At the weekend, Donald Trump missed death by the width of a hair. Literally. A 20-year-old man, armed with an AR15, the weapon of choice for gun massacres in the US, shot at him while he was on the campaign hustings in Pennsylvania. Thomas Crooks killed another man and injured another before he himself was shot dead.
The assassination attempt was worldwide news, as it should be. Politicians, including the US President were quick to condemn the shooting, all saying it had no place in American society or democracy. Tell that to children killed by gunfire. Every day, guns take young lives in the US.
A national health crisis was recently declared in the country. The crisis has claimed thousands of lives, devastated families and communities. A face mask does not prevent its spread, nor does washing your hands. It comes to people at roughly 1000 metres a second. It is not a sneeze. It is the speed of a bullet leaving a gun. Different bullets and different guns produce varying velocities, but to a target it makes little difference.
This is the crisis of death and injury by gun. Of course it is America, everyone sighs; and to use the emphasis ‘of course’ is a depressing and despairing recognition of the destructive cycle. Outside of a war zone, only in America could death by firearm be deemed so common as to be within the remit of a government department (that is not the Pentagon) to declare it so. In a war zone there is collateral damage. America is at peace, and yet there is this. COVIDs come and go, but this? It is part of national life – and death.
The US Surgeon-General Dr Vivek Murthy recently made the announcement declaring ‘firearm violence in America to be a public health crisis’. It is the first time the Office of the Surgeon-General has made such a proclamation. In issuing it the Office said ‘it outlines the devastating and far-reaching consequences that firearm violence poses to the health and well-being of the country’.
While Americans may be somewhat inured to the sheer volume of numbers. This statistic is beyond staggering: from 2000 to 2020 in the US, firearms were the leading cause of death for children and adolescents aged 1 to 19. And this: more than 4600 children and teens died from guns in 2020, according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is more than from car crashes.
That they’re just kids clearly isn’t defence enough.
To an outsider, the weight of statistics arising from this nationwide trauma is unfathomable. But we do not live within the grain of the more than 200-year-old tree that is the Second Amendment of the Constitution that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed’.
'More than 4600 children and teens died from guns in 2020, according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is more than from car crashes.'
It is impossible, however, not to draw a line from it to one of the findings of the surgeon-general’s report: Rates of firearm-related death in the US are significantly higher than rates in other high-income countries. There are other factors, too, such as the influence of the NRA on powerbrokers to resist change, and the mass marketing of guns, and targeted (pun intended) advertising.
The surgeon-general’s report states: ‘Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) found that, in 2015, the overall firearm-related death rate was 11.4 times higher in the US compared to 28 other high-income nations. During the same year, 83.7 per cent of all firearm-related deaths across the 29 countries studied occurred in the US despite the U.S. only accounting for about 31 per cent of the combined population.’
The discrepancy is worse in relation to children and adolescents. Across the 29 countries, 97 per cent of children aged up to four, and 92 per cent of children from 5 to 14 years died from gun injuries in the US.
Other data shows that in 2019, death by gun for children and teens was more than five times that which occurred in Canada, about 18 times in Sweden and more than 22 times in Australia.
The website Gun Violence Archive keeps a running log of firearm-related deaths. It lists incidents each day as they occur. In one week in July, 114 people were wounded and 21 killed from guns.
The following statistics are derived from groups United Against Gun Violence and Sandy Hook Promise, a non-profit organisation that rose from the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six adults were shot dead.
Every day, 327 people are shot in the United States. Of those, on average, 117 will die.
Each day, 12 children die from gun violence. Another 32 are shot and injured.
Mass shootings make up only 1 per cent of all gun violence; 60 per cent of gun deaths are suicide and 37 per cent are homicide — including the 1 per cent of mass shootings. The remaining 3 per cent include law enforcement involved shootings, unintentional shootings, and those that were undetermined.
As of 2022, the United States has 121 firearms per 100 residents. Making it the only country with more civilian-owned firearms than people (America’s population is 333 million.) One in five say they have had a family member fatally shot.
Since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, more than 338,000 students have experienced gun violence at school. There were more school shootings in 2022 – 46 – than in any year since Columbine. In 2022, 34 students and adults died while more than 43,000 children were exposed to gunfire at school. An estimated 4.6 million children live in a home where at least one gun is kept loaded and unlocked. It’s no surprise then that in a few cases, children have shot dead other children. Kids take guns to schools. Surely, there cannot be a more damning illustration of the crisis then this: schools now have protocols in place in the event of a massacre.
Is this not the opposite of childhood? Now, kids learn of death, bloody and flesh shredded.
Warwick McFadyen is an award-winning journalist. He has won two Walkley Awards and four Quill Awards. He has published several books of poetry. The latest is 21+4 Poems. His prose and poems have also appeared in Quadrant, Overland and Dissent.