Letters to the editor

Letter to the Editor: Gun violence in America is real

Last week, a frequent contributor wrongly suggested that Democrats are trying to take away our guns. Really? The author seems to forget which party controls the federal government these days. Was a gun ban passed during the Obama or Biden administrations? Nope.

Let's take a look at the facts of the issue, shall we?

First, Americans own more guns than any other country on earth with 120.5 guns per one hundred people. Our good neighbors to the north own a whopping 37.5 guns per hundred citizens, and Mexicans own a paltry 12.9 guns per hundred. (World Population Review).

Now the question becomes, why do so many Americans own so many guns?

Let's look at the history of gun legislation in America. An assassination attempt was made on Republican President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, resulting in four people being shot by John Hinckley, Jr. Subsequently, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was enacted by Congress on Nov. 30, 1993. (Brady had been shot in the head and was partially paralyzed for life.) The law mandated federal background checks on firearm purchasers in the United States. It also imposed a five-day waiting period on purchases until the National Instant Criminal Background Check System was implemented in 1998. Were anyone's guns taken away then? Again, no.

Also under the Clinton Administration, an assault weapons ban went into effect from 1993-2001, when it expired. One year after signing the Brady Law, White House lobbying also played a role in the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill, which included the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, commonly known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. The law banned certain semi-automatic firearms with two or more specific design features, and also prohibited the manufacture of ammunition magazines that held over ten rounds.

Did the Clinton-era Federal Assault Weapons Ban work? Recently published research from Stanford University found that from 1994 to 2004, the ban was associated with a marked decrease in mass shootings.

In 2025 alone, there were 408 mass shootings in the US, defined by the FBI as shootings involving four or more victims. (crimeresearch.org). So far this calendar year, there have already been 315 mass shootings, including eight killed in Michigan on July 24, six of whom were children! (massshootingstracker.site) And from 1966-present, 1,737 mass shootings have occurred, resulting in 4,465 total fatalities (Rockefeller Institute of Government).

Rights contained in the Constitution are not absolute. There are caveats to all of them. The fact that our founding fathers could not have predicted we would have weapons today that fire 700-950 rounds per minute is one. Regulating gun ownership to prevent mass shootings seems pretty reasonable to me. It seems to me Republicans don't care about saving innocent lives; Democrats do.

Russ Bowers

Parkersburg