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Guns, Guns, Guns

Perhaps someday we'll have common sense laws that keep machine guns and semi-automatic weapons and other instruments of mayhem out of the hands of ordinary civilians. Until then, all we have are facts, daily gun violence, frequent mass shootings, and senseless deaths  as people go about trying to live ordinary lives. Here are a few of the facts:

Since Aug. 1, 1966 (the date of the University of Texas Tower shootings in which 17 were killed) , there have been 131 incidents in which four or more people were fatally wounded. An average of eight died in each episode. Of the 948 killed, 145 were children or teenagers. The oldest victim was 98; the youngest, 8 months.

​People killed in mass shootings make up less than half of 1 percent of the people shot to death in the U.S. More than half of gun deaths every year are suicides.

From 1966 to 2015, a total of 1,531,198 Americans not in combat have been killed with firearms. This exceeds the 1,169,148 killed in six bloody wars:

                    Revolutionary War         4,435
                    Civil War                          498,332
                    World War I                    116,516

                    World War II                 405,399
                    Korean War                       54,246
                    Vietnam                               90,220

Like the Pulse nightclub massacre, which killed 49 in Orlando in June of 2016, the Mandalay Bay death toll, 58 murdered in October of 2017, exceeded the single-day death totals in both Iraq and Afghanistan.


And one more thing: Watching Rep. Steve Scalise enter the House chamber for the first time after being shot while practicing for the congressional baseball game (of all things), I was reminded of the many other victims of mass shootings--those who suffer injuries that may change their lives forever and often require months of rehabilitation. Rep. Scalise walked with the aid of two canes; therapy will be a long process. Those kinds of injuries are visible. The emotional scars, not so much. On Oct. 1, 2017, about 22,000 innocents attended the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. There, 58 concert-goers were killed and more than 500, injured by a single gunman. Emotional trauma? I'd guess about 22,000.

Sources:    Washington Post
                        Gun Violence Archive 
                        MSNBC, Morning Joe
    

October 3, 2017

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