Since this past Saturday, according to our friends at the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), there have been 385 shootings throughout the United States where someone with a gun tried to kill someone else who either did or didn’t have a gun. 

The result? 154 dead and 388 wounded, numbers which are probably somewhat underestimated since the GVA relies on media sources for its numbers which means a few shootings are missed here and there.

What the GVA doesn’t give us, and it’s not their fault, is the number of times that someone pulled out a gun, pointed the gun at someone else, pulled the trigger and missed.

You know that old saying, ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’ Right?

The point is that we don’t really know the true extent of gun violence in America. In fact, we’re not only not close to knowing, but if anything, we seem to be moving further away from trying to figure it out.

An article in yesterday’s USA Today summarizes the research on gun violence that has been funded by the CDC since the agency resumed its support of such work last year.  The reporter breaks $75 million in research grants awarded so far into three basic categories: community initiatives to reduce gun violence, veteran’s suicides and keeping children safe. The research director at the Giffords Law Center then sums it all up by saying she hopes we can finally gather some “’really basic data.’”

All fine and well, except there’s only one little problem. None of the studies which have been funded by the CDC have anything to do with gathering data at all. And if the only way I can get any idea about the extent to which guns are used to kill or injure anyone is to rely on media accounts gathered by the GVA, would the CDC track the incidence of Covid-19 by running a daily Google alerts scan?

Every few years the public health gun researchers get together for a meeting (they enjoy attending meetings) where they kvetch and moan about not having sufficient data to really understand gun violence. Which doesn’t seem to stop them from doing research because it’s better than working for a living, right?

I have said this again and again, but I don’t mind talking to myself, so I’ll say it one more time. It’s very simple. The United States experiences morbidly high rates of gun violence because we are the only country in the entire world which allows residents to own guns – semi-automatic handguns chambered for military-grade ammunition – that are designed only for the purpose of committing violence, which is defined by the World Health Organization as the intentional attempt to injure yourself or someone else.

What’s the response of public health gun researchers to this state of affairs? They look for ways to somehow mitigate the violence caused by such guns without getting rid of the guns. Have you heard one public health researcher call for an absolute and total ban on such weapons? You won’t.

Oh! I forgot! Want to be taken seriously by your public health colleagues when you conduct research on gun violence? Make sure to state that you have no intention of depriving Americans of their 2^nd-Amendment ‘rights.’

It’s what the physicians and public health experts who claim to be concerned about gun violence refer to as the ‘consensus’ approach. All we need to do is figure out strategies that will reduce gun violence but, by the way, still let Americans have free access to the cause of that gun violence, which happen to be the guns.

Of course, there’s always another approach we can use to take care of the problem without pissing off too many people on either side. We can promote the idea of being ‘responsible’ with guns, what some of the gun-control groups refer to as gun ‘sense.’

How touching. How polite. It’s not sense, it’s nonsense. Okay?

I can walk into the local Stop and Shop, pull out my Glock 17 and kill maybe 15 people in two minutes or less. Who says I’m not behaving responsibly with my gun?

Isn’t that what my Glock 17 was designed to do?