{"id":12230,"date":"2023-11-21T14:17:20","date_gmt":"2023-11-21T14:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12230"},"modified":"2023-11-21T14:17:20","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T14:17:20","slug":"americas-unique-enduring-gun-problem-explained-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12230","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s unique, enduring gun problem, explained"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“No other high-income country has suffered such a high death toll from gun violence<\/a>. Every day, 120<\/a> Americans die at the end of a gun, including suicides and homicides, an average of 43,375 per year. According to the latest available analysis of data from 2015 to 2019,the US gun homicide rate was 26 times<\/a> that of other high-income countries; its gun suicide rate was nearly 12 times higher<\/a>. Mass shootings, defined as attacks in which at least four people are injured or killed excluding the shooter, have been on the rise since 2015, peaking at 686 incidents in 2021<\/a>. There have been565 mass shootings<\/a> in the US in 2023 as of late October, including the Lewiston shooting, and at the current pace, the US is set to eclipse the 2021 record<\/a> this year.”
…
“According to a database maintained by Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, there were 520 active attacks \u2014 defined<\/a> as when one or more people are \u201cactively killing or attempting to kill multiple unrelated people in a public space,\u201d including but not limited to shootings \u2014 between 2000 and 2022. In many of those cases, police were unable to stop<\/a> the attacker, either because the attack had already ended by the time they arrived or because the attacker surrendered or committed suicide. Only in 160 cases were police able to successfully intervene by shooting or otherwise subduing the attacker.
 nother 2021 study<\/a> from Hamline University and Metropolitan State University found that the rate of deaths in 133 mass school shootings between 1980 and 2019 was 2.83 times greater in cases where there was an armed guard present. The researchers argue the results suggest the presence of an armed guard increased shooters\u2019 aggression and that because many school shooters have been found to be suicidal, \u201can armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent.\u201d”  
…
“In 2008, the Supreme Court effectively wrote NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre\u2019s \u201cgood guy with a gun\u201d theory into the Constitution. The Court\u2019s 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller<\/em><\/a> (2008) was the first Supreme Court decision in American history to hold that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm. But it also went much further than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heller<\/em> held that one of the primary purposes of the Second Amendment is to protect the right of individuals \u2014 good guys with a gun, in LaPierre\u2019s framework \u2014 to use firearms to stop bad guys with guns. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in Heller<\/em>, an \u201cinherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a matter of textual interpretation, this holding makes no sense. The Second Amendment provides that \u201ca well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State<\/a>, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t need to guess why the Second Amendment protects a right to firearms because it is right there in the Constitution. The Second Amendment\u2019s purpose is to preserve \u201ca well-regulated Militia,\u201d not to allow individuals to use their weapons for personal self-defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many years, the Supreme Court took the first 13 words of the Second Amendment seriously. As the Court said in United States v. Miller<\/em><\/a>(1939), the \u201cobvious purpose\u201d of the Second Amendment was to \u201crender possible the effectiveness\u201d of militias. And thus the amendment must be \u201cinterpreted and applied with that end in view.\u201d Heller<\/em> abandoned that approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heller<\/em> also reached another important policy conclusion. Handguns, according to Scalia, are \u201coverwhelmingly chosen\u201d by gun owners who wish to carry a firearm for self-defense. For this reason, he wrote, handguns enjoy a kind of super-legal status. Lawmakers are not allowed to ban what Scalia described as \u201cthe most preferred firearm in the nation to \u2018keep\u2019 and use for protection of one\u2019s home and family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This declaration regarding handguns matters because this easily concealed weapon is responsible for far more deaths than any other weapon in the United States \u2014 and it isn\u2019t close. In 2021, for example, a\u00a0total of 14,616 people were murdered in the US<\/a>, according to the FBI. Of these murder victims, at least 5,992 \u2014 just over 40 percent \u2014 were killed by handguns.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/23142734\/lewiston-maine-mass-shooting<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“No other high-income country has suffered such a high death toll from gun violence. Every day, 120 Americans die at the end of a gun, including suicides and homicides, an average of 43,375 per year. According to the latest available analysis of data from 2015 to 2019, the US gun homicide rate was 26 times that of other high-income countries; its gun suicide rate was nearly 12 times higher. Mass shootings, defined as attacks in which at least four people are injured or killed excluding the shooter, have been on the rise since 2015, peaking at 686 incidents in 2021. There have been 565 mass shootings in the US in 2023 as of late October, including the Lewiston shooting, and at the current pace, the US is set to eclipse the 2021 record this year.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“According to a database maintained by Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, there were 520 active attacks \u2014 defined as when one or more people are \u201cactively killing or attempting to kill multiple unrelated people in a public space,\u201d including but not limited to shootings \u2014 between 2000 and 2022. In many of those cases, police were unable to stop the attacker, either because the attack had already ended by the time they arrived or because the attacker surrendered or committed suicide. Only in 160 cases were police able to successfully intervene by shooting or otherwise subduing the attacker.<\/p>\n

nother 2021 study from Hamline University and Metropolitan State University found that the rate of deaths in 133 mass school shootings between 1980 and 2019 was 2.83 times greater in cases where there was an armed guard present. The researchers argue the results suggest the presence of an armed guard increased shooters\u2019 aggression and that because many school shooters have been found to be suicidal, \u201can armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent.\u201d” <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“In 2008, the Supreme Court effectively wrote NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre\u2019s \u201cgood guy with a gun\u201d theory into the Constitution. The Court\u2019s 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) was the first Supreme Court decision in American history to hold that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm. But it also went much further than that.
\nHeller held that one of the primary purposes of the Second Amendment is to protect the right of individuals \u2014 good guys with a gun, in LaPierre\u2019s framework \u2014 to use firearms to stop bad guys with guns. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in Heller, an \u201cinherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a matter of textual interpretation, this holding makes no sense. The Second Amendment provides that \u201ca well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.\u201d<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need to guess why the Second Amendment protects a right to firearms because it is right there in the Constitution. The Second Amendment\u2019s purpose is to preserve \u201ca well-regulated Militia,\u201d not to allow individuals to use their weapons for personal self-defense.<\/p>\n

For many years, the Supreme Court took the first 13 words of the Second Amendment seriously. As the Court said in United States v. Miller (1939), the \u201cobvious purpose\u201d of the Second Amendment was to \u201crender possible the effectiveness\u201d of militias. And thus the amendment must be \u201cinterpreted and applied with that end in view.\u201d Heller abandoned that approach.<\/p>\n

Heller also reached another important policy conclusion. Handguns, according to Scalia, are \u201coverwhelmingly chosen\u201d by gun owners who wish to carry a firearm for self-defense. For this reason, he wrote, handguns enjoy a kind of super-legal status. Lawmakers are not allowed to ban what Scalia described as \u201cthe most preferred firearm in the nation to \u2018keep\u2019 and use for protection of one\u2019s home and family.\u201d<\/p>\n

This declaration regarding handguns matters because this easily concealed weapon is responsible for far more deaths than any other weapon in the United States \u2014 and it isn\u2019t close. In 2021, for example, a total of 14,616 people were murdered in the US, according to the FBI. Of these murder victims, at least 5,992 \u2014 just over 40 percent \u2014 were killed by handguns.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/23142734\/lewiston-maine-mass-shooting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[53,110,113,407,112,406,109,300,619],"class_list":["post-12230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-deaths","tag-firearms","tag-gun-control","tag-gun-deaths","tag-gun-laws","tag-gun-violence","tag-guns","tag-statistics","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12231,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12230\/revisions\/12231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}