America’s deadly love of guns
America has a gun problem, and their children are paying the price. (Photo: Uvalde Leader News)
On May 24th, 11:33am, a gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, through a back door. 78 horrifying minutes later, the gunman was killed.
The death toll would not be released until several hours after. 19 students and two teachers died in the massacre, and more than a dozen were wounded.
This timeline of events was pieced together by The New York Times based on 911 calls, police reports, videos, and livestreams of the incident.
The Uvalde tragedy marks the 27th school shooting in 2022. The tragedy has also been the deadliest killing since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, where 20 children and six adults were killed. There have been over 900 shootings on school grounds since Sandy Hook, and this was the 214th mass shooting (a shooting in which at least 4 people are killed) in 2022 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Just a week before the Uvalde shooting, 10 people were shot to death in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. And then, at least eight more mass shootings took place across the weekend following the Uvalde tragedy.
#1 in gun violence
The data shows that among developed nations, the US remains an outlier. Gun violence is often high in countries with a high incidence of gang violence and drug trafficking, like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia. But among countries within the same GDP per capita range, the US has, by an overwhelming margin, the highest incidence of gun-related deaths—with 4 deaths per 100,000 people.
Shootings have become so common that they are now a leading cause of death for children and teenagers in the US. In 2020, more than 10,000 young Americans were killed by firearms. In 2022 so far, at least 653 children and teens in the US have been killed by guns.
And it only gets worse. The number of young people affected by gun violence in America has continuously gone up since 2018, making up about 94% of the world’s cases of firearm-related deaths for children between the ages of 5 and 14.
More guns?
It’s not just school shootings, either. Although mass shooting events tend to garner a lot of attention, most firearm deaths are not caused by them. Gun deaths only account for about 1% of all gun-related deaths in 2020, with the rest being cases of murder, suicide, and accidents. Notably, there has also been a very steep rise in the rate of gun suicide deaths among young people in the US.
Still, over half of Americans don’t think stricter gun control is necessary. In fact, almost all of the guns used in these shootings come from inside the home. Even though they make up only 4% of the world’s population, America holds an estimated half of the world’s civilian firearms. Data from mass shootings between 1966 to 2019 shows that over 80% of school shooters stole their guns from family members.
Despite all this, some states are pushing to make it easier for people to purchase guns. Not only that, pro-gun rights politicians think that arming teachers is the solution to school shootings. So, more guns. Exactly what a gun violence problem needs.
