Apparently I was in acronymistic confusion as I bounced a couple topics around for this week’s ACM: ERA or WMD… WMD or ERA… **
You can guess from the title which this story will highlight, but the ERA is amazingly important, topical, and the fact it is still not passed is a giant festering pustule on the face of America. Please take a minute for this important article – only three weeks ago, which received very little attention at the time: A "Mini" History of the 100-Year Fight for the ERA
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We have, over time, created some incredibly imaginative ways to murder each other, and in extremely large numbers! Gun powder bombs, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, nuclear bombs, napalm, mustard gas, ricin, and other biological and chemical weapons. Unfortunately none of them compare to the number of casualties of this “Weapon of Mass Destruction”! By 2016 it had already claimed more lives than ALL wars in the history of the United States. While over 1,350,000 of our citizens were killed during wartime efforts, fighting for their country, these WMDs kill their countrymen (and countrywomen) at far higher rates. Since 2016, at least 40,000 lives have been lost to this horror each year. For 250 years soldiers fought for a country with ideals of freedom and equal rights, while our country has ignored domestic WMDs killing and injuring small children along with the rest of our population. Amazingly it is not only legal, but has a huge base of support, even though most of us would rather see change.
This weapon of mass destruction is not only legal in all states, but has its tentacles in most households, securing mass casualties for years to come while we are left to wonder about the sanity of our country. Can our lawmakers really support these mass deaths on a yearly basis? Do any of them support ignoring chronic liver disease and cirrhosis with death rates just over 38,170 per year? As someone with chronic liver disease and cirrhosis I seriously doubt they would block any common-sense legislation tool to help reduce these deaths, such as more effective campaigns on alcoholism, better drugs to treat the condition, or the ability to “grow a new liver” for transplant. Unfortunately legislation to slow or stop the annual slaughter by these WMDs is almost impossible to pass, while too many of our elected officials abjectly ignore the problem.
You likely don’t need this trail of breadcrumbs, knowing I must be talking about guns. These WMDs would typically not be called out as such, as most by privately own firearms fire only a single bullet at a time. Sure – the automatic and semi-automatic guns have made “mass killings” a now common phrase we live with daily, but they number in single digit percentages of guns. Still, the definition of a WMD fits.
WMD Definitions
Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/…
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natural structures (e.g., mountains), or the biosphere.
(Encyclopedia) Brittanica:
www.britannica.com/…
weapon of mass destruction (WMD), weapon with the capacity to inflict death and destruction on such a massive scale and so indiscriminately that its very presence in the hands of a hostile power can be considered a grievous threat.
Even US Legal:
definitions.uslegal.com/…
Weapons of mass destruction refers to any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious physical harm through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors, a weapon involving a disease organism or biological agent, or a weapon that is designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life.
(Italics in above three definitions are mine)
Surely they fit in terms of the death they have caused. Historic number of deaths from wars compared to (non-combat) deaths by guns:
If you would like to see how these WMDs have been fairing lately in their death march, Gun Violence Archive shows a DAILY UPDATE of gun deaths, as well as some historical data, including mass shootings.
WHY CAN’T WE GET STRONGER LEGISLATION PASSED??
I really hate to say it yet again, as it is the base problem with so much wrong in society today, but the culprit is money, or more specifically, the ability to accumulate enormously vast sums of wealth.
www.visualcapitalist.com/…
Who is Producing America’s Firearms?
There are a wide variety of firearm manufacturing companies in the U.S., but production is dominated by a few key players.
Here are the top 10 gunmakers in America, which collectively make up 70% of production:
So, what are the economic impacts of the WMDs? Some would argue the industry supports American jobs/lives, and it does. Here are some stats:
$13.5 billion
Annual revenue of gun and ammunition manufacturing industry, with a $1.5 billion profit. (IBIS World)
$3.1 billion
Annual revenue of gun and ammunition stores, with a $478.4 million profit. (IBIS World)
OK, so there are $2 billion reasons, some of which are lobbying dollars which end up in the pockets of our elected officials. These legislators are looking at the very, very short game. They ignore the much larger cost to society, to the very United States of America they are sworn to defend!
