Guns Don't Kill People

San Gimignano: Really has nothing to do with today's post.

In the wake of America's record-setting mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, I find myself struggling to make sense of why Americans are struggling to make sense of this tragedy.

Everything the shooter did, up to the moment when he opened fire on the innocent, unsuspecting crowd was entirely within the letter of American law. 

There has been a mass shooting (where four or more people are shot) in the US almost every day this year. 

Somewhere between 11,000 and 12,000 (or possibly even 32,000) people die by gun violence every year in the USA. Up to two thirds of these deaths are suicides.

Americans have a 1 in 130 chance of dying by gun violence.

The sentiments of the people who adamantly support the second amendment of the US Constitution can be summed up this way: "nothing goes wrong most of the time and when it does go wrong, it's not the gun's fault." 

This is how I make sense of the dreadful events in Las Vegas this past week: American freedoms matter more to Americans than the lives they cost no matter how those lives are lost: at home with a bullet through your head, at a shopping mall at the hands of your three year old, at school, at work, or at a live concert on the Las Vegas strip. 

In the early days of the republic, the rallying cry was "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

That can now be updated to "Somewhere between eleven and thirty thousand lives a year is the price of liberty."

Thanks for reading!

Karen