun legislation is long overdue. The problem is not going away, and it's time to start putting in politicians who will make this their issue so that this disease can be cured.
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