$229 billion
The cost of fatal and non-fatal gun violence to the U.S. in 2012, representing 1.4% of total gross domestic product.(Mother Jones)
That was in 2012 – the numbers in 2022 are surely much larger. This industry costs taxpayers more than ten times the profits of a few. A very few. Gun manufacturing, ammunition manufacturing, firearms stores and the rest all have fairly low-paying blue-collar jobs.
www.zippia.com/…
The average salary for a firearms industry employee is between $38,000 and $40,000.
There are different kinds of jobs you can take in the firearms industry, but they all have relatively similar pay (unless you’re a CEO). For instance, the average Gun Salesman makes roughly $38,000 per year, while the average Firearms Technician makes $40,310 per year.
- The U.S. Firearm industry contributes $51.3 billion to the economy.
- The firearms industry employs 169,523 people across the U.S.
The above seems to point out the positive impact on the US job market from the gun industry, but employment is not a reason to keep a failed system. Sure, there are a few still fighting hard to keep coal jobs alive, but they will all end soon. The fact is, there is still has a net negative of over $200 billion per year. That is larger than the entire military budget in 1981.
Sure, you could argue it is freedom-loving Americans who will fight for their constitutional rights (which they misunderstand), but that is NOT the real reason. It is obvious, extraordinarily straight-forward and exceedingly motivating. As long as there are vast amounts of wealth to be had by pushing forward any agenda designed to increase sales, it doesn’t matter how half-baked the ‘reasoning’ is.
Fear is the primary tool used, with everything from ‘a black President’ to ‘war on Christmas’, ‘they are coming for your religion/jobs/women/way of life/freedom’. Gun sales skyrocketed after President Barack Obama won the white house.
When the west was wild, and survival depended on being able to defend yourselves against the original landowners fighting for their survival, and to catch wild game gun ownership made more sense. People also used an ox and a hand plow with a large steel blade to grow food, had never heard of a telephone, or an airplane. It was a completely different time, and the circumstances we lived in were completely different. Guns are not just injuring our economy, killing and maiming our children, our friends, our family – they are killing our morals and desensitizing our brains. TFG famously said he could shoot someone in downtown NY and nobody would do anything. There are now more than one mass-shooting in the US every day and who is doing something to stop it?
But what about ‘bad guys with guns’? Don’t we need a bunch of ‘good guys with guns’ to stop them?
www.psychologytoday.com/...
The True Odds of Shooting a Bad Guy With a Gun
Who we actually shoot is crazy.
(2017)
More than 30,000 people are shot and killed in the U.S. each year. About two-thirds of these, 20,000 people, are suicides. In other words, two out of three people who use a gun to kill a person use it on themselves…
But there are about 500 gun accidents of this kind a year. One out of 10 of them will be a child.
People like to argue that they need guns to protect themselves. About 250 Americans manage to shoot a bad guy per year.
…for the sake of simplicity, I am calling "shooting the bad guy" a justified death.
What we find is this:
- One justified gun death per 2 accidental deaths
- Five justified deaths per accidental child death
- About 1000 illegal deaths per justified death
- About 100 suicides per justified death
- About 100 homicides per 2 justified deaths
- A person pulling the trigger on a gun is most likely to be shooting themselves or their family rather than a "bad guy."
- Hunters accidentally shoot about 1000 people a year, roughly 50 times more than terrorists. About 500 people a year are killed by mass shooters.
- The odds of shooting a bad guy without a gun are zero.
People like to argue that they need guns to protect themselves. About 250 Americans manage to shoot a bad guy per year.
