We know what is killing 40,000 Americans a year. So why don't we act?
Opinion by Eugene Robinson
We all know what instruments snuffed out 18 innocent lives in two mass shootings within the space of a week. We all know what tools Americans used to kill more than 43,000 people, whether others or themselves, last year. The answer is obvious. We just refuse to do anything about it.
The problem is that the nation is cursed with an absurdly and tragically vast oversupply of guns. And, as a society, we refuse to even talk about the kind of comprehensive disarmament that could prevent the next massacre by someone full of entitlement and rage, the next drive-by killing by a homicidal drug dealer or the next gun suicide by someone in unbearable pain from depression. We would rather live with the carnage than seriously try to end it.
There are rage-filled people, drug dealers and people suffering from depression in Britain, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Poland, Spain — in every country in the world. But those nations have only a tiny fraction of the gun violence we experience in the United States. Why might that be? Because they have far fewer guns to use to do violence.
The United States is the only nation on the planet where there are more guns in civilian hands than there are civilians, according to the authoritative global Small Arms Survey, conducted by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. As of the most recent report, in 2018, we had about 120 privately owned guns per 100 citizens. The nation in second place, with about 53 guns in private hands per 100 people, was Yemen — which at least had its raging civil war as an explanation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-know-what-is-killing-40000-americans-a-year-so-why-dont-we-act/2021/03/25/395fb56e-8d96-11eb-a730-1b4ed9656258_story.html
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