Yesterday in Florida, another mass shooting occurred and as usual, the Republican strategy of “it’s too soon to talk about gun control” was all over social media and the airwaves. I disagree; the time to talk about gun control should be immediately after a gun is used to kill people because that is the worst-case scenario that comes along with readily available firearms in a large portion of this country. The bottom line is that yesterday a gun was uncontrolled and something terrible happened that took lives and will affect even more lives for years to come.
South Carolina is one of the worst states when it comes to gun violence and coincidentally, it’s one of the most gun-control free states as well. Let’s look at some stats (2014 data) and an excerpt that says it all:
15.9 firearm-related fatalities for every 100,000 South Carolinians, the ninth most of any state
A gun homicide rate of 5.5 per 100,000 residents that is fourth highest in the nation
Violent crime rate: 497.7 per 100,000 (7th highest in nation)
Poverty rate: 18.0% (11th highest in nation; higher poverty rates generate desperate people who may be more willing to commit gun violence)
“Like most states with the most gun violence, South Carolina’s gun laws are not especially restrictive. Weak gun laws may partially explain the gun violence, and they certainly explain the gun trafficking. According to research from the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, the low level of gun control has led to South Carolina becoming a major source of illegal weapons.”
But there’s more! 2015 actually showed an INCREASE in gun deaths in South Carolina. The 841 deaths set a record for “highest toll of gun deaths for the Palmetto State since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started tracking it”.
“South Carolina's rate of 7.4 firearm homicides per 100,000 residents in 2015 surpassed the national average of 4 and made it the seventh most violent state in the United States”.
You would think the Congresspeople of South Carolina would be extremely motivated to make the state safer and less violent….but Joe Wilson is not that sort of Congressman.
Joe Wilson is ex-military and a right-wing leaning Republican (at best) and I don’t really expect him to be a proponent of real regulation when it comes to gun control but you would think he would at least pretend that it is an important issue. Instead he fights the efforts of others who would try to protect the people of this country; after the 2015 Charleston shooting, Obama put forth a “measure to make it more difficult for people to avoid background checks when buying guns” that Wilson says would have no “serious impact in stemming the wave of mass shootings that have become so prevalent across the nation”. Why not try it anyway since doing nothing does not seem to be working? Wilson also believes that “criminals will still arm themselves despite gun laws and that arming the public may make criminals think twice before committing violent crimes”. So the solution is to add MORE guns into the mix? The more guns in circulation, the more likely one will be used in a violent situation.
Wilson’s most outrageous claim is that “the real problem, which is mental health” can be solved not by reducing the availability of guns to mentally ill people; he proposes that “supporting programs for the mentally ill is key to helping prevent violence” which sounds great but seemingly presumes that either all mentally ill people will self-diagnose and enter treatment or that the government will be able to identify and put them in said programs. And there is nothing saying we can’t help mentally ill people AND put into place reasonable and legitimate gun control legislation that will probably save lives in the future. Instead of that tactic, Joe Wilson voted to repeal the Rule Restricting Gun Sales to Severely Mentally Ill people in February 2017; this should surprise no one that Wilson continues to ignore the safety of his constituents while showing how important it would be to replace him with someone more responsible and ethical this November in the election.