Gun Culture Lets Self-Harm Fester in the Quiet Darkness of American Homes
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Are we a country defined by 300 million, or 33,000?
There are more than 300 million firearms in circulation in the United States, and many gun owners believe that it is their right as a citizen, if not a God given right, to own a gun. But there are also 33,000 Americans who die every year by a select number of those 300 million guns.
Is 33,000 a number we are comfortable with? Can the rest of us live with it, while some are not given the choice?
The figures on gun-related deaths comes from the number-crunchers at Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight. After months of investigation and research into databases from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI, and the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database, among others, FiveThirtyEight has put numbers and dots to the details that many Americans prefer to ignore.
Ben Casselman is a senior editor and the chief economics writer for FiveThirtyEight, and he says that while politicians and the media like to talk about the gun deaths that shock and anger us — mass shootings and terrorism among them — many, many more deaths are happening in the quiet darkness of American homes.
About two-thirds of all gun-related deaths come in the form of suicide. It's a truth that brings a sense of individual or community failure. In Washington State, approximately 80 percent of gun deaths are suicides, well above the national average of two-thirds detailed in the FiveThirtyEight report.
The state's legislature has attempted to tackle the question, both with bills from gun-control, and gun-rights, advocates.
The first bill to make it through is on the gun-rights side, HB2793, signed in March, and effective as of last June. Rather than mandating certain measures or prohibiting people owning a gun, the bills purely educational, creating a task force of public health and suicide prevention experts to educate gun owners and sellers on signs of suicide and depression.
Other bills, such as I-1491, are still making their way through the state legislature in the state. But for now, it's a victory for Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, who was among the law's main supporters, particularly because of what the law's outcome might mean for gun death statistics.
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear our full conversation with Gottlieb and Casselman.
