Gun Violence in the United States – Does this define our culture?
By Joel Wong
The recent racist mass shooting of 10 people on Saturday, May 14, 2022 at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY by an eighteen year old white man marked the most shocking gun violence incidence thus far this year. It’s 19 weeks into 2022, and America has already seen 198 mass shootings. According to the Gun Violence Archive, in 2021 the tally was 693 incidents; In 2020 it was 611; and in 2019 it was 417 mass shootings.
According to Mark Follman, the author of a new book, Trigger Points, such shootings are an American phenomenon. “The general public views mass shooters as people who are totally crazy, insane. It fits with the idea of snapping, as if these people are totally detached from reality. “That’s not the case. There’s a very rational thought process that goes into planning and carrying out these mass shootings.” The perpetrator in the Buffalo scouted and studied the crime scene, left behind a racist screed, donned body armor, and livestreamed the attack.
Furthermore, these mass shootings are not entirely limited to white supremacists perpetuating on racial minorities. Just a day after the Buffalo shooting, a Chinese immigrant opened fire in a Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, in Laguna Woods killing one man and wounding five others. The shooter is alleged to hate Taiwan and the shooting was apparently a “politically-motivated hate incident,” according to Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes.
A NPR article points out that the U.S. has a rate of 3.96 deaths from guns per 100,000 people in 2019. That was more than eight times higher than Canada, which had 0.47 deaths per 100,000 people — and nearly 100 times higher than in the United Kingdom, which had 0.04 deaths per 100,000. Prosperous Asian countries such as Singapore (0.01), Japan (0.02) and South Korea (0.02) boast the absolute lowest rates — along with China, also at 0.02.
Does Gun Violence define our Culture? I would like to raise this question for all to ponder!
Is our society getting more intolerant and polarized? Does social media continuously and increasingly divide us? I have observed some very educated and “civilized” people who cannot seem “to agree to disagree” and resort to calling each other names on WeChat, WhatApp and other social media. I have blogged on the root cause of this on How Social Media Divides Us
After the 9/11 incident, President G. W. Bush famously declared that “You’re either with us, or against us”. Some claim that this statement and similar variations are based on “Logical Fallacy” used to polarize situations and to force witnesses and bystanders to take sides or lose favor. In any case, this has led the US to a 20 year long war on terrorism which costed trillions of dollars and millions of lives on both sides. Subsequent US Presidents including Obama and Biden seem to continue this trend of thought, which was exacerbated by Trump’s “America First” foreign policy doctrine.
Did I just extrapolate domestic Gun Violence to US foreign policy?
Am I too bold in making this claim?
And finally “Does Gun Violence define our Culture?”
Let me hear from you!
Addendum: May 24, 2022. A reported 21 people were killed in an attack by a lone gunman at an elementary school in the small town of Uvalde, Texas. At least 19 students and two adults were among the casualties.
