Here’s an interesting statistic that today drew some attention on one of the many Sunday morning TV news/talk shows.
In the past decade, 153,144 people have died in this country from gun violence; 3,046 individuals have died at the hands of terrorists during that same period.
This came from Chuck Todd, moderator of “Meet the Press,” citing the stats provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He asked Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, about whether the country needs to do as much to combat gun violence as it has done to battle terrorism.
Lowry gave a reasonable and intelligent answer, which was that government’s fundamental role is to protect citizens against foreign enemies; he added that any gun-related action “on the margins” won’t do anything and that more comprehensive action runs the risk of infringing on the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
Meet the Press tackles gun violence
The discussion was fascinating.
Still, I’m a bit baffled by the fact that with such a huge disparity between gun-violence deaths and terror-related deaths, we still have been unable — or unwilling — to deploy government’s machinery to impose additional restrictions on gun ownership that does not infringe on citizens’ right to own a firearm.
After all, the government created a whole new Cabinet-level agency — the Department of Homeland Security — immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Still, madmen take guns into public places and massacre thousands more innocent victims … and we do nothing?