We all want an end to the horrific school shootings in the U.S. The question is how to stop them? Gun control is always the gut reaction, but it’s clear something else is involved.
There are 400 million privately owned guns in the U.S. Let’s be realistic - disarming the people isn’t going to happen.
While Americans endure more mass shootings than all other developed countries combined, and while they have the highest per capita gun ownership rate in the world, they do not have the highest per capita overall murder rate. More than 100 countries have higher murder rates and all of them have stringent gun control laws.
You don’t need a gun to commit a murder or a mass murder. The deadliest school massacre in U.S. history occurred at the Bath Consolidated School just outside East Lansing, Mich. on May 18, 1927. The toll was 45 killed and 58 injured with a bomb. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 and injured more than 600.
There already is gun control in the U.S. No one can just walk into a store and, a few minutes later, walk out with a gun. Background/criminal record checks are enforced, and various states and cities have their own gun laws. According to 2012 data, the strictest gun controlled city was Detroit, which also had the highest murder rate in the US. The lowest murder rate was heavily armed and lightly gun controlled Plano, Tex.
In the whole decade of the 1950s there was one mass shooting in the U.S. In the 1960s, there were six mass shootings. In the 1970s, 13. In the 1980s, 32. In the 1990s, 42. And it keeps going up. Why? What changed? Guns were much more readily available in the ‘50s and there was far less gun control. Schools even had rifle clubs.
It seems clear that something has happened, something that has fundamentally changed in society, changed how people think and act. It’s not just the mere presence of guns. Lawmakers and activists would do well to try and get to the bottom of this deeper rot, rather than taking the easy path and blaming firearms.
Art Betke
Prince George
