America Blows Another Chance to Tame Gun Violence

The recent attempt to kill Donald Trump, a crime that cost one bystander his life and injured two others, was terrifying and deplorable.

But while most people are fixating on the slug that grazed the right ear of former president Trump, they should be considering the hail of bullets going straight through the heart of America. I am talking about the country’s epic and ongoing failure to deal with the deadly plague of gun violence.

Demonizing and denial

Let’s start with the frenzied reaction to the attempted assassination of the former president, the second in his political career. Back in 2016 at a Trump rally in Nevada, Michael Steven Sandford tried to grab the pistol of a police officer providing security for the event. After his arrest, Sandford said that he wanted to kill Trump to prevent him from becoming president.

In the wake of the recent shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to create a bipartisan congressional task force to investigate the assassination attempt.

The head of the U.S. Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, was dragged in front of Congress, where she was publicly shredded for failing to prevent the attempt on Trump’s life. Members on both sides of the aisle demanded her head. The day after her testimony, they got it.

Some deep-state believers in the Republican party have openly mused that the Democrats tried to kill the Republicans’ presidential nominee by purposely withholding proper security for his campaign events.

Trump had set the stage for that narrative by previously claiming that FBI agents were authorized to kill him when they came to conduct a legal search of his Mar-a-Lago residence. In fact, the agents were abiding by standard protocol while looking for classified documents. Trump had removed them from the White House and refused to return them to the National Archives after losing the 2020 election.

Here in Canada, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith implied that it was the rhetoric of Trump’s progressive opponents that provoked the attempt on his life.

Smith was referring to the fact that Trump critics have accused him of being an authoritarian who poses a threat to democracy. Indeed, they have. Smith, though, appears to have missed a little news about why they have done that.

For starters, no one has torqued up the violent rhetoric in the United States as much as Donald Trump himself. He has pitted Christians against Muslims, American citizens against migrants, Republicans against Democrats, and everyone against the so-called administrative state.

He is the guy who encouraged attendees at one of his rallies to punch a heckler in the face.

He is the guy who wondered why federal border guards didn’t just shoot migrants in the legs when they try to enter the United States illegally.

He is the guy who has pledged to round up and deport millions of undocumented people who have been living in the United States for years.

He is the guy who drew a page from Hitler’s own script by saying migrants are “poisoning” the blood of America.

He is the guy who claims to want to abolish the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and a slew of other federal agencies.

He is the guy who wants to try Liz Cheney for treason and use the Department of Justice against his political rivals.

And oh yes, he is the guy who wants to suspend the U.S. Constitution, the better to be the dictator he says he will be on Day 1 of another Trump administration.

Trump’s violent iconoclasm is catchy. Consider a comment made this week by Ohio state Sen. George Lang. Speaking at a campaign event for Trump and running mate J.D. Vance, the senator talked about what would happen if the Republicans don’t win the 2024 election.

“I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved.... I’m glad we got people like... Bikers for Trump... on our side.”

Sound a tad authoritarian to you, or is it all just left-wing hyperbole, Madame Premier?

Everyday casualties

Attempted presidential assassinations are always big news. There have been 46 U.S. presidencies and 16 assassination attempts, including four that ended in the death of a president.

But my question for the politicians and media who are obsessing over the attempt on Trump’s life is this. With the country standing knee-deep in gun deaths, with the violence going up like a rocket, where is the resolve and commitment to keep regular people safe?

Why does it seem more important who gets shot, rather than how many other victims fall with virtually no changes to the country’s dreadful gun laws?

It is no accident that Thomas Matthew Crooks was toting an AR-15, an assault weapon originally developed for use by the U.S. military. Thanks to gun-lobby politics, almost anyone in the United States can get their hands on a personal weapon of mass destruction.

Consider the evidence for the proposition that America’s fetish for guns is more than a crisis. It is a tragedy, and the people in charge are looking the other way on the critical issue of gun control.

The United States has recorded 40,000 gun deaths per year since 2014. In three of those years, 2016, 2017 and 2018, the death toll reached 50,000.

The leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States is not car accidents, drug overdoses or disease. It is gunfire. In 2021, 2,590 young Americans died from gun violence — nearly the death toll for the traumatizing terror attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

According to analysis from the Pew Research Center of the mortality statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the death rate for this demographic rose by 50 per cent between 2019 and 2021.

There is a gender and age component to that grim statistic. Boy victims accounted for 83 per cent of gun deaths, girl victims 17 per cent. In 2021, children between the ages of 12 and 17 made up 86 per cent of gun-related deaths among children and teens, including accidents, homicides and suicides. Homicide was the leading type of gun death for all children, but suicide accounted for 36 per cent of gun deaths for those aged 12 to 17.

The dead are only part of the story. In 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that children under the age of 18 visited emergency rooms 11,000 times for gunshot wound treatments.

No wonder. The country is awash in guns.

Armed to the teeth

According to an article in the Trace that includes data from various government agencies such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, an estimated 494 million guns have been produced for the U.S. market since 1899. If guns are maintained, they can last 100 years. An estimated attrition rate still leaves “about 378 million guns in circulation.” An independent Swiss research firm, Small Arms Survey, put the number at 393 million guns in the hands of civilians in the United States.

If no one knows the exact number, the bottom line is that the country has more guns than people. And the American ratio of 120.5 firearms per 100 residents is by far the highest in the world. (By way of comparison, there are 34.7 weapons per 100 residents in Canada.)

