Our New Normal

On this day, May 29, 2023 we Americans observe Memorial Day, the day we honor the men and women of our armed services who gave their lives in the service of our country. It is right and just that we do this. We must never forget them and their sacrifice. 

During my childhood, my family had a tradition of visiting the graves of our deceased family members on Memorial Day, whether they were veterans or not. It was right and just that we did that too.

Last Memorial Day came directly on the heels of the beginning of Russia's war in Ukraine, inspiring me to dedicate my last Memorial Day post to "the people who through no fault of their own, get caught up in war." I then went on to liken Ukrainians and civilians in war zones all over the world, killed while going about their everyday lives, to people in this country going about their daily lives who are killed in gun violence. 

It is also right and just to do this.

Because perhaps every Memorial Day from now on, we will be reminded of two specific days of infamy in our own country, the anniversaries of two American massacres that occurred just before the holiday last year, to be exact: May 14, 2022, at a Tops Grocery Store in Buffalo, New York, and May 24, 2022 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. 

Yet another truly horrifying and repulsive thing is this: in our day there are more mass shootings in the United States in one year than there are days in a year, so one can mark the anniversary of a mass shooting practically every day of the year. Worse still, the number of mass shooting victims is a small fraction of the total number of victims of gun violence in this country.

In 2022, according to the web site The Trace, 20,138 gun deaths, (not including suicides), occurred in the United States. That number was a slight decrease from the previous record-setting year.

Now consider this: inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, there are 58,318 names of all the U.S. service men and women who either died or were MIA during that conflict which for us lasted between 1955 and 1975. 

You do the math.

This is our new normal. There are so many gun tragedies in our country that unless they are particularly horrific in terms of the number or age of the victims, or the reasons why they were killed, we hardly notice anymore.

It's tempting to find a single culprit for these horrible statistics, but there are many. According to this Wikipedia chart which is quite out of date, for every 100 people in the United States, there were 120 guns.  That number is significantly higher today. Number two on the list is Serbia with a paltry 37.2 guns for every 100 people followed by Canada, with 34.7 guns for every 100 people, and Finland with 32.4.  If you remove the U.S. from that equation, it is obvious that the number of guns per person in a country, does not necessarily correlate with a high gun-murder rate.

The countries with the highest gun-murder rates in the world are concentrated in one geographical area, Central America and parts of South America, with Venezuela and El Salvador far and away leading the pack with 36.75 and 36.34 gun related deaths per 100,000 people respectively, according to a recent web site from World Popluation Review. According to that site, those numbers are attributable to "the prevalence of criminal gangs and a vibrant drug trafficking industry." In El Salvador, at least according to the older Wikipedia list, there were only 5.8 guns per 100 people in 2015. By contrast, Serbia, Finland and Canada all with about seven times the number of guns-per-capita, had 4.8, 2.9 and 2.3 gun-=murders per 100K people respectively.

From the World Population Review list, the United States experienced 10.89 firearm related deaths per 100K in the past year, a rate comparable to those of Uruguay, Paraguay and Panama.

If one only looks at these numbers, gun rights advocates have a point when they say limiting the number of guns available to the general public is not going to eliminate gun violence.

But what do we make of the off-the-charts number of guns in this country? Remember, there are almost four times as many guns-per-capita in the States than in Serbia, the country second place in that category the world.

My take is that with all those guns available, it is stupid easy to get your hands on one in this country, be you a responsible gun owner, a run-of-the-mill criminal, or a sociopath. And with few meaningful restrictions on the sale, manufacture, possession and the carrying of firearms in many U.S. states, and even more lax restrictions on the way, it's only going to become more stupidly easy in the future. 

True, the U.S. is not in the top twenty in the world in terms of gun-murder rate, it's number 22, according to the WPR list. That's hardly a bragging right.

But as far as public mass shootings go, along with per-capita gun ownership, we are in a class all by ourselves. 

The connection may be purely anecdotal, but I don't think so. Gun rights activists claim other culprits for the preponderance of mass shootings in this country, mental health being number one. 

