This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated April 24, 2021
Over the past month, it has been impossible to escape news of Americans becoming the victims of gun violence. There have been more than 150 mass shootings in 2021, with over 50 in the past month alone.
If it seems like these mass casualty shootings are contagious, that is because evidence suggests they often are. A 2015 study, which analyzed data from USA Today and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, found statistical correlations between school shootings and mass killings with firearms, indicating each such event is likely to inspire a similar one within the following 13 days.
Here in New York, this may seem like a tragic problem that affects other parts of the country, and history has largely borne that out, but any state’s strong gun safety restrictions can only be so effective when other states nearby have lax gun laws. We have seen this month how vulnerable we can be to gun violence.
On April 18, an Ohio teenager was arrested at a busy midtown subway station after police saw him with an unloaded semi-automatic rifle and ammunition in a bag he was carrying. It is not yet known if he had intentions to use the weapon, but had he wanted to, the results could have been horrific. Two days later, in West Hempstead on Long Island, a shooting at a Stop & Shop supermarket left one employee dead and two wounded.
Technically, that did not count as a mass shooting, as the official definition is events in which four or more people are shot, wounded, or killed, not including the gunman. Neither would the April 18 fatal shooting of three people in Austin, TX by a former police detective. The extent of this plague of gun violence is far greater than what most statistical snapshots show.
“We do not need to live like this, where over 1,000 kids are killed by guns each year and tens of thousands use the convenience of a readily available firearm to make a rash decision they can never take back.”
The triple gun homicide in Austin was classified as an act of domestic violence. The man charged with the crime faced charges last year of sexually assaulting a child. The child’s mother had told the court that she feared for the lives of herself and her child with him out of jail, but by late 2020, the ankle monitor he had worn for five months was removed, at which point he was basically unmonitored. He should never have been able to be in possession of a gun. Texas does not have any Red Flag laws, which allow people to petition to have those who pose a danger to themselves of others, to lose their ability to possess firearms.
Indiana does have such a law, but it is so onerous that it could not be used to prevent Brandon Scott Hole from shooting and killing eight at a FedEx facility on April 15. This, despite his own mother calling authorities last year to report that her son might intend to initiate an exchange of gunfire with police as a means to die by suicide. Unfortunately, the necessary hearing under the state’s Red Flag law was never held, as the prosecutor could not meet the short time requirements laid out in the law. Hole would then legally buy the two rifles he used for his attack.
Asked recently about mass shootings, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said, “I do think this is a public health crisis.” That is precisely the case and we must respond to it the way we do to other public health crises.
In recent years, the United States has been hovering around 40,000 total gun-related deaths per year. With nearly 13,000 through the third week of April, this year is on pace to exceed 40,000 fatalities and 30,000 injuries. Through April 20, 424 children under the age of 18 have been killed by guns and 994 injured. Data from recent years has also shown that nearly two-thirds of all deaths from firearms are from suicides.
We do not need to live like this, where over 1,000 kids are killed by guns each year and tens of thousands use the convenience of a readily available firearm to make a rash decision they can never take back. We need laws passed at the federal level this year that mirror New York’s Red Flag laws and background checks.
