According to the Gun Violence Archive, in the United States in 2022 there were 648 mass shootings, defined as at least four people shot in a single incident, not including the shooter. That amounts to almost two mass shootings every day last year. Overall there were 20,181 gun related homicides last year, more than 55 homicides every day of the year. These are truly shocking numbers. We are once again engaged in a great civil war, but unlike the first Civil War, we don’t know why we are fighting. An army of aggrieved people take up arms and shoot their fellow citizens. It is as though some violent and irrational force seizes them one by one, and they have no choice but to arm themselves and kill people. If every war tells a story, this war tells the story of people overwhelmed by an angry impulses that regularly boil over into homicidal rage.

How did we get here? For starters, we are a country awash in firearms. 393 million of them. We have more guns than people. Is there any reason to be surprised that we are also awash in gun violence? Imagine for a moment that, instead of guns, there were 393 million flame throwers in people’s hands. If that were the case, is there any doubt that we’d have a similar epidemic of flamethrower attacks? When the impulse to kill takes hold of someone, as it does about 55 times every day in this country, the would-be killer would naturally turn to the one device in their possession that could efficiently kill, and a flamethrower nicely fits the bill.

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