The United States has been gripped by constant shootings, especially school shootings, over the past 10 years.
On both sides of the aisle, there have been significant struggles with the issue.
Democrats have pushed for stronger gun reforms and have demonized guns to one degree or another.
Republicans do not seem particularly interested in doing anything except offering thoughts and prayers and calling for more guns.
Unfortunately, having more guns has surprisingly not worked and it appears that God has been out of the office, but hopefully, he will work on those prayers soon.
Demonizing guns and being derisive toward them is not going to win hearts and minds either. Democrats need to work on their messaging if they plan on doing anything useful on the reform front. We really need to face this issue head-on and call it what it is: a people issue.
Looking at school shooting data on websites like Wisevoter starts to paint a clearer picture. It takes into account state populations, gun ownership rates and the number of shootings between 1970 and 2021. It shows there is no real correlation between gun ownership and school shootings.
Take New Hampshire, our ownership rate is 46.3% and we have had seven school shootings, ranking us 19th and 41st in the country respectively. If the number of guns was the issue then New Hampshire should have had many more incidents by now. It goes both ways as well; Hawaii had one of the lowest ownership rates in the country at 9.1% and has only had three shootings in that period.
According to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) and presented by Wisevoter, the top 10 states for school shootings are as follows: California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina and Georgia. This is where the issue becomes clear: These top 10 states for school shootings are the 10 most populated states in the country.
As you follow shooting rankings and population, there is an almost direct correlation between the two statistics. This is the people issue I am talking about, and you cannot unsee it once you notice. It makes sense the more people you have in an area, the more the likelihood of dangerous crime increases; more people means more problems.
My statement is not meant to be anti-human or anti-gun, but as a country, we need to have this reckoning. Guns are not necessarily bad and neither are people, but we need to support strong and effective gun reform measures if anything positive is to be done. Until then, I guess we will just have to keep pressing our luck, and hopefully, there are no whammies.
Timothy Fitzpatrick can be contacted at
tfitzpatrick@kscequinox.com
