The Truth About Guns, Gun Violence in the US

We have been duped:

We are being told by the now Supreme Court (circa. 2022) we must adhere to the original tenants of the Constitution – not including some of the Bill of Rights, specifically those adopted after the Civil War – the Amendments 13 to 27. This is an artifact not from our founders, but from the right-wing starting the 1980’s.

Many Americans came to believe that originalism was itself original, a mode of constitutional interpretation that dated to the 1790s rather than to the 1980s. The gun debate descended into irrationality. Liberals often reacted hysterically to conservative gun rights arguments and called for impossible-to-pass gun control measures, measures whose consequences the NRA delightedly exaggerated. Under these circumstances, some gun owners grew genuinely fearful that the federal government intended to seize their guns. Meanwhile, the NRA’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, like originalism itself, prevailed.

In a searing critique of the new interpretation of the Second Amendment, the historian Garry Wills pointed out that the Second Amendment had everything to do with the common defense and nothing to do with hunting: “One does not bear arms against a rabbit.”

In 1986, Congress repealed parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act in a Firearms Owners’ Protection Act that invoked “the rights of citizens . . . to keep and bear arms under the second amendment.” In 1991, Warren Burger called the new interpretation of the Second Amendment “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” It was, indeed, breathtaking. In a few short, violent years, guns became for conservatives what abortion had become for liberals: an emotionally charged matter of a constitutionally guaranteed, individual right with which party operatives could reliably get voters to the polls because, in fact, the constitutional guarantee was no guarantee at all.

And, here we are 40 years later:

• Gun owned the US – 400+ million
• People – 330 million
• Guns/1,000 People – 1,200
• Gun Deaths – 45,222, 2020, 2^nd Highest in the world, Brazil is 1^st
• Gun Deaths/100,000 people – 12.1, 10^th
• Assault Rifles – 20 million
• Mass Shootings 2021 – 609
• Mass Shootings/week – 11

Compare this to Australia:

• Gun Owned – 3.5 million
• People – 27.1 million
• Guns/1,000 People – 100
• Gun Deaths – 219, 2019
• Gun Deaths/100,000 people – 1.04, 24th in the world
• Assault Rifles – 0 – outlawed by National Firearms Agreement law in 1996 after Port Arthur mass shooting 35 people died, along with pump shotguns,
• Mass Shootings 2021 – 0
• Mass Shootings/week – 0