What to Do About Gun Violence?
By Albert B. Kelly
Scanning headlines, the past few weeks, bracketing stories about interest rates, inflation, Covid, and whatever nonsense is going on with Twitter, there’s our ever-present mass shootings. These headlines told us five people were gunned down inside a nightclub in Colorado Springs, three people were shot to death on a bus at the University of Virginia, and another six died at the end of a gun in a Chesapeake, Virginia Walmart. All of this killing occurred between November 13th and November 22nd.
For some, it might be tempting to think that we just hit a bad patch, that the recent shooting and killing just happened to be clustered together and eventually things will revert back to some type of normal. But the truth is that mass shootings are a part of everyday American life.
We don’t know what the final body count will be for 2022, but according to analysis of the Gun Violence Archive done by the Washington Post over 47,000 people were killed by guns in 2021.
Different data bases define things differently. The Gun Violence Archive (https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ ) includes four or more victims whether killed or injured while USA Today, working with Northeastern University and the Associated Press, include killings of 4 or more people from all weapons (excluding the offender).
No matter what source you choose to examine, we are a violent nation. In 2022 as we close out the year, we’ve had 611 mass shootings according to the Gun Violence Archive. Compare that to 2014 when there were 269 mass shootings. I actually caught myself writing “only” when referring to the number of mass shootings in 2014. Go figure.
As a nation, we started the year on New Year’s Day with seven mass shooting incidents resulting in 6 dead and 24 injured. We’ve hardly let up. As of this writing, here in New Jersey since the beginning of the year, we’ve had 9 mass shootings as defined by the Gun Violence Archive with 3 dead and 39 injured.
One number that caught my attention in the Gun Violence Archive was the number of murder-suicide incidents which came in at 610. For New Jersey, the data base records 8 murder-suicides with a body count at 16.
Those viewing the data will draw their own conclusions about what it all means, but the fact that we’ve had 611 mass shootings and 610 murder-suicides suggests to me that there are far too many angry, despairing and ultimately unstable people in our midst. We’re not nearly as resilient as in the past.
Lawmakers offer thoughts and prayers because it’s safe and few people trust the government anyway, lobbying groups whip their donors into a lather to raise money, and talking heads argue about what the founders meant by a well-armed militia. For the rest of us, we just pray that the people we love will not be in the line of fire when the shooting starts.
Setting aside weapons bans for a moment since that is a nonstarter, how do we conduct our due diligence with respect to guns, background checks and wellness checks in such a way that people are able and willing to speak up when they see something, here something, or know something?
I suspect that there are people on the fringes of most of these tragedies who weren’t surprised. In the case of the shooting at the Chesapeake, Virginia Walmart, one co-worker of the shooter said “everyone always thought something was wrong with him” while another co-worker said that the shooter promised to retaliate if he ever got fired. He bought the gun a few hours before the killing started.
You can’t blame these co-workers, there was nothing direct to report at the time, but in the context of buying a gun, these statements and perceptions begin to provide a context and gun violence always has its context.
We’ve got inner city gun violence which is different than suburban gun violence which is different than rural gun violence. We’ve got black gun violence and white gun violence, we’ve got gang gun violence and bullied-rejected-loner gun violence, we’ve got disgruntled-worker gun violence and ex-lover gun violence.
How do we better understand each context in order to carry out due diligence, whether background checks or periodic wellness checks? How do we buy needed time? And if we’re mistrustful of the government specifically in this area, how do we mobilize like-minded networks at the grassroots level to help?