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While having dinner a few minutes ago a Fox News analyst, Kirsten Powers, pontificated that mass killings with guns is becoming epidemic in this country. Unbelievably not one person challenged her outrageous allegation. But, it’s the liberal track to immediately blame guns and to s t r e t c h the truth. It happens with each such event. Evil, violent, mentally unstable people kill masses of other people. One such event would be one too many, but has mass murder become epidemic in the U.S.?

Since the shootings at Columbine in Colorado there have been a bit less than 30 instances of what could be classified as mass killings in the U.S.. Lets suppose that all of those horrific murders happened in schools and colleges. (They didn’t. They happened in shopping malls, outside churches, in cafeterias, etc.)

In the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Education, there are about 139,000 schools. Assuming that all those mass murders were committed in schools that would be .0002% of the schools that had an incident since April of 1999. That would be .00001% of schools that had an incident each year. Now add in all the shopping centers, all the churches, synagogues, and other places where people meet in groups. To call mass murder in the U.S. an epidemic is crazy talk based on the facts.

Another way to think about this is to consider the perpetrators. Including, and since Columbine in the spring of 1999, less than 40 people have been involved in mass murders involving guns. That’s about 13 years. There are about 280,000,000 people in the United States. About 3 people each year kill enough people so that it’s classified a mass murder. The percentage of the population is…It has too many 0’s to print. 3 crazy, mean, evil people out of 280 million isn’t exactly a lot is it?

What about the guns? In this country we own approximately 90 guns per 100 citizens. Wowzer! That is a lot of guns. In fact it’s about 252 million. Yet just over 30 have been used in mass killings in the past 13 1/2 years. That too is a minuscule percentage of guns used in mass killings.

As I said earlier, one mass murder is one too many. And especially when it involves children. But I think anyone who thinks about it for a few minutes can easily see that guns are not the problem. It’s the 3 nuts out of 280 million citizens who go haywire and kill lots of people each year.

If people want to be up in arms (no pun intended) about gun crime, how about Chicago? Homicides are up 38% since Rahm Emanuel became mayor. (I don’t think that is the reason but it’s a short time period.) It’s more dangerous by almost double to live in Chicago than for an American solder to be in Afghanistan. The population of Chicago is about 2.7 million and for each 1,000 citizens 15.2 of them  were murdered last year, the homicide rate will be much higher at the end of the year.

Cities like Chicago where gun related crimes are perhaps epidemic is where we should really be concerned. It is worthy of notice that Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. New York is another story. A few years ago the Big Apple had over 2,500 murders per year (2003) and now has far less than Chicago by percentage. The difference? Police work. What we need far more than gun control laws is better police practices and training so that teachers, health workers, military leaders, clergy, and others can spot murderers in the making and get them help. That is where we should focus our efforts. Screaming “The Sky is Falling” is not helping.

Tonight before our meal we prayed for the family members, teachers, and everyone else who are now grieving the loss of someone they loved there in Connecticut. May God comfort their hearts.

Royce