While we’re all talking about Bump Stocks… could we be missing the bigger issue?

As it does every time we see a headline-making tragedy, the gun control debate has come up. But are we all chasing red herrings? Are we swatting at flies when there is an elephant or two in the room?

The total number of deaths by firearm in 2016 is reportedly 33,594.

That number includes suicide, criminal homicide, mishap and justifiable homicide.

If we can take the numbers from the Brady Institute as accurate, they are claiming 93 people in America die daily within the unbrella term ‘gun violence.

Of that number, most — 58 a day — are suicide, not homicide.

But suicides — as tragic as they are — are not the problem that keeps people up at night, and generate headlines. Maybe they SHOULD be, but they’re not.

Stripping away the suicide figure, we’re looking at about 12,500 gun deaths a year. 

Ok, now we’re getting into more useful stats.

Of those who remain, the vast majority of homicides are perpetrated by young males, usually against other males of similar age.

The rampages and mass killings that splash across the headlines are an exceedingly small percentage of the total.

The question of politics has come up. There was even a meme about it.

Do the mass killers have a tendency to vote Democrat? Sure, some of them have been registered as Democrats. But even that stat is hit-and-miss. It’s hard to quantify. Should you count the Vegas Killer, Paddock? He was reportedly a registered Democrat in 1984… back when he lived in Florida.

Those details are slippery at best. Let’s deal in what we can quantify.

But what IS clear is that the homicide rate with guns are — in most regions — in decline.

But there are places gun-related homicide are still rising. And both trends follow clear patterns.

They are declining in America ‘generally’ but rising in the cities. Obviously, rural America tends to tilt ‘Red’ while urban America tilts ‘Blue’. 

Here are the places with the highest per-capita murder rate in the USA, 2016: St Louis; Baltimore; Detroit; New Orleans; Birmingham; Jackson MS; Baton Rouge; Hartford; Salinas; Milwaukee; Washington, DC; Kansas City; Cincinnati; West Palm Beach; Memphis; San Bernardino; Oakland; Atlanta; Richmond; Kansas City; Pittsburg; Chicago; North Charlotte.

Whatever else you might want to say about the trends, the places where murder — including, obviously, gun crime — are on the rise tend to be Urban. And politically very ‘Blue’.

But most of our violent crime occurs in violent cities, most of which have been Democrat strongholds for a long time… the Chicagos, Baltimores, Detroits and St. Louis.

If we REALLY wanted to stop ‘90%’ of shootings, we shouldn’t be talking about ‘bump stocks’ and ‘high capacity magazines’. If we truly cared, as Obama claimed about ‘saving even one life’, our National Gun conversation would be talking about two things.

1) Suicide prevention at a national level.

The annual age-adjusted suicide rate is 13.26 per 100,000 individuals. Men die by suicide 3.5x more often than women. On average, there are 121 suicides per day. White males accounted for 7 of 10 suicides in 2015. –American Foundation Suicide Prevention

That’s suicide generally. As we said earlier, suicide by gun accounts for 58 per day. What does that mean in real terms?

That’s the same bodycount as one Las Vegas Massacre.

Every.

Single.

Day.

2) Breaking the cycle of urban violence in Democrat strongholds.

You know… better schools, mentors, stronger families, lock away people who use guns in crimes.

Basically the OPPOSITE of Obama’s stack of sketchy pardons — which included gun offenses — that he crammed through before leaving office.

So, Democrats aren’t the ‘white knights’ rushing to our rescue they claim to be.

They’re actually distracting us from the real crisis.

And if we finally addressed these two issues, what would happen to these numbers? They would drop.

How much?

A LOT.