Finding Balance
By Albert B. Kelly
Recently, I came across a
study that said the United States far outpaces the rest of the world in mass
shootings. To be clear, there is no universal definition of what constitutes a
“mass shooting”. Certain reports put out by the FBI consider it a mass shooting
if there are more than four victims. Regardless of whether we call it a mass
shooting or we insert the word “spree” somewhere in the narrative, we’re the
leader of the pack.
We are just 5% of the
world’s population, yet we account for 31% of the world’s mass shootings since
1966. Of course it was right around that time that a guy named Charles Whitman
climbed into the bell tower at the University of Texas with a rifle and killed
16 people. It seems like the prospect of the mass shooter has been with us ever
since.
In fairness to us, other
countries have their share of mass shootings. The Philippines, Russia, Denmark,
Yemen and France all have had mass shootings over the same period, but if you
add up all the mass shootings collectively from these countries they still
don’t come close to the United States.
This information comes
courtesy of the University of Alabama and criminologist Adam Lankford. Of the
178 countries Lankford studied, the United States ranked first in per-capita
gun ownership. His 2007 survey found 270 million firearms in civilian
households- an ownership rate of 88.8 per 100 people. The next closest country
was a third world country, namely Yemen with a rate of 54.8 %, which is
remarkable considering that someone’s overthrowing the government there every
other week.
In light of these dramatic
stats, perhaps we as a country need to stop talking at and past each other and decide
once and for all that we will do something collectively and substantially on
gun control as opposed to waiting for the next mass shooting with the
handwringing and spin that comes for a couple of weeks afterward before we move
on to other things.
There was a time once when
mass shootings were a rare thing, now it seems to be a fairly common occurrence.
I’m not sure what it takes to get us to that place where we’re willing to find
the sweet spot, the balance between basic rights and access.
I expected progress after
Patrick Purdy killed 5 and wounded 30 others at a Stockton California
schoolyard in 1989. I thought the same in 1997 after 14 year old Mike Carneal
shot up his Kentucky high school killing 3 and injuring five. I was wrong.
Still nothing after 15 year old Kip Kinkel killed his parents and 2 others
while wounding 22 in May 1998. But certainly I thought we would make some progress
after Columbine in April 1999.
But maybe that was ancient
history. So I figured we might do something after Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 and
wounded 17 at Virginia Tech in April 2007. After Jared Loughner killed 6 and
wounded 13, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscan in January of
2011, I assumed this would spur her fellow lawmakers to act. I was wrong again.
That’s why I didn’t hold
out hope after James Holmes walked into a movie theater in Aurora Colorado in
July of 2012 and killed 12 while wounding 70 more. But I managed to find a
little hope in December 2012 in the days after Adam Lanza killed 20 first
graders and 6 adult staff at a Newtown Connecticut elementary school.
I thought surely the
execution of a classroom full of 5 year-olds would shake us and move us on some
profound level and we would find a way to get something done about guns and access
and violence and madness.
But here we are and not a
lot has changed. The shooters change and the scenery changes so that maybe it’s
not a movie theater or a school; but a kid like Dylann Roof in an AME church in
Charleston South Carolina on a Wednesday night offing 9 people at a Bible
Study.
I don’t know what the
answer is or what it is in American culture that translates into the type of
carnage we’ve seen over the last few decades. But until we figure that out, we
should demand that lawmakers find a serious compromise that balances second
amendment rights with restrictions on access. A lot of lives hang in the
balance.