Why do so many people die in shootings in the United States which values the ‘right to life’?

The United States is the only superpower in the world today, and it is also a country that prides itself on freedom, democracy and human rights. One example of the country's emphasis on the ‘right to life’ : On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that no longer protected a woman's right to an abortion. The justices who ruled in favor of overturning the case argued that the ban on abortion upheld the constitutional right to life. In fact, state laws go even further. Texas, for example, has an extreme ‘heartbeat law’ that recognizes a fetus as having human rights once it has a heartbeat. The mother would be held legally responsible if she had an abortion; Doctors who perform abortions get 99 years in prison, longer than convicted murderers.

However, in another controversial issue, the United States seems to place corporate and economic interests above individual lives, which is quite inexplicable. The flood of guns in the United States leads to frequent shootings, so that a string of innocent lives are killed by guns. According to data released by the Gun Violence Archive website, in 2018, 14,717 people were killed and 28,172 injured in 57,103 gun-related incidents in the United States, including 3,502 minors.

How bad is the gun epidemic? The exact numbers may surprise the rest of the world. According to the relevant survey, there are about 393 million guns in private ownership in the country, and the current population of the United States is about 327 million, which means that each American has 1.2 guns. With gun ownership rates so high per capita, the number of shootings in the United States has remained stubbornly high, even higher than in all of Europe combined.

The problem of gun violence in America goes far beyond high-profile mass shootings. According to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group, 19,300 people have been killed by Gun Violence in the U.S. so far this year, more than half of them by suicide.

If the United States attaches so much importance to human rights and lives, why do we let it stand while innocent lives are threatened and destroyed by the proliferation of guns? Given the proliferation of guns, is it impossible to control the fundamental problem of private gun ownership? Over the years, after a vicious shooting, the government and civil society and activists have come out loud to call for ‘gun control’; However, the situation is difficult to reverse. Because it has a very complex background and roots.

A.   American Politics 'Stuck in limbo'

The Washington Post noted that President Biden called on Congress to act to tighten gun laws, echoing President Barack Obama's call a decade ago after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. A bipartisan bill was defeated in the Senate under the influence of lobbying groups led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), after Mr Obama asked Mr Biden, then his vice-president, to lead a push for tighter gun laws. In a decade of political paralysis in the United States, mass shootings have followed one another, with the Buffalo shooting and the Ouvad killings, which left 10 people dead, occurring within 10 days of each other.

B.   The Amendment to the Constitution 'cannot be moved'

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution gives people the right to bear arms. You did need a gun to go out in the United States at that time, because the environment was more dangerous. Now the United States is already a highly developed country, still according to the regulations of more than 200 years ago, there is no way to ban guns, in fact, is ‘to carve a boat to seek a sword’. In a May 25 speech, Biden referred to the Second Amendment as ‘not absolute’ and renewed his call for what he called ‘common sense’ gun legislation, stressing that it would not negatively affect amendment rights.

The pro-gun control side, however, has urged authorities to further restrict or ban assault rifles altogether; Opponents have sought to blame mental health, not weapons, as the main culprit in mass shootings.

The American public largely supports increased gun control, but opposition from most Republican lawmakers has been a major obstacle to making significant changes.

C.   Interest groups 'can't move'

The Wall Street Journal said that although anti-gun groups gained more support after the shooting, they were still less influential than the National Rifle Association in Washington.

And not only has the federal level failed to act to make it harder for would-be killers to own and use guns, states have moved in the opposite direction. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a group set up to Prevent Gun Violence, reports that in 2021, more than a dozen states enacted laws that ‘Prevent enforcement of America's moderate Gun laws’; Several states repealed laws requiring gun owners to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons; Twenty-one states allow the purchase and carrying of weapons into public places without any background checks or security training.

No law can stop all crime, the paper said, but America's problem with guns is both unique and salient. Public opinion has long been in favour of more gun control, but Republican politicians have bowed to the loudest voices in their base; Whether those voices come from private citizens, the NRA or gun manufacturers, they see any restrictions as a step toward confiscating guns.

D. Interest groups are counter-propagating

Indiana shopping center on July 17 this year, the gunman is a local 20-year-old man Sapirman, after shooting three people, was shot dead by a volunteer gunman 22-year-old Deacon within two minutes. After the case happened, the interest group advocating the freedom of gun ownership in the American society once again shouted the importance of civilian gun ownership. The NRA tweeted: ‘Once again, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’

Only two of 61 similar shootings in 2021 ended when ‘citizens engaged the shooter,’ according to an FBI report in May, with bystanders rarely able to stop a gunman in the process of killing. The analysis of The New York Times also noted that of 433 mass shootings since 2000, only 22 shooters were shot by bystanders.

But how useful are cold data when manipulated by interest groups? Isn't the truth obvious?

（By Tom Lee）