Thursday, July 20, 2017

SHOOTINGS: FRIGHTENING STATISTICS


The statistics are compelling and frightening. According to Mother Jones, “Between 1982 and 2011, a mass shooting occurred in the United States every 200 days. Between 2011 and 2014, a mass shooting occurred every 64 days.” As the magazine points out, “The frequency of mass shootings has tripled since 2011.”

On October 1, 2015 a 26-year-old white male killed eight people and wounded nine others at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Just eight days later, on October 9th, there were two school shootings in one day. One person was killed and three were wounded at Northern Arizona University. Later in the day, one person was killed and one wounded at Texas Southern University. There are so many shootings and killings that many do not even make the evening news crawl on TV screens.

The answer is not more guns. The United States has over 300 million guns in private hands, or nearly one gun for every citizen.

The answer is to find ways to keep guns out of the hands of those who are bent on mass public executions. (To be continued)


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