This Thursday, August 8th from noon to 1 p.m., Let’s Talk, KWMR’s listener call-in program, wants to hear your views in our discussion of Gun Violence.
After the mass killings of last weekend, the news has revolved around gun violence in the U.S.A., and about what causes it, who is perpetrating it and what could help prevent it. A recent Johns Hopkins study found that states with gun licensing laws have lower gun violence and fewer suicides using firearms than those with more lax laws. It would seem that existing federal background checks are not sufficient when a person who passes one can obtain a gun within minutes.
About half of the almost 300 million firearms in the U.S.A. are owned by roughly 3 per cent of the population. 78 per cent of Americans do not own a gun. Sales of guns are increasing, and when gun owners fear that a certain kind of weapon might be banned they buy one or more of those weapons. There were ammunition shortages in 2013 after the Sandy Hook killings, as the national conversation about gun control spurred stockpiling, especially for the mass shooters’ weapon of choice, the AR15. Ammunition sales are rising again in the wake of the latest killings. Do any gun owners support gun control?
Nearly 40,000 people were killed by guns in 2017, almost two-thirds of them were suicides. Firearms are the second leading cause of death of American children and teens. Black children and teens are 14 times more likely to die by gun homicide than white children of the same age. Women in the U.S.A. are 21 times more likely to die by gun than women in other high-income countries, with an average of 52 women per month being shot to death by an intimate partner.
Mass shootings are most often perpetrated by white men, often white supremacist men. American and European nationalists have been tracked to the Russia-Ukraine war, where they have been getting military training before returning home. Thomas Jefferson said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Is there a danger of armed uprising in the U.S.A.?
Is there ever a justification for the use of armed violence, such as a revolution by the oppressed in a dictatorship? While non-violent uprisings have succeeded, such as against the Marcos regime in the Philippines, they usually depend upon mutinies in the police and military to succeed, with inevitable violence resulting. Were the Dayton police justified in shooting Connor Betts?
How can we stop the violent use of force by individuals and governments? How can we stop the rise in violent hate crime? How can the high gun homicide rates in poor urban areas be lowered? How can we raise boys in a way that might make them less violent? Are video games and “sick people” really to blame for mass shootings?
Please listen and call 415-663-8492 or 8317 during the show to lend your voice, opinions, solutions, fears, hopes and other thoughts about violence and guns in the U.S.A.
