and it’s not good
The surge in firearms homicides that began in 2015 has an important feature not highlighted in the recent CDC report.
Prior to 2015, nonfirearm homicides and firearm homicides tracked each other well (figure shows raw CDC data).
In 2015, these trends diverged.
Firearm assaults are more lethal than assaults using most other weapons. Therefore, any shift causing assailants to favor firearms might cause such a divergence, even if rates of assault are stable.
This begs the question: why are assailants more likely to use firearms recently?
Originally tweeted by Andrew Morral (@AndrewMorral) on May 16, 2022.
I’m going to take a wild guess and say that when states loosen gun laws and guns flood the streets, when a national party elects an unfit white nationalist to the the White House and when a large minority of a country goes batshit crazy this sort of thing can happen.
There are too many guns. And it appears that as far as the gun nuts are concerned there are never enough. They have to have their toys and if large numbers of innocent people, including children, die, well that’s the price we all have to pay for their freedom.
No surprise. They allowed hundreds of thousands of their own voters to die rather than promote a safe, effective vaccine instead of snake oil. Half the country is not rational.