Murder. Suicide. Accidental death.
I know too many victims of a gun: Jeff. Randy. Willy. David. Anita. Steve. These are people that come to mind without even thinking hard. They were friends, acquaintances and relatives.
Jeff was murdered. The only one killed by someone else’s hand.
Randy was lucky, He survived his suicide attempt when the bullet riccocheted off a tooth — and missed his brain. He was a Vietnam vet who got his life together after that, shook his alcoholism and lived long enough to enjoy a few years of relatively happy retirement.
Willy was a grammar school classmate. They said he shot himself while playing with his gun and talking to his girlfriend on the phone.
David was the high school golden boy, an athlete and top student several years older than me whose girlfriend broke up with him. So he shot himself.
Anita was a relative who thought divorce was too shameful. So she killed herself in her backyard instead.
After Anita, Steve is the one I think of the most. A high school classmate with a quick wit. He was funny as hell, because he could see a situation and instinctively know how to turn it into dry humor. Bob Newhart type. Steve became an accountant too. I would bump into him now and then later in life. He stayed funny even after his divorce.
Then one day he put a shotgun in his mouth and that was that. Leaving everyone who knew him wondering if there wasn’t something they could have done. I guess his humor was a defense mechanism, like so many comics. Pity we didn’t see that until there was nothing left to do but mourn.
And now, 58 + people murdered in Las Vegas, with hundreds more injured using weapons that are legal because the NRA wants real and existential mass terror to make the gun industry rich and America free.
But don’t get distracted by the mass shootings, as horrible as they are.
Our slaughter is a daily thing and most of the gun deaths are “just” suicides. Suicides that wouldn’t happen in most cases if there wasn’t a gun handy.
It wasn’t what Trump was talking about when he said he would end “This American Carnage”. But that’s what it is. This American Carnage.
Look at the numbers, just try and take them in. Can you? I can’t.
35,476 gun deaths in just one year, according to 2015 CDC statistics.
Here are the subcategories of those 35,476 gunshot deaths:
22,018 suicides
13,463 homicides
489 unintentional homicides (like two-year olds shooting their brother or mother)
484 “legal intervention”, i.e. police shootings
If you want statistics of what a dangerous place America has become, compared to the rest of the world, VOX has them.
I’m just thinking of the ones I know first-hand. The ones who didn’t die in a mass murder. But they are dead, just the same, victim of a gun being at hand. And their passing has left a lot of holes in a lot of lives.