Yes, it’s time to talk about guns, school shooting, students killed and injured, the number of firearms in Georgia (and other states), and where the guns are kept. A tragedy occurred today at Apalachee High School in the small town of Winder (p. 18,338). According to reports at around 4:00 P.M. today, 4+ people were killed and 9+ injured in this horrible mass shooting.
The shooter has been identified as a 14-year-old boy (I will not release his name). The shooting occurred in the morning at around 9:30 AM. Injured students and others were helicoptered to local hospitals, with some of the victims in serious condition. Check here for further updates on this mass school shooting.
Guns: An Evil in Our Midst
Where I live (Georgia), 49.2 % of fellow citizens own guns. And, this year, our governor (Brian Kemp), who touted a rifle aimed at a young boy who was interested in dating Kemp’s teenage daughter in a 2018 primary election commercial, signed into law a bill that will allow anyone to carry a concealed handgun in public without a license from the state (Senate bill 319). Other states have passed similar laws. Kemp calls this a “constitutional carry” law that says any person has the right to carry a gun without a paper from the state. This is reckless, and with our history of mass shootings in schools and churches, I have to wonder what people like Kemp think when they see grieving parents suffering from a loss more profound than we can imagine.
Guns: Where are they?
Most Americans believe that every person has the right to own arms, from a pistol to an AR-15 style rifle. Indeed, we lead the world in not only the number of guns per person, but the number of people who die from fire arms.
For example, here is a chart that shows how guns are distributed across the United States. They are not distributed evenly. As you can see, there are just a few states that hold on to the top spots in the race to buy and register guns. The data I am showing you is only registered guns. I don’t have data on unregistered fire arms.
Note that a few states are at the top of the leaderboard for registering guns. I am still determining how many additional unregistered firearms are in the United States. This graph is known as a process chart. It’s a way of assessing the variation of a variable (number of guns per state). Using the average number of firearms per state as the middle blue line (103,770), we can then calculate the UCL: Upper Control Limit=116,607 and the LCL: Lower Control Limit=90,933. Leading the states in gun ownership is Texas, followed by California, Florida, Virginia, and so forth. At the lower end of the graph, leaders are Delaware, Vermont, Hawaii, North Dakota, Maine, and Nebraska.
People and Guns
The graph in Figure 1 does not tell us the percentage of people in each state who own guns. Some states, such as Texas, California and Florida have more people within their borders than states like Delaware, Vermont and North Dakota. The question now is what percentage of people in a given state own guns? Figure 2 is a graph that will help us answer that question. This graph gives you the percentage of people in each state that own guns. In Montana, more than 66.3 % of adults own guns. Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, and West Virginia follow right behind Montana. On the other end of the chart, Massachusetts and New Jersey have the lowest percentage of people owning guns (14.7 %).
According to the World Population Review, both Massachusetts and New Jersey have some of the strictest gun ownership laws in the United States. Obtaining a permit or license required to even purchase a gun in these states can take weeks and is relatively rigorous. However, Massachusetts also consistently has one of the lowest gun fatality rates in the United States. It is important to understand gun control is determined primarily by each state. States that have very strict gun laws tend to have less numbers of people killed by guns.
Winder School Mass Shooting
The mass shootings happen almost daily in the United States. This is the result of the proliferation of unregulated arms. Today, a 14-year-old boy walked into a school and opened fire on innocent students and teachers. e used it to murder nineteen students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
I don’t know how we can change this trajectory of unregulated gun control. Some have. It we don’t, then the slaughter of innocent people, including children at school and their teachers, will continue in the United States.
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