Wouldn't it be great if Uncle Sam cared as much about gun violence as he did about terrorism? Let's run the numbers...
Over the past quarter century, about 4,000 Americans have died at the hands of terrorists. That figure includes both foreign and domestic attacks, and it averages about 160 per year, or one death every 2 to 3 days.
By comparison, gun deaths on American soil over that same 25-year time span have added up to a grand total of around 1,000,000. That includes suicide, accidents, and deliberate killings, and is equivalent to 40,000 deaths per year, or over 100 per day.
As you can see, gun deaths dwarf terrorism deaths, exceeding them by several orders of magnitude. And it might have something to do with the priorities our government has set over the last few decades. The War on Terrorism has cost our nation $8 trillion thus far over the course of the 21st century. Compared to that number, we have spent but a pittance on mitigating domestic gun violence. We have also killed over 2 million foreigners in our quest to prevent terrorism, and have suffered 60,000 military casualties of our own. By comparison, we have lost just 3,500 police officers on our own streets over that same time frame, only a fraction of whom died trying to keep us safe from firearms.
In conclusion: our nation is dying. And it is a death by a million tiny lacerations. We live in perpetual fear of scary brown men a world away, while ignoring the far more real and tangible threats that lurk behind our neighbors' doors. And we are suffering from our failure to prioritize threats to our safety.
This is not to say that our efforts at preventing terrorism should take a permanent back seat to domestic concerns. It only means that we should take all such dangers into equal consideration while we as a people move forward.
Add new comment