I don't buy it. As far as I know, there are people with mental health issues everywhere in the world, not just in the States. I'm not even convinced that all perpetrators of mass shootings are indeed mentally ill. There are certainly millions of people in this country and elsewhere with mental health issues who would not harm anyone, let alone commit mass murder. I'm all in on making mental health a priority in this nation. But the emphasis on mental illness being a major cause of violence is no more than a smokescreen from the issue of gun legislation and an excuse to stigmatize and marginalize yet another group of people. 

Regardless, the one thing we have that nobody else does here in the good ol' U.S.A., along with a mass shooting or two every day, is unfettered access to guns. 

What IS sick are politicians looking for gun lobby money and a few extra votes, people who could make a difference to save at least some lives, wearing lapel pins in the likeness of AR-15 assault rifles, the preferred weapon of mass shooters. 

What a slap in the face to the people who lost loved ones to those weapons of mass destruction. 

They may as well piss on the graves of our fallen soldiers, seamen, airmen and women. I have no doubt that in exchange for money and a vote or two, they would do just that.

The Chicago Line

In terms of pure numbers, there have been more murders in Chicago this year, and in many previous years, than any other any American city. It comes as little relief that because of its large population, Chicago ranks anywhere between #10 and #30 (depending on which day and where you check the stats), in murder rate in this country, in other words the number of homicides in relation to the size of the population.     

One could argue because of that second statistic, Chicago is not the "murder capital" of the nation as it is so often referred. That's hardly a bragging right.

Some would diminish the significance of our increasing murder rate as it is concentrated in certain "bad" neighborhoods and not the entire city. High crime rates have historically been associated with areas of poverty combined with ethnic and racial segregation, unemployment, the breakdown of families, the predominance of street gangs and other factors. As the crime and murder rate in much of the city has remained fairly stable, it stands to reason that the murder rate in the poorer neighborhoods of Chicago has skyrocketed, well out of proportion with the overall rate of the city as a whole.

Despite not living in a neighborhood with a particularly high murder rate, I don't find any comfort in that. On the contrary. This is my city and every murder, whether it be in affluent Lincoln Park, the economically challenged Englewood, or my neighborhood somewhere in between, Rogers Park, is an unspeakable tragedy.

There is no way to sugar-coat it, we cannot spin the situation to make it better, we are all affected by the horrific number of murders in our city.

Therefore, I'm not averse to Chicago's murder rate being openly and honestly discussed by those who have a legitimate concern for the wellbeing of this city and its inhabitants, preferably accompanied by some useful thoughts addressing the tragedy.

What I have no tolerance for are politicians and pundits who use violence in Chicago as a distraction from one of the pressing issues of our day, gun control. 

You hear the trope every time there is legitimate outrage after a mass shooting. Defenders of not doing anything to control the obscene availability of guns in this country will predictably drop the Chicago Line in order to "prove" that gun laws do nothing to prevent crime.

This is the Chicago Line: "Despite having the toughest gun laws in the nation, Chicago also has the highest murder rate."

Strictly speaking, neither of those points are accurate, but that's not a problem for me. If there were a legitimate argument for Chicago being an example of strict gun laws having little or no effect on crime, it would be a valid point.

But it's not a legitimate argument and therefore not valid. The bottom line is that in Chicago's case, the correlation between its relatively strict gun control laws and its high murder rate, is purely anecdotal, much like the tentative correlation many people make between vaccines and autism (a story for another day).

The problem with the correlation between Chicago (more appropriately Illinois) gun laws and the murder rate is quite simple. While Illinois gun laws are fairly strict by US standards (ranked eighth strictest in the nation), the laws in its neighboring states are anything but. Given that, it stands to reason that a state with strict gun laws being an island surrounded by states with lax guns laws is no more effective than a no peeing section in the middle of an open swimming pool. It turns out that well over half of the guns used in crimes in Chicago come from out of state, the majority of those from Indiana, which is literally across the street from some parts of Chicago. 

The state of Illinois requires all gun purchases to be accompanied a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card on the part of a buyer, issued by the State Police which must be presented to the seller for verification at the time of purchase. That process alone takes a few days so you can't simply walk into a gun shop in this state and leave with a shiny new weapon. This FOID card can be rescinded any time its holder is considered a risk such as having committed a crime or determined to be mentally unstable.

None of this is true in Indiana or Wisconsin where almost anyone with absolutely no business having a gun can make the easy drive across state lines to buy one.

