Without a Gun How Many Lives Would Have Been Saved?
Marian Wright Edelman
By Marian Wright Edelman
Washington, DC—When news broke of the murders at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin on August 5th, people of all faiths and backgrounds and the first responders who came to the scene to help were horrified by the ambush on men and women as they prepared for worship services. Leaders across the country quickly denounced the hate crime and the FBI immediately began investigating the attack as a possible case of domestic terrorism. But as easy as it was for all of us to be outraged by another senseless attack and heartbroken by the congregation’s stories, it was difficult to be surprised by how it took place again in a nation unwilling to curb guns designed just to kill lots of people in the hands of lawless people. Would this have happened without a semi-automatic gun and high-capacity clips of bullets?
The shootings at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin came only two weeks after James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 58 others at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in one of the worst mass shootings in American history. Would this have happened without an AR-15 assault rifle, a Remington 870 12-gauge shot gun, and a semi-automatic handgun with high-capacity clips of bullets? After the Aurora massacre, the Denver Post published an interactive timeline listing some of the others:
August 1966, University of Texas at Austin, Texas: 16 people killed, 31 hurt. July 1985, a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California: 21 people killed, 19 hurt. October 1991, a Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas: 23 people killed, 22 hurt. May 1998, the community of Springfield, Oregon: four people killed, 21 hurt. April 1999, Columbine High School, Colorado: 13 people killed, 26 hurt. April 2007, Virginia Tech University, Virginia: 32 people killed, 27 hurt. February 2008, Northern Illinois University, Illinois: five people killed, 16 hurt. March 2009, Coffee and Geneva counties in Alabama: 10 people killed, six hurt. April 2009, a community center in Binghamton, New York: 13 people killed, four hurt. November 2009, Fort Hood, Texas: 13 people killed, 24 hurt. Other shootings, like the January 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona that killed six people and injured 13, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, could be added to this list. Would any of this devastation have happened without semi-automatic guns and high capacity clips of bullets?
Every time another mass shooting happens in the United States, the debate over gun control comes fleetingly to the forefront—until political fear paralyzes courage and action. Inevitably, some people repeat the argument that the solution to preventing mass shootings is not better gun control laws—even control of assault weapons which have no place in nonmilitary hands—but getting even more Americans armed. The apparent fantasy result would be something straight out of Hollywood where every single time a bad person stands up with a gun a good person with their own gun would quickly rise up out of the crowd, shoot the bad person, and save the day.
But arguments like this ignore both common sense and scientific evidence about the connection between the ready availability of guns—including assault weapons and guns with large ammunition capacity—and the epidemic of gun violence in America. Daniel W. Webster, professor and co-director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a panelist at the Children’s Defense Fund’s recent conference, wrote after the Aurora shootings: “We should not brush aside discussions of gun policy as too politically difficult to expect meaningful change, or ‘the price for our freedoms.’ Instead, we should reflect on why the U.S. has a murder rate that is nearly seven times higher than the average murder rate in other high-income countries and a nearly 20 times higher murder rate with guns. And we should consider how flaws in current gun policies contribute to this disparity . . . Following mass shootings, gun control opponents have not been bashful about pushing for laws to remove restrictions on carrying guns in schools, bars and churches. Indeed, calls for removing restrictions on carrying concealed firearms will not stop mass shootings. Research indicates that so-called right-to-carry laws don’t reduce violence, and may increase aggravated assaults. But studies I have conducted indicate that stricter regulations of gun sales, whether by retail dealers or by private sellers, are associated with fewer guns diverted to criminals. Moreover, national surveys show that a large majority of citizens favor these reforms to our gun laws, including most gun owners.”
It is way past time for common-sense gun law reform in America. Many of the victims of mass shootings have been strangers—sometimes children—who were personally unknown to the shooters but were simply in “the wrong place at the wrong time,” even if the “wrong place” turned out to be going to class, attending a worship service on a Sunday morning, or going to the local movie theater on a summer evening. In other words, they could have been any one of us.
What will it take for us to do something about it?
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.
August 29, 2012 - 4:44 pm
There is a problem those who favor more restrictive gun laws never seem to address. Without exception, every restrictive gun law has been followed by an increase in violent crime. And without exception every permissive gun law has been followed by a decrease in violent crime.
Just comparing the United States and Western Europe, provides convincing evidence that restrictive gun laws are the last thing an informed person would want. With the comparable numbers for Western Europe in parentheses: In 2010, the 308,746,000 (440,600,000) Americans had a total of 1,246,248 (4,728,875) violent crimes for a rate of 403.6 (1,072.6) violent crimes per 100,000 population. Those numbers include 12,996 (26,171) murders for a US murder rate of 4.2 and a Western European rate of 6.0 per 100,000 population.
Obviously, the “heavily armed” United States violent crime and murder rates are far below the rigidly gun controlled States of Western Europe. And even further below England, whose 2,203,000 “violent incidents against adults” is a rate of 4,156.6 compared to the US “all ages” rate of 403.6.
