In 2011, about 8500 people were shot to death in the US. In 2010, the number according to the FBI was 8700, give or take a couple. The number has been gradually going down, but it's been as high in the last 50 years as 20,000 murders in a year.
There is apparently a type of American who likes to kill people.
I grew up in a neighborhood in Chicago where a lot of those people who like to kill people lived. My neighborhood was called Murdertown--poeple died on the sidewalk in front of my house. There was a lot of fear there. When we could, we moved away. It was nice to be able to sit on the front porch in the new neighborhood.
As the type of American who is generally still fearful, I would like it made as difficult as possible for those other Americans to kill me or other people. You can understand my fear. It's easier to buy a gun in America than it is to get a drivers license. I just want it to be as hard to shoot someone to death as it is to drive a car.
If you know a politician, please pass my concern onto him or her.
Thank you.
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2 comments:
I don't know, Doc. Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. Would the suggestion be that things would be even worse without them? God forbid.
I would love to hear some proposed solutions to this problem that don't include outlawing guns to those who use them safely and legally. Background checks are not enough apparently. Then there is the black market.
Maybe the solution might be along the lines of Confucius' idea that what starts in a persons heart affects the family, which in turn affects the neighborhood, and so on to the state and nation, etc. We need to cultivate a culture that rewards good behavior and discourages behaviors we don't like--like killing people.
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