Environmental Impact
We should also take a look at some of the long-term environmental impacts (yes, WMDs typically have some sort of environmental fallout, and guns are no exception):
https://www.thetrace.org/2016/04/gun-range-toxic-lead-pollution/
Gun Ranges Produce Thousands of Tons of Toxic Pollution Every Year
The United States is home to more than than(sic) seven thousand shooting ranges, according to The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s largest trade group. Every year, these facilities attract an estimated 20 million visitors, who produce staggering amounts of debris. According to the Department of the Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey, an individual range can go through between 1.5 to 20 tons of lead shot and bullets annually. Outdoor ranges as a whole may use more than 80,000 tons in that same period.
snip
In many cases, ranges only confront the problem of toxic debris when so much has accumulated that it attracts the attention of local government or outside activists. (Ranges that shoot directly into or near bodies of water are at a higher likelihood of environmental litigation or government action, for example, due to laws protecting wetlands from hazardous waste.) Faced with the prohibitive costs of a massive cleanup, some ranges are forced to close, leaving taxpayers with the bill.
Add to that the environmental impacts of all of the steel and other materials, as well as the loss of use of those same resources for something of more value to society, including all of those human resources in over 169,000 people.
The costs so far outweigh the ‘benefits’ of private gun ownership in the US it should not be a discussion we need to have more than once. Instead gun and ammunition lobbyists continually fight (with wealth as the persuasive argument) against extremely common-sense legislation which would at least curb some of the downright stupid (dumb/idiotic/childlike/unsupportable/demonstrably outrageous) reasons guns continue to kill us at staggering numbers. We need legislation such as background checks, mental stability, more responsible age restrictions, magazine limits, and limits on assault and assault-style weapons whose ONLY purpose is injuring/killing humans – it is what they are actually made to do. Instead we receive a barrage of ‘my constitutional right / 2nd amendment’. Guess what? I have some constitutional rights too, including the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Guess which three of these three rights are being infringed upon by the constant state of WMDs in more than half of the households in my country? In my neighborhood? IN MY BACK YARD?!?
https://www.rd.com/article/gun-violence-statistics/
Guns in America: 16 Charts You Need to See
I chose only 4 of these images, but suggest you see the entire article. So, we can see that over 4 million teachers could be employed per year, or we could repair ALL bridges and dams in one year with a 440 billion surplus! (I don’t see new aircraft carriers as a big win over WMDs) Holy “cat’s out of the bag” Batman!!
efsgv.org/…
Gun Violence in the United States
Gun violence is a preventable public health tragedy affecting communities all over the United States. Every day, more than 100 Americans die by gun violence, including 64 who die by firearm suicide, 39 Americans who die by firearm homicide, and 3 who are killed by other forms of gun violence. In addition, every day nearly 200 Americans visit the emergency department for nonfatal firearm injuries. Over half of these cases are a result of a firearm assault and an additional 37% are unintentional injuries. Overwhelming evidence shows that firearm ownership and access is associated with increased suicide, homicide, unintentional firearm deaths, and injuries. These injuries and deaths are preventable, and we must advocate for evidence-based solutions to make gun violence in the U.S. rare and abnormal.
And who can forget this little gem of a headline from… last week:
In gun nut America a 3-year-old girl shoots her 4-year-old sister dead
This problem is so pervasive as to warrant excitement and jubilation when even small progress is made.
www.whitehouse.gov/…
March 14, 2023
Executive Order on Reducing Gun Violence and Making Our Communities Safer
What can you do?
This mutual fund is now the largest owner of one of largest gun companies in U.S.
Demand your retirement NOT be invested in BlackRock Asset Mgmt or other stocks and mutual funds who profit from death, from taxpayers, from you and me.
**When deciding on my topic for today my original plans were to talk about some of the good news on solutions for the environmental hazards of plastics and other pollutants. Then there was https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/4-teens-arrested-murder-charges-sweet-16-party-shooting-atlanta-rcna75125, and not only was the shooter/murderer (suspect) a 17-year old, it was actually one of at least three 17-year olds as suspects in mass murders shootings from February 27th to March 5th, 2023... Yup, in less than one lousy week. I am not sure what snapped for me, but I became furious and immediately decided to ditch that topic for later. My battle between ERA and WMD came later.