The bottom line is simple enough. Gun control kills.
Stranger
August 29, 2012 - 10:24 pm
We should strive for peace. But Upper Caste Sikhs loot, maim, slaughter and persecute Lower caste Dalits.
All 10 Sikh Gurus were upper caste Khatris. No lower caste or OutCaste Dalit Gurus.
Sikhs cultivate a pious image to attract, impress, deceive and back stab.
History shows Sikhs are the most violent people on earth. Sikh gangs ravage Canada with rape, slaughter, drug trafficking.
Sikhs use beards, long threatening knives, turbans, to segregate from others. Why are Sikhs hostile to interracial marriage with poor Blacks and Hispanics?
Mass migration of Sikhs destroys working class America, crushes them in unemployment, poverty, depression.
Sikhs commit genocide of millions of female fetuses to produce male kids.
Sikh Terrorists murdered 100,000 innocent Indian civilians during 80s, 90s. Sikh terrorists bombed Air India flight 182 from Canada and murdered 350 passengers in 1985.
August 29, 2012 - 11:25 pm
800,000 – 2 million people last year were ‘saved’ by the use or possession of firearms in the U.S. As opposed to 10 separate events in the U.S. spread across 44 years. You want to talk incidents, let’s talk incidents. September 11, 2001, 2819 people killed in that tragedy and there were no guns involved. Now you have a rough estimate to your question.
When you say something must be done, it only applies to those who would follow the law. By default, criminals don’t follow the law. All this “something must be done” accomplishes is depriving law abiding citizens from firearms and made them easy targets for criminals, you know, the ones that don’t care about laws. Criminals will always have firearms available to them.
The founders believed it important enough to put uninfringed gun ownership into the Bill of Rights. Not the Bill of Suggestions, the Bill of Rights. They understood when persuasion, words or politics fail to save you and yours from tyranny, harm or death, you need to take direct action.
“Please, Mister, don’t rape me. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t rob me. Hey, don’t kill me. Please stop strangling my daughter.” These are merely requests. With a gun, there’s no argument.
Your discussion is weak at best. You offer no solutions. You only repeat the dogma of “something must be done”. No law can keep anyone safe or safer from anything. From your point of view, we should have laws against murder, kidnapping, robbery, rape and a slew of other obviously harmful behaviors. Well, we do. Yet, these crimes persist and continue to increase.
You complain, but do not have one single suggestion about how to “fix” this.
Madam, you waste words and take no action. You would be perfect in public office.
August 30, 2012 - 11:10 am
How can you be taken seriously when you don’t know anything about firearms? An AR-15 is NOT an assault rifle. Only the military can own them. An assault rifle is fully automatic or 3 round burst. You are uneducated in the topic in which you are writing. You may have well just written ” guns are bad and I want them all to go away”. An AR-15 is a rifle. Nothing more. It is black and looks like what the military used but is functionally different. There are brown wooden deer hunting rifles that are far more lethal. AR-15s are used for target shooting and hunting so yes they do belong in hands of civilians. You are basing this on emotions and not facts. Does it matter what firearm you are killed with? Do you feel any better of you are shot with a gun that has a 10 round magazine (not “clip” as you again incorrectly called it). Keep any firearms away from criminals not just the ones you seen scary.
January 16, 2013 - 10:47 am
Guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people!
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns!
I’m all for gun control,my gun controlled my my two hands!!
January 16, 2013 - 10:48 am
Guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people!
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns!
I’m all for gun control,my gun controlled by my two hands!!
May 4, 2013 - 6:41 pm
Two things:
Firstly, “Would this have happened without a semi-automatic gun and high-capacity clips of bullets?” “A semi-automatic gun”, you do realize the lion’s share of firearms in America are semi-auto. So to restrict them would take firearms out of the hands of most gun owners. I realize that this is your true goal when it come to “sensible” or “common sense” gun control. And for God’s sake if you are going to write about firearms how about taking 10 minutes to look into the correct nomenclature when it comes to the very parts that you seem to hate. A clip is a device used to assist in loading magazines and is only called a “clip” by thugs in movies or on TV and apparently journalist. And the bullet is the projectile that travels down the barrel and strikes the target while a cartridge, a round, a shell, or ammunition is what is loaded into a magazine and is made up of a bullet, propellant and a primer encased within a metallic or plastic casing.
Secondly, Your timeline of mass shootings seems to miss the point. According to a new report from the Congressional Research Service mass shootings have claimed 547 people killed and 476 more injured in the U.S. since 1983. And yet in the Liberal utopia of Chicago with its strict gun laws racked up around 507 killed in just 2012 alone. You are given a glimpse of the nation’s future, a future of strict gun control, in the daily killings in Chicago. I simply don’t see how that future would be any better for my children.