The love of guns trumps the love of fellow man
The deadly shooting at a nightclub in Orlando took place three years and six months after a gunman killed 27 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
In the number of people killed, the Orlando massacre tops the list of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States, going back to 1949, which includes 299 people killed during 16 events.
Reverb Press reported in December that the U.S. has more guns per capita than any other country in the world, along with the highest rate of gun homicides among the world’s wealthy nations. In October, the Washington Post cited a 2012 Congressional Research Service report published exactly one month before the Sandy Hook shooting that estimated there were 310 million guns in the U.S. as of 2009 - more than our population at that time.
CNN recently reported that the U.S. is home to nearly a third of the world’s mass shootings. However, there have been no changes to federal firearm legislation passed by Congress since early 2008.
How can this be? Why is our government not protecting us? Why do my fellow Americans sit passively by in apathy while we are used as target practice, even when our own state fell victim? The Economist, in response to the Charleston Massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015, when nine were killed, wrote: “Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard (mass shootings) the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic, and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing.”
Are we really prepared to accept that we may be shot when we worship at church, go to school, shop at a mall, go to work, go see a movie, stop to get gas, drive on a highway, or sit in our homes?
These are all places where we have taken bullets, and most are not mass shooting incidents.
How many more must die before we say enough!
What will it take before the right to live is as important as the right to bear arms?
The writer lives in Conway.
This story was originally published July 10, 2016 at 8:38 AM with the headline "The love of guns trumps the love of fellow man."