A gunsight can prove to be a very narrow view of a big world.

We are truly an exceptional country when it comes to firearms
Based on data collected worldwide by the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), the Divided States of America has more than 300 people shot every day and about 125 die from wounds. Emergency rooms in hospitals treat 200 people from firearm wounds per day.

A few are from accidents, such as the hunting dog stepping on a trigger of a loaded shotgun on the seat of a pickup or a three-year-old boy shooting his mother with a Glock from her purse.
In 2023 46,728 individuals died from firearm violence, the third highest annual total on record. For the fourth consecutive year gun violence was the leading cause of death for children aged 1-17.

The recent school shooting at Bent, Oregon, didn’t seem to surprise anyone except the residents of Bent.
Congress has never sought answers why the Divided States of America overwhelmingly has led the world in school shootings for decades.

During the 2009-2018 period CNN and the World Population Review discovered this shocking fact: school shootings in the rest of the world are extremely rare: United States-288 incidents, Mexico-8, South Africa-6, Nigeria and Pakistan-4, Afghanistan-3, Brazil, Canada, and France-2 each, and other nations including Russia, China, Germany, and Turkey-1 incident each.

Are we so different from the rest of the world?

Do we hate kids when we know where they are?

Could it be we have too many firearms?

In 2024, we had 499 mass shootings resulting in 507 deaths and more than 2,169 injuries.
Isn’t it time we find out why and change our laws?

Why did 27,300 people commit suicide in 2024?

Why were 17,927 the victims of murder?

Shouldn’t we at least try to get some answers?

As early as 1991, John Hopkins University data indicated 30,810 Americans died by suicide. More than 60% of them shot themselves and 80% were White. At the time, two thirds of the gun owners in the U.S. were White.

Does that tell us something?

In analyzing firearm deaths, scientists must recognize that data centers have different standards and methods of accumulating facts and evidence.

Why do Americans own guns?
Sociologist Harei Shapiro in his book Basic Pistol: Living and Dying By the Gun in America states: “The reasons people give for owning them have changed strikingly up until the late nineties. Up until the late 1990s, people bought guns primarily for hunting or for sport. In 2023, however, the most recent year for which statistics are available, more than 70% of gun owners said that their major reason for their owning a gun was protection. Americans now bear arms not for trips into the woods but for trips to the grocery or to pick up their children from school.”

  Between 2021 and 2024, more than 11 million Americans bought a gun for the first time. Half were women, a fifth were Black and another fifth were Hispanic, close to the demographics of the country.
In 2000, only a third of Americans believed having a gun at home made it safer. In 2026, almost two-thirds, a huge majority, think it’s true.

In our history we had a legal right to defend the home with lethal force but we couldn’t take that right to the streets. But then came “stand your ground” laws in many red states.

Research indicates that states with higher gun ownership rates usually have higher levels of gun violence, that women who live in a home with a gun face increased risks of violence, that access to firearms greatly increases the risk of suicide, the leading cause of gun death.

But owning a gun often is a choice today because a gun can be an emotional choice to assist a person to live in a chaotic world. Research also tells us that people who turn to guns to feel safer and more empowered end up experiencing the absolute opposite.

If one focuses more on danger one sees more of it. The more danger the more the guns. A gunsight can prove to be a very narrow view of a big world.

Why did mass shooting events increase 187.5 percent in 2025?
Mike Jensen, research director of START, wrote in late August: “The warning signs of growing civil unrest in the U.S. are evident.” 

Did the killing of Charlie Kirk indicate a turning point for political violence?

Prominent politicians canceled public events due to safety concerns, and many Black colleges went on lockdowns after mass shooting threats.

Today’s researchers of political violence say the current problem looks like the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s which did bring about some massive social changes in civil and voting rights laws.

But the streets have been flooded with more than 450 million firearms by gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association, and the American people have not told the Supreme Court there is any difference between a musket and an AR-15 that can fire 70-0- rounds a minute.

In the last three decades I have written dozens of columns about this American exceptionalism because of my experiences in hunting and eight years of active and reserve service in the Marine Corps as an infantry officer.

I’m going to wait for the American people to inform the Supreme Court they want a change.
This is my last column about guns.