Guns: Adding Insult to Injury

Source: Nationhood Lab.

The last few days have seen a confluence of gun tragedy. A shooting death in the church of Joel Osteen ("church" used loosely) in Houston and a shooting death (and 21 wounded) at a Superbowl rally in Kansas City. More and more, mourning for the dead has barely begun before new dead take their place in the headlines.

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Adding insult to injury, today I received a notification of a comment added to my 2023 post, "TIL: Gun Violence in the Deep South". Before I get to that comment, let me summarize what I learned about that subject:

What I learned: The death rate from gun violence "varies wildly between regions. Of the larger regions, the Deep South is the most deadly with a smoothed rate of 15.6 per 100,000 residents, followed by Greater Appalachia at 13.5. On the other end of the spectrum, New Netherland – the Dutch-founded area around New York City – has a smoothed rate of just 3.8 per 100,000, a rate less than a quarter that of the Deep South."

Source: The Wheel.

Let that sink in. The death rate from gun violence is highest in the Deep South and lowest around New York City. Perversely, politicians in the Deep South are the most vocal in calling for more guns as a solution to gun violence.

OK, back to my notification of a comment, which is what prompted this post. It was a comment added overnight to my blog post that I quoted fro. It was from a gun dealer and was filled with links:

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Buy Colt AR15 in Texas
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Buy Zastava M92 ZPAP
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Buy UZI PRO 9mm lol

I know it's not personal. I know the comment was computer generated, probably a robot scouring the internet for posts about guns and automatically commenting on each. Still, I find the comment depressing. There must be a market out there for this to be at all effective. A market out of which will come the next headline about guns and violence and death. The mayhem will continue until we quit electing people from the only political party that obstructs any and all gun regulation.

P.S. You won't find the comment on my post. It was deleted before it ever made it online.