Mass shootings occur almost once a day in the U.S., yet protecting gun rights seems to concern Americans more than increasing controls on guns.
On Thursday, a gunman killed nine people in a community college in Oregon. It was the 994th gun incident in which there were four or more victims (including the shooter) since the start of 2013, according to the website Mass Shooting Tracker.
The data shows that excluding Thursday’s shootings, there have been 375 deaths and 1,089 injuries in 2015 so far. The website began to collect the figures on known incidents just after 20 children were gunned down in December 2012 at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
Speaking from Washington after the killing spree, Barack Obama said: “We’ve become numb to this” — and he seems to be right.
December 2014 marked the first time in two decades of polling that those feeling strongly that the rights of Americans to own guns should be bolstered were in the majority, according to Pew Research.
According to the survey, 52 per cent said it was more important to protect Americans’ right to own guns, in contrast with 46 per cent who said it was more important to control ownership of the weapons.
Those supporting gun control were in the majority immediately after the Newtown shootings, with 51 per cent backing it in the U.S. in January 2013. However, that share had dropped by five percentage points by the end of 2014.
Between those two surveys, the proportion agreeing with the idea that gun ownership protects people from becoming victims of crime increased from 48 per cent to 57 per cent.
Part of this seems to be down to misperception. In a 2014 Gallup survey, 63 per cent of Americans said they thought violent crime was increasing despite the rate hovering at near 20-year lows.
The Pew data from December 2014 showed that 63 per cent of those surveyed thought that keeping a gun in the home made them safer, compared with 35 per cent 15 years before. In other words, Americans feel less safe and think a gun might be able to protect them.
Nearly 11 million guns were manufactured in the U.S. in 2013, with a total of just below 16 million entering circulation after legal imports are included, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015
