There is a smarter way to reduce gun deaths

The 2012 Newtown Elementary School Shooting: A New Era of Misinformation and Politics in the United States. A Campagne for a New Normal

The December 14, 2012 massacre of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut was the deadliest school shooting in US history. A new era of misinformation and politics began with that pivot point.

Robbie Parker, a father whose public statement after his daughter’s death was mocked by Alex Jones repeatedly, testified in the conspiracy theorist’s recent Connecticut trial about a run-in with a man on the other side of the country who followed him through city streets, yelling that his daughter’s murder had been a hoax.

Another Sandy Hook father, Lenny Pozner, whose civil case against Jones in Texas is still pending, is among the relatives who has faced death threats. A woman from Florida was sentenced to five months in federal prison for making threatening calls and emails to Pozner.

Since Sandy Hook, there have been more mass shooting occurrences in the US, but politicians have not done much to address them.

After that horrific attack, Alex Jones of Infowars and other right wing conspiracy theorists immediately began speculating that the massacre had been staged as part of a broader conspiracy to take away guns from the public. The US is fertile ground for those lies to spread due to two things: Most Americans were on social media and their trust in mainstream media had fallen sharply.

Some of the videos were widely seen by establishment figures in media and politics, as an indication of how politicians will increasingly boost misinformation in the years to come. The one popular conspiracy video had been seen 10 million times by the one-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.

The targeting of ordinary Americans has gone far beyond those associated with crimes and tragedies. Conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic and the safety of vaccines led to the harassment of nurses and other hospital workers. And election workers across the country have found themselves targeted by mainstream politicians and others pushing false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

Conspiracy theories and violence are very close to each other. The chaos that occurred at the US Capitol on January 6, 2020, was the product of a conspiracy theory and a communications campaign from the White House.

Not only are outrageous false beliefs no longer disqualifying for national politicians, they have become a litmus test in some Republican contests. One recently re-elected member of the US Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) – who promoted QAnon as a candidate – verbally attacked a teenage survivor of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida and has stoked doubts about Sandy Hook and other tragedies.

In the debate about guns, popular conspiracy theories and false information have become a part of the process. President Biden’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives – an important Justice Department agency to keep Americans safe that has been without a permanent head since 2015 – was undone last year in part by a campaign of nasty memes and disinformation about the nominee and his family.

According to critics, modern-days Dodge City scenarios in which routine fender-bender accidents could escalate into bloodbaths among gun-toting motorists was the reason for the Page 1 article in 1995. False alarm, for the most part. Concealed-carry permits didn’t turn communities into Dodge, because those who went through the permit process were often middle-aged adults with no criminal history and pretty good self-control. (That said, it is a problem when the Supreme Court encourages gun proliferation and when some states now issue permits to almost everyone, but the court still allows some room for regulation.)

Even if a new assault weapon ban could be passed through the Senate, it wouldn’t affect the 20 million or more rifles already in circulation. The ban on assault weapon sales from 1994) to 2004 didn’t slow the sale of such weapons, and may have been counterproductive by turning them into icons of American manhood. Indeed, there are probably now more assault rifles in private hands in the United States than in the armories of the U.S. military. We liberals have become champion marketers for the firearms manufacturers.

Fifth, we haven’t been as evidence-driven as we should have been. One problem with gun research today is that it’s frequently pursued by people with strong agendas, either pro-gun or anti-gun. Liberals sometimes leap on poorly designed studies if they support our conclusions, in ways that discredit our side. Some police strategies such as targeted deterrence, which targets those most likely to use illegal guns, have reduced violence, because of a history of racism and abuses, as has the liberal impulse to delegitimize all policing.

The Gun Violence Archive says America reached its grim number by the first week in March, setting a new record.

The deadly cycle of violence has taken the place of further gun safety legislation as it becomes clear that the majority on Capitol Hill will not reflect this.

“There are real solutions and tools – including bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines – available now that can make a difference, but only if our elected officials act to implement them,” he added.

Why is the US gun violence epidemic so bad? Generation Z Rep. Maxwell Frost’s 2022 Campaign for Ending Gun Violence in the United States

The US has more deaths from gun violence than any other developed country. The rate in the US is eight times greater than in Canada, which has the seventh highest rate of gun ownership in the world; 22 times higher than in the European Union and 23 times greater than in Australia, according to Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation data from 2019.

“For gun violence survivors, this is an incredibly painful milestone to mark, and it arrives earlier and earlier each year,” said Liz Dunning, a spokesperson for Brady whose mother was shot and killed while answering the door of her home in 2003. “But survivors are increasingly taking action, and demanding our lawmakers stand up to the corporate gun industry and take comprehensive steps to reduce the recent influx of mass shootings.”

Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, the first member of Generation Z elected to Congress, centered his 2022 campaign on ending gun violence in the US, finding support among young voters who grew up as part of the “mass shooting generation,” as he calls it.

We have seen these things and wondered why as young people in elementary, middle and high school. Why is this happening? Why are we not fixing this? When he won the Democratic nomination, Frost said he would run and vote in order to have the right to vote.

A July 2022. CNN survey shows that most of the public favors stricter gun laws, but more than 4% think that recent legislation doesn’t go far enough to change things.

Many Republicans who now control the US House of Representatives cite a mental health crisis in the US as the reason why America has a gun violence problem.

Researchers at the University found that guns made incidences of violence more lethal, despite the growing mental health challenges. The increase in suicides and homicides was most likely due to gun-related incidences. The gun suicide rate increased 10% while the non-gun suicide rate decreased.