No one can prove that the sheer number of guns is the cause of gun violence. But one startling statistic arises from comparing ratios of gun-related deaths with all homicides on a country-by-country basis.

In the United States, guns are involved in 80.5 per cent of homicides. It’s four per cent in England and Wales, where there are just 615,627 guns. In Australia, with three million guns, it is 11 per cent.

The gun-buying habits of Americans have undergone a profound change. Back in the late 1960s, rifles and shotguns accounted for most gun purchases.

These weapons were purchased by people who used them for hunting or recreational purposes. Now handguns account for most weapons sales. They are not being purchased for target practice or hunting. Americans are buying them for self-defence.

It used to be the case that mass shootings, defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed or injured, were relatively rare. The BBC reports that for the last three years, there have been more than 600 mass shootings annually in the United States, or nearly two a day.

The list of victims of gun violence stateside continues to grow like a cancer: Route 91 Harvest music festival, Las Vegas, Nevada — 60 killed, over 500 injured; Pulse, Orlando, Florida — 49 killed, 53 injured; Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut — 26 killed; First Baptist Church, Sutherland Springs, Texas — 26 killed, 20 injured; Walmart, El Paso, Texas — 23 killed, 26 injured; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida — 17 killed. And on and on and on.

There is a vitally important context for these dread numbers. As reported by Axios, in the 60 years from 1949 to 2011 there were 11 mass shootings in which at least 12 people died, Columbine being one of the worst. Since then, a period of just over a decade, there have been 14.

While mass shootings are becoming more frequent and more deadly in the United States, researchers at the University of Chicago’s Chicago Project on Security and Threats found that an alarming 14 per cent of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum believe that the use of force is justified to “achieve political goals that [they] support.”

Researchers also found that 12 million Americans say that violence is justified to restore Donald Trump to power. Making that number even more chilling, faith in democracy is waning at the same time.

In 2022, 111 million Americans told researchers that they did not believe that elections could solve the country’s fundamental problems. Just a year later, the number exploded to 142 million. Here’s how the director of the University of Chicago research team, professor Robert Pape, reads the tea leaves:

“What’s happening in the United States is political violence is going from fringe to the mainstream.”

In a nation with more guns than people.

What real reform could mean

When Australia was faced with mass shootings like the one at Port Arthur in Tasmania where 35 people were killed, it revamped the way the country regulated guns. It was a wide-ranging and radical effort.

The first piece was to have consistent firearms legislation in all states and territories in the country. That yielded a uniform approach to regulatory and certification systems no matter where a gun owner lived.

Restrictions were also put in place for certain assault-style weapons. And rifles as well as handguns had to be registered.

Australia also developed a stricter screening process for people seeking gun licences, including giving a “genuine” reason to explain why the gun was needed.

The Australian government gave gun owners a 12-month amnesty period to comply with the new regulations. It also introduced all these changes in stages, including a provision to buy back weapons that would be affected by the new legislation. Some 643,000 firearms were turned in.

By comparison, the American approach to gun regulation is a hodgepodge of differing approaches at the federal, state and local levels.

Twenty-five states allow carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. Eight states require permits for open and concealed carry.

Anyone over 18 can buy a rifle or shotgun without condition, and there are virtually no restraints on buying semi-automatic weapons. If you don’t want to face a background check, all you have to do is buy your gun at a gun show or from a private seller. (There are some restrictions on machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and armour-piercing ammunition in America.)

Guns and money

Although countries like Canada and Australia, as well as states like California, New York and Illinois, exemplify what can be done to promote public safety, it is highly unlikely that the United States will ever conduct a radical overhaul of its approach to gun control.

There are two reasons.

The first is the enormous economic footprint of the gun industry in the United States. According to Forbes, the business of making and selling guns is a $28-billion-a-year enterprise.

Since the industry is super-sensitive to any regulatory or legislative changes, it invests big money in lobbying in Washington. And the lobbying pays off. Even when the House of Representatives passes gun-related legislation, it is rarely taken up in the Senate.

An exception to that rule is President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. When Biden signed the act into law in 2022, it marked the first time in 30 years that Congress and the Senate agreed to federal gun reform.

The legislation gave $750 million to help states implement so-called “red flag” laws, designed to remove firearms from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.

There was also funding for the nation’s mental health initiatives as well as to make schools more secure from potential attack.

Background checks were strengthened. Instead of a 10-minute phone check before saying yes, no or maybe to a gun applicant, authorities now have up to 10 days to review juvenile and mental health records of young gun purchasers.

But here’s what the legislation didn’t do. It didn’t feature universal background checks, it didn’t ban assault weapons like the AR-15, and it didn’t prohibit high-capacity magazines of the kind often used in mass shootings.

Why? Because access to firearms in the United States is a matter of how the powers that be interpret the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of the right of Americans to keep and bear arms.

And so, at the same time that Biden signed his legislation into a law restricting gun rights, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded them.

In a 2022 judgment written by Clarence Thomas, the court ruled that the Second and 14th amendments protected an individual’s right to a handgun for self-defence. That decision reversed a handgun ban in the District of Columbia.

Two years later, Justice Samuel Alito wrote a decision reversing a similar gun ban in Chicago, again based on constitutional grounds. As the Second Amendment puts it, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Only three countries in the world have made gun ownership a constitutional right — Mexico, Guatemala and the United States.

Short of constitutional reform, or reform of the Supreme Court, which Joe Biden is now seeking, America will remain a country more comfortable banning books than guns. And the price of that choice will be paid in blood.