It’s high time to protect America’s children
The writer is a private professional and writes on geopolitical issues and regional conflicts
Just over a month after the deadliest incident of mass shooting in almost a decade at the Robb Elementary School in Texas that killed 21 people including 19 children, and a racist mass shooting in a New York supermarket killing 10 Black people, President Joe Biden in June signed the gun safety legislation into law. “At a time when it seems impossible to get anything done in Washington, we are doing something consequential.”
Commemorating the 10th anniversary of poignant tragedy of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School, which massacred 20 first-graders and 6 teachers, Biden on December 14 patted himself for signing the first major bipartisan gun control law in almost 30 years as well as taking “more executive action” than any other US president.
Within weeks of his assertion, a man in Utah shot down his wife, mother-in-law and five children before committing suicide. Biden and the first lady offered condolences on the “tragic shooting”. But Americans expect the president to do a lot more to stop the carnage of children and women at least, as given circumstances — for instance pandemic stimulus checks and financial crisis — are fueling the phenomenon.
Over the last twenty years or so, more school-aged children have died from guns in the US than on-duty police officers and active-duty military personnel combined, as gun violence has surged across communities, pushing overall death rates to a historic level in almost three decades. Biden cannot just mourn at a time when the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is warning that guns are the number one killer of children, even more than cancer or car accidents.
The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) counted at least 281 mass shootings in the US around the time Biden announced his gun safety law. The figure rose to 648 at the year-end, nearly double the number (336) recorded in 2018. The US has experienced a mass shooting almost every day; and once every three weeks, someone is shot at school premises, The Guardian, says citing data from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security/GVA.
With 6,116 (989+5,127) children and teenagers (above 17 years) shot in 2022, the most in a single year since the GVA began tracking nine years ago, the shooting of more 16 children (6116/365) a day paints a horrifying picture about the children’s safety in the country.
Education Week, an independent news service, reckons there were 51 school shootings across the US in 2022. The K-12 School Shooting Database, using a wider metric, revealed shooting incidents in the US had dramatically increased to 302 in 2022 compared to 250 in 2021 and 119 in 2020. The year 2022 is still in its infancy and 151 children and teenagers have already been shot by January 9.
The year 2002 broke all records for the most school shootings in over four decades and marked one of the most violent years — a pattern matching with a spiking rates of violent and gun crimes across the US. Last week’s gunshot by a six-year-old child at his educator raises a “red flag” for the country, showing how adversely the brains of the little angels are influenced by violence.
‘Brady — United Against Gun Violence’ estimates that more than 300 people are shot in the US every day; 22 of them are children aged 17 or under. The Sandy Hook Promise puts the number of children who die from gun violence every day in America at 44 (12+32). The non-profit group uncovers several shocking facts: the US had 2,032 school shootings since 1970 (reaching at alarming high of 948 since the Sandy Hook School tragedy); some 4.6 million children live in a home where at least one gun is loaded and unlocked; and children in impoverished areas are as much as four times more likely to be killed than their affluent peers.
Indeed, the US cannot be governed unless it safeguards the lives of its citizens, particularly children from this rampant gun violence. The Second Amendment of the US constitution — which defends the right of an individual to carry a handgun in public — will be labeled as a “cruse” as far as it continues to kill Americans and their children.
The CDC has reportedly removed defensive gun use data over pressure from the gun control advocates. The extent to which gun violence has pervaded in the US is intolerable. As some politicians yet offer religious platitudes from Bible to bear arms, it threatens the situation may spiral out of control, necessitating an urgent response from the Biden Administration to protect the children at home or in schools.
There are an estimated of 345 to 415 million firearms owned by eighty-one million Americans. A country with such a heavily-armed nation can no way secure its “mass shooting generation”. In order to shield US children, the Democrats and Republicans should resist the hawkish elements in their camps, curb a growing fanaticism — making negative impacts on adolescents and kids — and take stringent administrative and legislative measures to end America’s fixation with gun culture.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 15th, 2023.
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