Gun violence in America: What makes us so special?

By Brian Medeiros

Skyhawk View Staff Reporter

 

For the fifth year in a row the United States has had more mass shootings than days in the year, yet there seems to be no clear answer about how to respond to the gun violence epidemic that America has found itself in the middle of.

Every year, more people are affected by gun violence and rather than coming together for a solution there has been an increasing divide within the political sphere on what to do about what many Americans see as one of the most important issues facing the country today.

The Gun Violence Archive, an American non-profit that aims to provide public and accurate information regarding gun violence in the United States, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which a minimum of four people are shot, being either injured or killed, not counting the shooter. As of December 7, 2023, they have reported 632 of these events in the United States in 2023. 

The FBI, which uses the term “active shooter incident” to describe a person or persons “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area” reported an increase from three to sixty-one of such incidents from 2000 to 2021, according to a Pew Research Center Study.

According to that same study, the United States is currently experiencing the most gun murders in its history at the highest rate since the early 1990s.

Many Americans believe blame for this can be placed on mental health struggles. Millions of people in America struggle with mental health issues and the gun violence seen in the news is often perpetrated by a person with undertreated mental health problems.

Sergeant David Washington and Lieutenant Matthew Gorham from Stonehill College Campus Police agreed that mental health plays a significant role in the gun violence epidemic.

“Mental health is huge... you need to get people the help they need... it’s the person behind the weapon who needs the help,” Gorham said.

Washington, a 28-year police officer, said that the COVID-19 lockdown negatively affected many people’s mental health, resulting in the uptick of gun violence that has been seen since then. 

“You couldn’t go anywhere, you couldn’t leave the house, you couldn’t do the normal things you do,” he said.

professor Pamela Kelley, an associate professor of criminology at Stonehill College, has done research on gun violence, specifically gang violence, and spoke similarly about the mental health problems which cause shootings as well as the mental health problems that arise because of gun violence.

Kelley, who has done lots of her research in Brockton, Massachusetts, said that she has personally witnessed lots of the mental health issues caused by gun violence: “People stopped calling the police when they heard gunshots, this had become a part of their normal life,” she said.

In addition to mental health concerns, many believe that making it harder to get guns or stopping people from getting them at all would prevent shootings, while others argue that stricter laws would do nothing to stop these murders.

Lieutenant Gorham credited Massachusetts for having some of the strictest gun laws in the country and said that the state clearly takes gun violence seriously, but that at the end of the day, it mostly comes down to the responsibility of legal gun owners to prevent violent incidents from taking place with their own weapons.

The support for Massachusetts’ strict gun laws is also supported by data. As of 2021, the state enjoyed the lowest gun death rate in the country at 1.5 deaths per 100,000 residents, according to Pew Research Center.

While acknowledging the success of the state’s laws, both officers also argued that gun laws should be careful not to punish those who do follow the law, “bad guys don’t go through the rules to get guns” Washington said. 

They said that gun laws can be used to improve safety, as Gorham noted support for stricter background checks, but also stressed that gun laws should not punish law enforcement or civilians gun owners who do follow the law, “it’s almost like they’re punishing the responsible people,” Washington said.

While lots of attention is given to the causes of gun violence, much less seems to be given to the effects that gun violence has on the people, families, and communities surrounding it. professor Kelley did lots of research through a grant from the Shannon Community Safety Initiative and can speak in detail about the subject.

Kelley gained insight through her research on the effects of gun violence in some of the most impacted communities such as Brockton and Taunton, Massachusetts. She said that it creates a lot of fear which does considerable damage to people living in a state where are constantly at risk of gun violence. 

“People fear leaving their homes... it has a detrimental effect on their communities,” she said.

Kelley said how gun violence has further effects, more specifically on the families who are directly involved. She said that many families within these communities are broken up, with fathers and brothers in jail. Many children have either no caretaker or none who care about them. She explained that this leads many children to turning to gangs as their only family. Kelley said that these children are often “willing to do whatever they need to” to stay with their new family. This often includes crime involving guns, only further perpetuating the cycle of families being devastated by gun violence.

Despite how easy it may be to look to the future of gun violence with fear, more research such as professor Kelley’s continues to be done and police such as Sergeant Washington and Lieutenant Gorham keep developing their strategies to prevent and respond more effectively to gun violence. These efforts as well as growing political movements in search of an answer suggest that better days are ahead for gun violence in America.

(professor Pamela Kelley working in her office, as she would have been when conducting her research)