In the United States, gun culture encompasses the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs about firearms and their usage by civilians. Gun ownership in the United States is the highest in the world, and constitutionally protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Firearms are widely used in the United States for self-defense, hunting, and recreational uses, such as target shooting.
The latest incident in America’s epidemic of gun violence — this time at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday — has left 19 children and two teachers dead.
Last year alone, more than 1,500 children under 18 were killed by firearms. America’s gun scourge is not about mental illness. It is, and always has been, about the 400 million guns that remain largely unregulated on the streets and in our homes, some of which are then brought to our children’s schools.
INSIDE AMERICAN GUN CULTURE
The US is one of three countries to include gun-ownership rights in its constitution, along with Mexico and Guatemala. The right “of the people to keep and bear arms,” enshrined in the Second Amendment, was established in the 18th century to allow states to form militias to protect themselves against oppression by the federal government.
In 2008, the US Supreme Court ruled that the amendment also protects the gun rights of individuals. Beyond the legalities, the gun is a cultural icon in the US. It was a necessary instrument of soldiers in the Revolutionary War and cowboys roaming the Wild West.
More recently, semiautomatic guns that fire bullets in rapid succession – also called assault weapons – have gained popularity among law-abiding gun owners and mass killers alike. Mass shootings in other countries, although less common, have also led to debates over regulation. A massacre of 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand in early 2019 prompted an overhaul of gun laws there.
MASS SHOOTINGS IN THE US
While mass shootings account for just a fraction of US gun deaths, they attract the most attention. In May 2022, 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in rural Texas, a week after 10 were killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
In a report released the same month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified 61 “active shooter” attacks in 2021 that killed 103 people – the most annual deaths since 2017, which was the year a sniper opened fire at a concert in Las Vegas, killing 58 people.
A right to guns
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms. And, around 30 per cent of the American population avails this right.
A survey by Pew Research Center found that four in 10 Americans had at least one gun in their household in 2021. Three in 10 Americans said they owned a gun themselves.
Prevalence of guns in the American households is surprising given that in the same Pew survey, 94 per cent people identified guns as a “problem”, with 56 per cent calling it a “big problem”. And, 53 per cent – seven per cent decline from 2017 to 2021 – opined that Americans want a stricter gun control laws.
Are mass shootings becoming deadlier?
Deaths from the “mass shootings” that attract international attention, however, are harder to track.
While the country does not have a single definition for “mass shootings”, the FBI has for over a decade tracked “active shooter incidents” in which “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area”.
According to the FBI, there were 345 “active shooter incidents” in the United States between 2000-2020, resulting in more than 1,024 deaths and 1,828 injuries.
The deadliest such attack, in Las Vegas in 2017, killed more than 50 people and left 500 wounded. The vast majority of mass shootings, however, leave fewer than 30 people dead.
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