53 Americans Killed per Day With Guns, Can the Pressure of Human Rights Organizations Confront the Incursion of Gun Lobbies?
The shooting incidents occurring frequently in the US schools prompted Human rights organizations to denounce the incursion of Gun Lobbies in the US. Pushing towards a gun control policy, civil organizations are pressuring the Biden government to take action.
On May 25, the United States was shocked by a shooting that took place at an elementary school in Texas, killing 19 children and two adults.
The Guardian newspaper published an article by Maeve Higgins about the mass shooting. The writer considered that America today is like a body attacking itself, “the system we once used to protect ourselves has become out of control, and now it is attacking us.”
Before the attack on Robb Elementary School in Texas and the killing of 19 children and two adults, the United States witnessed, less than two weeks ago, the killing of ten people in another mass shooting inside a store in New York.
She pointed out that all over the US, Americans are listening to the screams of the victims' relatives. “Their grief and our collective horror weigh on our minds and hearts,” she emphasized.
Broken Body Parts
On average, approximately 53 people are killed every day with a gun in the United States. According to data collected by the BBC from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 45,222 people in America died from gun-related injuries in 2020, the last year for which full data is available. More than half of these deaths were suicides, and 43% of the deaths - up to 19,384 people - were homicides.
In the pandemic years, arms sales soared in the US. There were more guns in the US than in most similar countries. It is relatively easy to obtain guns legally and illegally. The evidence points to an almost complete failure to prevent dangerous people from purchasing weapons and using them to kill and harm others and themselves.
The writer referred to the Human body allegory, she explained that if we compare the US country to a body, this body has many broken parts, namely easy access to lethal weapons, toxic masculinity, racism, and distorted ideologies built around the constitutional right to bear arms.
She concluded by saying instead of treating these broken parts, “we continue to work and carry these damaged parts with us. There are no puzzles here. We have answers to the questions of how this was allowed to happen and why it will continue to happen. The question now is how do we live in a body that attacks itself?”
Sacred for Americans
Americans have a "unique" and "exceptional" relationship with the idea of owning a gun, according to a report published by CNN.
The report explains that the "right to own a gun" guaranteed by the US Constitution is considered a "sacred" matter, at a time when some criticize this matter, especially with the increasing death toll related to gun shootings in the United States.
The report revealed that there are 120 weapons available for every 100 Americans, according to a survey of data conducted by Small Arm Survey, a specialist in weapons studies based in Switzerland.
The figures showed that the United States leads the world in terms of weapons stocks available to individuals, followed by the Falkland Islands, which have 62 weapons available for every 100 people, followed by Yemen, which has been at war for years, and has a stock of 53 weapons per person.
SAS data estimates that Americans own 393 million guns out of the 857 million weapons available to them for civilian use, which represents about 46 percent of the world's individual stockpile.
According to an October 2020 Gallup poll, about 44 percent of American adults own a home with a gun. Zachary Elkins, of the University of Texas, told CNN that the United States is one of only three countries where bearing or owning a gun is a constitutional right, the other two being Guatemala and Mexico.
Data from the American Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) indicate that US arms manufacturers produced 9 million guns in 2018 alone.
In March 2021, the FBI announced that it had conducted audits of 4.7 million individual requests to possess weapons.
A third of US adults believe there would be a decrease in crime if more people owned guns, according to a 2021 Pew survey.
Data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHMI) show that the rate of gun-related homicides in Washington DC is higher than any rate in any US state, and is close to levels in Brazil, which ranks sixth in the world linked to firearms.
The suicide rate using firearms is seven times higher than in other developed countries, with a rate of six suicides per 100,000 people, while multiple studies have linked gun ownership and suicides associated with it.
The Washington-based organization The Gun Violence Archive counted 417 mass shootings in 2019, and since the beginning of 2022, it has monitored 213 mass shootings in the United States.
Gun Shops
It seems like the relationship between Americans and weapons is a complex relationship. The Americans enjoy the liberty of owning guns as a constitutional right and feel desperate and sad about the mass killing resulting from this liberty.
In one week, the United States witnessed three mass shootings, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries, in Gilroy, California, El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
The United States is witnessing almost daily shootings in public places, and major cities such as New York, Chicago, Miami, and San Francisco are recording an increase in the rate of crimes committed by firearms, especially since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic in the year 2020, according to Agence France-Presse.
The right organizations urged US President Joe Biden to adopt laws controlling the firearms sector. Biden said in a speech from the White House, "It is time to turn pain into action."
He asked "When, for God's sake, will we stand up to the gun lobby?" adding, "I am disgusted and tired" of the frequent shootings in school circles.
