worth a thousand words

by nance In culture, Links, Pictures Leave a comment

This tweet says it all. There has some discussion about the statistics in the tweet, questioning how we define the term “mass shooting”1 and what things unify shootings like Dayton and El Paso (and Columbine and Sandyhook and Orlando and Las Vegas and Marysville Pilchuck and and and…) but still. It tells us something real and true and desperately sad.

Study after study after study tells us that better gun control laws will result in fewer deaths. But I’ve signed petitions and voted for “common sense gun laws” and even called a congresswoman once. It feels pointless. So what can we do? Honestly, I haven’t a clue. I feel profoundly unintelligent when it comes to the “gun lobby” and the NRA and how it all works but I’m going to read this and this and this and then go from there.

Here are a few more graphics to ponder — all from Giffords Law Center.

Americans are 25 times more likely to die of gun violence than residents of peer nations
The 10 states with the highest gun death rates have some of the weakest gun laws in the nation
51% of suicides in America involve a firearm
1,500 children are killed with guns every year
Abused women are five times more likely to be killed by their abuser if the abuser has a firearm

I want to wrap this up with a little cheerleading or something to rally us to keep doing the work but I guess I need to do some more digging / reading / learning first. I’ll report back.

  1. In this case, it’s based on numbers from The Gun Violence Archive and is defined by a shooting where 4 or more people are shot, not including the shooter, regardless of whether those shot live or die, and might include, say, a domestic violence situation where a father shoots his wife and three kids (which sounds a lot like a mass shooting to me, even if the victims are not shot in a mall or movie theater — but whatever)