The BBC compiled this statistical portrait of America’s gun culture five years ago and updated it a month ago, before the Buffalo and Uvalde massacres. The latest studies report that there are more than 400 million guns in the U.S.
It begins:
It was over 50 years ago when the administration of President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared that “firearms are a primary instrument of death in American crime” and that it was “primarily the result of our culture’s casual attitude towards firearms and its heritage of the armed, self-reliant citizen”.
At the time, about 90 million guns were circulating in the country.
Today, there are many more guns and many more deaths.
Firearms deaths have become even more of a fixture in American life, with the 1.5 million that took place between 1968 and 2017 higher than the number of soldiers killed in every US conflict since the American War for Independence in 1775.
In 2020 alone, more than 45,000 Americans died at the end of a barrel of a gun, whether by homicide or suicide, more than any other year on record. The figure represents a 25% increase from five years prior, and a 43% increase from 2010.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Last week, Brian Lehrer of WNYC stated that the U.S. has 4% of the world’s population and 50% of the world’s guns. The truth squad tells me to tell you that I’ve not been able to verify this astonishing assertion. The closest I can get is a 2012 article with the numbers 5% of the population and half the guns. This piece is on a news site with which I’m not familiar, linking to a CNN report that’s no longer available.
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The reforms of gun possession being proposed are the equivalent of trying to fix a drip in the kitchen sink while the sewer is massively backing up in the basement and working up to the first floor. The objective, however unobtainable at this moment, has to be taking guns away. Period.
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The only “reform” now blocked by Republicans is a background check. You are right. The Uvalde killer would have passed. The mother of Newtown (Sandy Hook) killer bought his guns and she would have passed.
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I’ve halted regents review to give my kids their time to talk about the events of the last ten days and beyond and they have a ton to say about all of this. I’ll tell y’all this: our kids are an articulate bunch who are perceptive and thoughtful about what is going on. However, they are also worn down, tired, with frayed nerves.
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And years after many years and years still passing NOTHING has been done…NOTHING.
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Which will continue until the Republican Party is soundly defeated.
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& Krysten Sinema. If it’s not her, it’s Joe Manchin (although he just proposed a background check bill w/retiring Rep. Sen. Pat Toomey.
Elections up: vote. them.all.OUT.
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Something has been done at the federal level–but it’s negative. From 1994 to 2004, there was an assault-weapons ban.
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– The victims & families, of course, have our hopes & prayers in this sorrowful time.
– Now, so soon after this tragic event, is not the appropriate time to discuss gun control, as that would be politicizing it.
– The important point is that horrifying isolated incidents like this not dissuade us from maintaining the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens to own assault weapons just because sometimes someone who’d use them for destructive purposes occasionally falls through the cracks.
– If the teachers had been armed this wouldn’t have happened.
– We must tighten security at our schools. The gunman should never have been able to get into the building.
– The real solution is to establish greater support for mental health services.
Did I miss any?
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A recent report, minutes ago, says the killer had no known mental health problems. In the context of Abbott’s gun-crazy Texas, he must have seemed completely normal.
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Yes, that’s my point. All the standard “solutions” paraded out following each of these horrific incidents are futile attempts to circumvent the most obvious answer: to make these weapons unavailable. The typical response to that suggestion, echoed yet again by Gov. Abbot in his obligatory post-shooting speech, is to point out that gun control laws in such places as Chicago, NYC, & Chicago don’t eliminate gun violence. The “logic” there is that a proposed solution is useless if it’s not 100% effective.
No measure is going to eliminate the problem fully, but that doesn’t justify dismissing it as worthless. Yes, if this class of weapon is made illegal for the general public, some will still manage to get their hands on one. However, it will be substantially fewer than there are now.
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Culture-
Today, the 10 “most 2nd amendment friendly states” include 7 states that were slave states in 1854.
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What a coincidence!
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https://www.npr.org/2022/05/25/1101181842/nra-trump-speech-guns-banned-houston?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social
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Republican hypocrites.
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American Gun Culture
Ancient Greece had temples
Fertile Crescent , farms
Europe has cathedrals
All we got is arms
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American Gun Culture (2)
Other cultures sculpt the marble
Paint the Chapels (what a marvel!)
Write the poems and write the plays
Grace the lives in endless ways
Leave a mark that’s everlasting
All we leave is ever-blasting
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