The News About Guns: What Do We Really Know?

From a Buffalo supermarket and Texas school to a Tulsa hospital office and Philadelphia street mass shootings have minted a form of ritualized news coverage that sadly in no way lessens their grief The politics that surround the tragedies are similarly pro forma Like a theatrical classicamp8217s stage revival the actors follow a script Americans can repeat word for word The news reports the event then the political kabuki Unfortunately despite the seemingly endless airtime and spilt ink what Americans read and watch about gun violence doesnamp8217t even come close to capturing its cost or the countryamp8217s profound failure to stem the carnageMass shootings are defined as events where four or more people not counting the triggerpuller are killed or wounded This year they total 240 as of June 6 The news media have done well in most cases in reporting their details in near real time But with mass shootings averaging more than one a day so far in 2022 the gunplay is overwhelming print broadcast cable and other platforms They rush to feature todayamp8217s mayhem then move to the next slaughter in all but the bloodiest cases leaving the aftermath to local outlets if anyone at allThe breaking news syndrome similarly stymies reporting that can provide context for the Kafkaesque theater endlessly repeating the American gun dramaamp8217s lethal plot Stories are written or aired from time to time that reference a justpublished academic study or a newly commissioned inquiry on guns and their impact But regular indepth reporting on their facts for instance on gun violenceamp8217s toll or new research on its politics is sparse despite the daily crime scenes that warrant more than the usual quotif it bleeds it leadsquot three minutes on screenFacts the late IF Stone wrote are subversive Arraying the facts about guns the industry the human impact and how the country ranks in handling their lethality makes clear why mass shootings and our failure to curb them will continue It doesnamp8217t take much digging The numbers speak for themselves Begin with the magnitude of the problem 84 million Americans thatamp8217s 70 percent of all people 18 years or older own guns Thatamp8217s 120 firearms for every 100 people and gun possession is growing Americans bought 19 million guns in 2021 the industryamp8217s second best year ever bringing the estimated total in civilian hands to 393 millionAs for the business of guns itamp8217s a big time industry At 70 billion in 2021 the economic activity generated by gun makers their suppliers and associated companies has tripled since 2008 according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation Gun makers employ 54000 people manufacturing weapons and ammunition 115000 work for wholesalers and dealers 121000 more are part of the supply chain There are 13000 licensed gun manufacturers but size matters The biggest companies Smith ampamp Wesson Sturm Ruger Sig Sauer and Remington produce 60 percent of the handguns and almost half of all rifles made in the United StatesGun and ammunition manufacturers are lightly regulated testifying to their success in using their political weight in Washington as well as state capitals There are no substantive requirements to be licensed as a gun maker manufacturers are shielded from product liability companies routinely ignore even basic government reporting requirements on weapons production and Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms ATF regulators the industryamp8217s federal minders have highly limited oversight powers operating under weak rules and budgets that tie their hands The industryamp8217s generous political spending makes clear it intends to keep it that wayAccording to Open Secrets a lobbying watchdog the gun lobby laid out some 190 million on Capitol Hill from 19982021 spending 114 million of that total since 2013 In the same 23year period gun rights organizations made direct political contributions to candidates for federal office totaling 505 million Republican candidates received 99 percent of those donations The gun industryamp8217s lobbying outspent gun control advocates by 160 million between 19982021 Campaign donations from gun rights groups were twice those from gun control activists in the period as wellLike the statistics describing the gun industryamp8217s political leverage the facts about the costs of the violence created by its products suggest why its selfprotective lobbying and campaign checkwriting is so generous A Harvard Medical School study in the April Annals of Internal Medicine examined health care costs associated with the 40000 Americans killed and 85000 wounded by guns each year Using 10 years of insurance data the study compared health care and its costs for 6498 survivors of firearm injuries with those of 32490 control participants It did the same for their 12489 family members compared to 62445 in the control groupThe study spotlights the fact that the human cost of gun violence depicted on TV screens is only beginning when the TV cameras go dark and the yellow crime scene tape comes down According to the Harvard researchers gunshot survivors average 2495 more in health care spending per month than their demographically and clinically matched peers Extrapolate those costs for one shooting victim to the 85000 Americans wounded in a year direct health care spending for all survivors totals 25 billion in their first twelve months after being shotThe Harvard study isn39t an outlier A data base created by Rand Corporation a California think tank to track gunrelated hospitalizations shows the magnitude of the damage guns have done in the 21st century Gunshot wounds put 550000 people in the hospital between 20002016 a body count the Rand analysts added that is likely understated A 2017 study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine analyzed emergency room costs for shooting victims Its researchers calculated annual ER and inpatient costs of gunrelated injuries at 28 billionWill reporters who cover the next mass shooting present these facts Does a gun industry whose products create the carnage warrant the media39s attention as quotbreaking newsquot Buffalo Uvalde Philadelphia wherever the shootings arguments over why they occur and the political fights over what to do about them are well known So what about their national impact Crawls that run at the bottom of TV newscasts tote up holiday death tolls on the road or the victims of floods tornadoes and hurricanes as the natural disasters recede But relentless gun violence Does the scoreboard for the gun industry39s lethal products even make the newsWhen it come to the casualty count of dead and wounded and the cost the answer obviously is quotnoquot According to the University of Washingtonamp8217s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation the United States ranks eighth in recorded gun mayhem among the 64 high income countries surveyed by the Institute this year Add the territories of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands to the statistics for the 50 states and Americans jump to sixth on the most violent list But it39s an old storyAsk Republicans Some 44 percent surveyed in a CBS NewsYouGov poll last week said they believe that mass shootings are just something Americans have to accept in a quotfree societyquot The views of the GOPs faithful of course aren39t a surprise As a party that has benefited from the largesse of the gun industry for decades neither are the actions of Republican legislators who oppose serious gun control measuresStill one wonders if the citizens they represent in Mississippi Kentucky Louisiana Alabama Missouri South Carolina Arkansas and Tennessee would agree According to the Third Way a progressive think tank the eight rank in the top ten states with the highest homicide rates in the country The Gun Violence Archive an online database also has recorded 58 mass shootings in the eight states so far in 2022 Whether or not it makes the news it39s a fact tooClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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The News About Guns: What Do We Really Know?

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Kent M. Harrington

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