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| Shared Idea |
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| Need for Gun Restrictions
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| The time is long overdue to enact laws that counter the extensive damages that guns cause in our nation. As noted in an article by German Lopez on December 15, 2022, in “The Morning” (an email news from The New York Times): “The U.S. has more guns than people.” The impact is disastrous.
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| As Lopez also noted: “Guns are now the No. 1 cause of deaths among American children and teens, ahead of car crashes, other injuries and congenital disease.” A recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation noted that, while U.S. children account for only 46 percent of the population of at the rich countries in the world, 97 percent of gun-related child deaths occur here.
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| That report noted that 56.2 deaths per million people ages 1 to 19 occur in the US. By comparison, the numbers are 6.2 for Canada, 3.1 for France, 1.0 for Germany, 0.5 for the United Kingdom and 0.3 for Japan. If our level of gun-related deaths was proportional to that of Canada, about 26,000 less children would have died since 2010!
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| Two days later, another note appeared in The New York Times that noted that “a record number of guns at airport security checkpoints” this year, according to the Transportation Security Administration. As a result, there was an increase in the maximum fine for violations of firearm regulations. 6,301 guns had been stopped by the agency, and over 88% were loaded. A 10% increase is expected over the record set last year.
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| “Guns are usually seen as a political issue, but really firearms policy is a health issue,” as Sean Scully noted in the News of the States Evening Wrap on December 21, 2022. He went on to report how, as of that morning, the “Gun Violence Archive says it counts just shy of 43,000 gun deaths in 2022 as of this morning, 56.8% of which are suicides, and more than 37,000 non-fatal injuries. That’s part of a nearly decade-long pattern of increasing deaths and injuries by firearms.” He also reaffirmed how “Americans just keep buying more and more firearms.”
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| This is a difficult battle, but we need to try to see that at least some gun restrictions are enacted by the federal government!
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