It has been six months now since the mass murder in Newtown (Connecticut) -- when twenty children (none over 7 years old) and 6 teachers were killed. If there was any hope that this horrific incident would give Americans pause and slow down the outrageous number of gun deaths in this country, those hopes have been dashed. In fact the problem may just be getting worse.Think Progress is reporting that there have been at least 14 mass shootings (random gun-related incidents, usually in a public area and resulting in either multiple injuries or death)in just the six months since Newtown. That's more than twice the one mass shooting per month the U.S. has averaged over the last four years. Here are the locations (and casualties) of those shootings:
Webster, New York...............2 dead, 3 wounded
Herkimer, New York...............4 dead, 2 wounded
Hampton, Virginia...............1 dead, 4 wounded
Blair County, Pennsylvania...............3 dead, 3 wounded
Akron, Ohio...............4 dead
New Orleans, Louisiana...............19 wounded
St. Louis, Missouri...............4 dead
Manchester, Illinois...............5 dead
Concho County, Texas...............2 dead, 5 wounded
Albuquerque, New Mexico...............5 dead
Phoenix, Arizona...............2 dead
Orange County, California...............4 dead
Santa Monica, California...............4 dead
Seattle, Washington...............4 dead
Those are just the mass shootings. The true death toll from guns is much worse -- averaging 28 people shot to death every single day since the Newtown shooting. In fact, a couple of weeks ago (on May 31st) the number of people killed by guns in the United States just since Newtown, surpassed the number of American troops killed during the entirety of the Iraq War. Let me put that another way. It took less than six months for this nation's gun culture to kill more Americans than years of fighting in a bloody war claimed.
Here's another interesting fact. Americans are so scared of terrorists that many of them are willing to give up their privacy and constitutional rights to be protected from it. In 2011, there were 10,323 people killed by terrorists -- in the entire world. That's only about a third as many people killed by guns just in the United States each years (where the death toll easily tops 30,000 each year). Why aren't our elected officials worried about three times as many people being killed in this country as terrorists kill worldwide?
The NRA and the GOP still tell us that there is no gun problem in the United States. I wonder -- just how many deaths will it take each year before we have a problem? If terrorism is a problem, then our gun culture has to be a problem (because it is killing far more Americans than terrorism).
