This past Saturday, thousands of supporters and leaders of gun control from all over the country met in Washington, D.C. for the March on Washington for Gun Control, to demand stricter gun laws. Some of the speakers at the march included political leaders like Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Mr. Duncan and Rep. Van Hollen speak in the video below about the "unacceptable" death toll from gun violence.
In many parts of our country, kids are scared to simply leave their house, walk to the bus stop, or go to the mall because they might not come back. Our generation is scared. Our generation is dying. One boy in Chicago drew a picture of himself as a fireman with the caption, "If I grow up, I want to be a fireman." IF, not when. He gave the picture to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, then CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
This boy in Chicago had reason for wondering IF he would grow up.
In its 2012 report, the Children's Defense Fund revealed some shocking statistics:
- 8 children die from gun violence every day
- The number of preschoolers killed by guns in 2008 (88) and in 2009 (85) was nearly double the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2008 (41) and 2009 (48).
- The most recent analysis of data from 23 industrialized nations shows that 87 percent of the children under age 15 killed by guns in these nations lived in the United States. The gun homicide rate in the United States for teens and young adults ages 15 to 24 was 42.7 times higher than the combined rate for the other nations.
- Gun homicide continued as the leading cause of death among Black teens 15 to 19. White teens the same age were more likely to die from motor vehicle accidents, followed by gun homicide in 2008 and gun suicide in 2009.
Many people have been fighting to put an end to this violence. But where has the public outcry been? Where are the youth, who were so politically active in November? Why do we, as Americans, simply accept these atrocious numbers as tragic but unavoidable and move on? Our generation has proven itself to play an important role in politics, I hope we start playing a larger role in fighting for our lives.
Please post sources for your numbers. You say 8 children, which evokes innocent little kids. Yet most of those "children" are teenage criminals.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what the point of the preschooler stat, but note that since the NRA has been offering Eddie Eagle, the accidental death rate is decreased. If guns were so bad, we'd have a lot more than 88 preschoolers killed in a country with 300 million guns. While ever death is tragic, note that death by drowning is double the gun death in preschoolers.
Why focus on gun death? Our overall death rate is pretty high.
Finally, those teenagers that die in that age range is mostly inner city and drug related. We have a drug war problem, not a gun problem.
You've no mention of your own sources in your comment, Mr. Henry. Even so, "accidental death rate" isn't a valid stat when we're talking about gun violence.
DeleteAccording to 2010 statistics, accidental drowning was much a much bigger stat for deaths of preschoolers than gun violence, but we've tried to curb these deaths - California even has a law that requires child barriers around pools - while we haven't for guns.
I doubt mass school shootings happen in prisons, so the criminals thing is kind of silly.
I think the point of the preschooler stat is to narrow the death count to something so small to show the ridiculousness of our problem.
One can focus on gun death because death by guns far exceeds death by any other weapon and America. And it just so happens that per capita, America (89/100) has 30 more guns than the second most saturated country, Yemen (55/100). Sure, correlation doesn't mean causation, but Mexico (where our "drug war problem" may stem from) has much lower (15/100). These are off of 2007 stats, but have been compiled in a wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
Also, according to the CDC, Assault (Homicide) by discharge of firearms is more than double Assault (Homicide) by other means. That means that guns are used to kill people more than twice as often as any other weapon (or no weapon at all). Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf
Patrick, the source is right there in the text. As for dismissing the facts because you consider teenage criminals and inner city victims no better than vermin, I can only say, "Wow!"
DeleteSolid post. Your writing is so smooth, and, for a blog, it's just the right length. You were effectively concise, but still managed to blend just the right number of startling facts (from a credible source) with your meaningful questions and powerful call to action. The clip is good too. Rep. Hollen nails it. Keep it coming.
ReplyDeleteI saw something in the media last month about how the rate of murders committed with guns in Chicago is actually much, much higher now than Chicago's gun-murder-rate ever was back in days of the Prohibition era and Al Capone's rule over organized crime. That was about 85 years ago however, and there were fewer gun control laws in those days. It was even legal for hardware stores to sell guns back then, including the Thompson submachine gun. The Chicago of 85 years ago also had a population of mostly white people, too, since the blacks had not migrated to Chicago in large numbers from the South yet, and the browns from South of the border had not even started crossing the border yet. This same same demographic trend seems to apply to the rest of America, also. The further back in American history we look, the more we see of a similar pattern in just about every part of America - More white people, few or even no gun control laws, few or even no crimes committed with guns. So put that in your pipes and smoke it.
ReplyDelete