“later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.”
~Warsan Shire~
Warsan Shire (born 1988) is a Somali–British writer, poet, editor and teacher. Shire was born in 1988 in Kenya to Somali parents. She immigrated to the United Kingdom aged 1. Shire has a . As of 2015, she primarily resides in London.
Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and thousands more injuries annually. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, firearms (excluding BB and pellet guns) were used in 84,258 nonfatal injuries (26.65 per 100,000 U.S. citizens) and 11,208 deaths by homicide (3.5 per 100,000), 21,175 by suicide with a firearm, 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm, and 281 deaths due to firearms-use with “undetermined intent” for a total of 33,169 deaths related to firearms (excluding firearm deaths due to legal intervention). 1.3% of all deaths in the country were related to firearms.
His speeches after mass shootings — speeches that have become a bit of a morbid ritual, given how regularly the shootings occur — have grown angrier, more emotional, and more disgusted at America’s gun violence problem and Congress’s unwillingness to do literally anything to stop it.
“This is a political choice that we make,” Obama declared Thursday night, October1. 2015. after the 294th mass shooting of 2015, “to allow this to happen every few months in America.”
But let’s be clear about precisely what kind of choice this is. Congress’s decision not to pass background checks is not what’s keeping the US from European gun violence levels. The expiration of the assault weapons ban is not behind the gap. What’s behind the gap, plenty of research indicates, is that Americans have more guns. The statistics are mind-blowing:
America has 4.4 percent of the world’s population but almost half of its civilian-owned guns.
The US has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country
Why are there so many shootings?
One piece of this puzzle is the national rate of firearm-related murders, which is noted above. The United States has by far the highest per capita rate of all developed countries. According to data compiled by the United Nations, the United States has four times as many gun-related homicides per capita as do Turkey and Switzerland, which are tied for third. The US gun murder rate is about 20 times the average for all other countries on this chart.
That means that Americans are 20 times as likely to be killed by a gun than is someone from another developed country.
We’re done talking about your right to use guns, it’s time to talk about our right to be free from gun violence!
The NRA and morally corrupt Politicians refuse to recognize “gun violence” as a public health crisis and have fought every bill meant to curb the illegal gun market and keep the guns out of the hands of convicted felons, people convicted of domestic violence and people with a severe mental illness. As far as we are concerned, the NRA and morally corrupt Politicians have just as much blood on their hands as the people who are actually pulling the triggers.
It Is What It Is 