The man is an idiot
31: Percentage of American households that reported having a firearm in 2014, the lowest level of reported gun ownership in the last 40 years.
23 million: Number of background checks the FBI conducted in 2015, nearly three times the 8.5 million completed in 2000.
11 million: Number of guns made in the U.S. in 2013, the year after the Sandy Hook massacre. That’s more than twice as many as the 5.4 million firearms produced in 2010.
48: Percentage of Americans who cite protection as the main reason to own a gun, while 32 percent said hunting. In 1999, 49 percent of Americans said hunting was the main reason to own a gun, while just 26 percent said protection.
39: Percentage by which gun-related homicides dropped between 1993 and 2011.
The shooters in San Bernardino, at Umpqua Community College, in Roanoke, Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina and Lafayette Louisiana -- the most recent “mass” killings -- all obtained their weapons from federally licensed gun dealers. All had passed the requisite background checks.
Some of the shooters should have been barred from purchasing guns. Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African Americans people in a church, should have been turned down since he had admitted to possessing drugs, but the FBI failed to follow through on the investigation. John Houser, who shot up a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, had a history of mental illness and domestic abuse. He should not have been allowed to purchase a firearm, and indeed had been denied a concealed weapon permit in his home state. But in neighboring Alabama, he got one anyway.
These examples are not the exceptions – they are the rule.
Thousands continue to die from guns in cities like Chicago, where 442 were shot to death in 2015, Baltimore (301) and in New York, where more than 300 were murdered. The White House has discouraged law enforcement officials in those cities from aggressive policing tactics, such as “stop & frisk,” which in 2011 allowed cops in New York City to confiscate more than 800 guns.
Last year in New York, fewer than 400 guns were recovered. What does more to reduce gun violence? Taking away weapons from criminals, or adjusting background checks for gun buyers?