On April 30, a man shot and killed two students in a classroom at my university, UNC Charlotte. He injured four others.
On May 1, the day after the mass shooting at UNC Charlotte, a man was shot and killed in an apartment complex near the university. On April 30, the day of the mass shooting at UNC Charlotte, a man was shot and killed outside a Charlotte restaurant. On the weekend before the mass shooting at UNC Charlotte, three people in Charlotte were shot and killed in separate shootings. Also on the weekend before the mass shooting at UNC Charlotte, a man walked into a synagogue near San Diego full of people praying. He shot four people and killed one person before his gun malfunctioned. He had over 50 rounds of ammunition. During the week of April 27-May 3, 238 Americans were shot and killed.
As of May 3, there have been at least 109 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019. May 3 is the 123rd day of 2019.
In 2018, more than 14,000 Americans were shot and killed by someone else.
Over 22,000 people a year in the U.S. commit suicide with a gun.
As of May 3, the NRA (I will not link to the NRA, for the same reason that I have not named the shooter at UNC Charlotte) had not tweeted anything about the mass shooting at the university. On April 29, the day of the mass shooting, the NRA did tweet the speech of Candace Owens of Turning Point USA, complaining (according to the headline) about “leftist and Democrat politicians” who say that “you are responsible when something horrific happens.”
The gun industry has spent between $19 and $60 million since 2005 funding the NRA. Many of the nation’s largest gun manufacturers are “corporate partners of the NRA.” The gun industry spent $3.3 million in lobbying in 2017. The NRA spends much more than that.
The gun industry sells between 1 million and 1.5 million guns per month, or 12 to 18 million guns per year. 30% of Americans own a gun, a number which is declining slowly, but 29% of those own five or more. The gun industry is marketing increasingly lethal products to repeat customers.
Gun deaths in 2017 were the highest in at least fifty years by total number, and the highest since the mid-1990s by rate.
The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005 shielded gun manufacturers from liability in most cases when people used their increasingly lethal products to shoot and kill other people. This disastrous example of regulatory capture must immediately be repealed, in order to force gun manufacturers to design their products to minimize the risk to the thousands of innocent people shot and killed by them every year. Since they apparently won’t do this on their own, they should be forced to make it a priority.
Last week, Insys Therapeutics executives were found guilty of criminal conspiracy to profit by getting doctors to prescribe opioid drugs to patients who did not need them, and who would be far more likely to be harmed than helped. There should be analogous criminal trials for gun industry executives. It would be a start.
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