The Shock of Ordinary Gun Violence

[billh58]

Only in America: A computer algorithm about guns has been created to predict who is most likely to be shot soon, or to shoot someone. The Chicago Police Department, desperate to reduce gun violence by street gangs, authorized this unusual tool three years ago and has been using it to track and caution the most likely offenders.

It is a remarkable state of affairs that local governments must resort to such an approach to deal with the reality of gun mayhem. Yet it is sadly understandable, too, as a timid Congress cowed by the gun lobby fails to enact stronger gun-control laws for a nation increasingly flooded with high-powered weapons.

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As a rule, a public anesthetized by gun abuse tends to pay attention to the ubiquity of guns in this country when massacres seize the headlines, like the San Bernardino terrorist attack that left 14 dead, or the shooting of 20 schoolchildren in Connecticut. But the full problem is far more widespread, deadly and almost routine, according to a survey by a team of reporters from The Times reviewing a year of these multiple shootings.

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This is a public health challenge of critical proportions deserving a thorough debate from the presidential candidates. Yet Donald Trump, in his march toward the Republican nomination, has made a befuddling series of corkscrew turns on guns, depending on his audience.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/opinion/the-shock-of-ordinary-gun-violence.html?emc=edit_th_20160526&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=31465010&_r=0

The right-wing gun lobby, and the Second Amendment absolutists who support and enable them are directly responsible for the needless deaths and injuries caused by the lax regulation of lethal weapons in this country. Help to elect Democrats who understand the public health menace caused by this sad state of affairs, and together we CAN stop the madness.

[billh58]

2. Of course they do...

These brief, lethal outbursts of gunfire stirred no national concern. As a sum, they register like a dispatch from a secret war zone. They were sparked by minor, often drunken grievances — forgettable if guns had not been at hand. And the victims in these shootings are just a subset of the nearly 11,000 Americans killed by guns and the estimated 60,000 wounded each year in single homicides and assaults.

A reduction in gun violence begins with a reduction in the number of guns available to those "responsible in Chicago" and elsewhere.