Yet another weekend of carnage has shocked the United States. Or maybe we are no longer shocked. An unemployed young man in a quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood opened fire on police officers who arrived at his house responding to a domestic dispute.
Yet another weekend of carnage has shocked the United States. Or maybe we are no longer shocked.
An unemployed young man in a quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood opened fire on police officers who arrived at his house responding to a domestic dispute. By the time his shooting spree was over, three officers lie dead and one other was wounded by the onslaught. The young man, Edward Poplawski, reportedly was armed to the teeth, convinced that President Barack Obama would soon institute a ban on handguns. He was also wearing a bulletproof vest.
Poplawski blamed President Obama for his spree. We don’t know what demons possessed Jiverly Wong in Binghamton, who killed 13 people in an immigrant community center, or Lovelle Mixon, the alleged shooter who killed four police officers in Oakland, Calif., before he was shot to death, or Robert Stewart, who killed eight people at a North Carolina nursing home, or James Harrison, of Graham, Wash., who shot and killed his five children and then killed himself. In just over a week, there were five mass murders in America, with a death toll of nearly 40.
Until a recent spike, the national murder rate was dropping. Gun control advocates point to some of the restrictions placed upon gun ownership as a reason for the decline. Those opposed to gun control say that more gun ownership has served as deterrence to violent crime.
I don’t know who is right. I just know that these almost daily shooting sprees and escalating numbers of deaths take place because someone – someone who means harm to others – has access to a gun. According to the 2007 Small Arms Survey, the United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world at 90 firearms per 100 citizens. The United States, with less than five percent of the world’s population, owns about 35 to 50 percent of the world’s civilian-owned guns.
According to the Brady Campaign, headed by former Ronald Reagan press secretary James Brady, who was injured during an assassination attempt on Reagan, in 2005, eight young people ages 19 and under were killed by a firearm in the United States.
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