In thinking about possible new gun legislation in America, I was reminded of “Dragnet,” that iconic television show from the fifties that spawned the line “Just the facts, ma’am.” Rather than mount a soap box, let’s just present some facts.
A 2018 Small Arms Survey reported that there are over one billion small arms distributed globally, of which about 85 percent are in civilian hands. U.S. civilians account for 393 million (about 46%) of the worldwide total of civilian-held firearms.
In the U.S. there are about 120.5 firearms for every 100 residents, dwarfing that of other developed nations, such as Australia (14.5), Germany (19.6), Great Britain (4.6), France (19.6), Italy (14.4), Canada (34.7) and Japan (0.3).
After Bill Clinton banned assault weapons in 1994, mass shooting deaths dropped by 43 percent. After the Republican Congress let the ban expire in 2004, they shot up by 239%.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention report that there were a record 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the U.S. in 2020.
Firearms were the leading cause of death in children under the age of 19 in 2020, surpassing auto accidents as the leading cause of death in that age group.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) spent $20 million on gun ads in 2020.
The NRA has contributed funds to two dozen sitting Republican U.S. senators, including Maine Sen. Susan Collins. In fact, 16 GOP Senators have received at least $1 million in contributions from the NRA.
Since the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 that claimed the lives of 20 children and six staff members, 948 school shootings have taken place.
In 1996, a gunman murdered 16 students and their teacher at Dublin Primary School in Scotland. By the end of 1997, Parliament had banned private ownership of most handguns. The U.K. has experienced only one mass shooting since that time.
In 1996, a gunman went to a historical site at Port Arthur Tasmania, an island state in Australia, and killed 30 people with 23 injured. Within weeks, the government implemented stricter gun control laws as well as gun buyback programs. Australia has not witnessed a mass shooting since 1996.
In 2019, 51 people were killed and 50 others wounded in Christchurch in New Zealand when a gunman opened fire at the two mosques in the city. Less than one month later, the New Zealand Parliament voted 119-1 to introduce a nationwide ban on semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles. There have been no mass shootings since that time.
Twenty-seven people were killed by guns in America on Christmas Day in 2015, which is equal to the total number of people killed by gun homicides in an entire year in Austria, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Estonia, Bermuda, Hong Kong and Iceland combined.
During the recent Memorial Day weekend, a preliminary count found that at least 156 people died and 412 were injured from 5 p.m. Friday until Tuesday.
Forty-six million American children live in a home where at least one gun is kept loaded and unlocked.
Eighty-eight percent of Americans favor background checks for the purchase of handguns. Sixty-seven percent of Americans favor a ban on assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons.
(Let’s take a time-out from the fact-based format to present what author Stephen King had to say about assault rifles: “Semi-automatics have only two purposes. One is so owners can take them to the shooting range once in a while, yell ‘yeehaw’ and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use — their only other use — is to kill people.”)
Those are just some of the facts related to guns in America. It is time for Congress — and state legislatures — to decide who we want to be as a nation when it comes to guns. It is time to act. And that’s a fact.
David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary and suggestions fo future “Just a Little Old” columns. dtreadw575@aol.com
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