Why does the United States, with only a small percentage of the world’s population, have such a huge percentage of the mass killings – as well as other firearm deaths? Is it the violence in our movies? Is it those first-person shooter video games? Is it young men raised in homes without fathers? Is it untreated mental illness? Social isolation?
All of these factors may play a role in tipping an already unbalanced person toward violence. And all are worth examining for ways in which we can improve them as a society. But are they unique to the United States?
Regardless of where they are produced, Hollywood’s reach is global; our movies are everywhere. Single-parent households, mental illness, and social isolation are likewise not uniquely American issues – though the fraying of our already thread-bare social safety net means that many human needs, which are addressed elsewhere, are left unmet in our country.
But the most relevant factor that truly is unique to the United States is also the most obvious. It is incredibly easy for anybody—including unbalanced, potentially violent people, many of whom may have been affected by the factors mentioned above—to access weaponry that can amplify an angry outburst into a community-wide tragedy.
To pretend to analyze gun violence in America, while discounting our ongoing wide-open nationwide firearms bazaar, is to ignore an elephant that utterly fills the room. It’s not real analysis, it’s industry-sponsored verbal gymnastics. Those who smugly scorn the students who are peacefully protesting gun violence today tacitly condemn those who will be the next victims, and the ones after that, to a cruel fate.