But the real problem with this nation's lax gun laws insofar as crime is concerned, is the that they enable guns to be manufactured at a staggering rate. I looked at one of my previous posts a decade old and recalled that ten years ago, there were as many guns as people in the United States. Today it is estimated that there are about twenty percent more guns than people in this country. That translates to (if my math is correct) roughly 80 million more guns in circulation today in this country than ten years ago.

Sure there are lots of responsible gun owners who take pains to prevent their firearms from getting into the wrong hands. But what happens when they sell those guns which are later re-sold or stolen? That's not to mention all the irresponsible gun owners out there.

Since guns are so plentiful in this city, one needn't bother making the trip to Indiana or Wisconsin, they can be had right here, mostly illegally of course. As the gun crowd rightfully points out, criminals aren't going to let a mere law prevent them from getting a gun. But if there weren't so many guns around in the first place, it wouldn't be so damned easy for criminals to get their hands on them. Sorry gun guys but this one is on you.

Another inconvenient fact debunking the correlation between Chicago's murder rate and gun control is that cities with comparable or higher murder rates than Chicago such as Birmingham, Little Rock, New Orleans and St. Louis are all in states with far more lenient gun restrictions than Illinois. In contrast, cities like Los Angeles and New York, both in states with stricter gun laws than Illinois, have far lower murder rates than Chicago.

Unfortunately there is a segment of our society who seems to be immune to reason and facts. That's why anti gun control politicians and pundits keep getting away with using the Chicago Line as their main line of defense in arguing the failure of gun control.

You may ask why Chicago is singled out as the gold standard of American murder and mayhem. Could it be that all those other cities are in solidly red states that typically oppose gun control? Oh I dunno, just a hunch.

The Chicago Line was a favorite of the exPOTUS who was fond of trashing the blue state of Illinois and especially Chicago, home of his predecessor and favorite target, Barak Obama. 

In a bit of horrendous timing, days after the mass shooting of fourth graders and their teachers in Uvalde, Texas, an NRA convention was scheduled to take place in Houston, 278 miles away. Many folks who planned to attend either as speakers or entertainers, cancelled their appearances out of respect for the dead and their families. Not the exPOTUS who danced a little gig at the end of his address to the crowd, after paying "homage" to the victims of Uvalde by mispronouncing most of their names. Also present at the gun-lovers' orgy in Houston was Texas senator Ted Cancún Cruz who predictably used the old reliable Chicago Line in his speech. Here is what he said: 

Gun bans do not work. Look at Chicago. If they worked, Chicago wouldn’t be the murder hellhole that it has been for far too long.

Which is interesting because in 2019, Cruz was excoriated by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot after he dropped the Chicago Line in slightly different words, after a particularly brutal holiday weekend in this city. It's bad enough to extol the virtues of guns by exploiting Chicago violence in reaction to a tragic weekend in the Windy City, but it's a whole other level of bad to use it in the wake of another town's tragedy.

Perhaps the most tasteless use of the Chicago Line to date came from Texas governor Greg Abbott at a press conference in Uvalde, the day after the shooting. You may remember it was Abbott who famously blamed windmills for the disastrous power grid failure last year after an unusual snap of cold weather in the Lone Star State. Never mind that wind power generates only a minuscule amount of Texas energy. 

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that this modern-day Don Quixote would bring up Chicago while blocks away, grieving parents were in the process of receiving the remains of their murdered children who had to be identified the night before by DNA samples as the bullets from a high powered military grade weapon ripped apart their bodies and destroyed their faces.

In order to assure his fellow gun toatin' Texans that he wasn't moved by the unspeakable tragedy that befell his constituents in Uvalde enough to keep weapons like the one used at Robb Elementary School out of the hands of people likely to use them against ten year olds, Abbott said this:

I hate to say this, there are more people that are shot every weekend in Chicago than there are in schools in Texas.

Perhaps he was bemoaning the fact that there aren't enough schools in Texas but I don't think so. Not giving him the benefit of the doubt on that one, his statement is so wrong on so many levels. 

Beyond the errors in logic, by comparing numbers of murder victims in Chicago and Texas, Abbott is treating human lives as if they were commodities. He may as well have been talking about spark plugs or widgets. 

Not only did Abbott receive the wrath of the Mayor of Chicago, but also that of Jay Pritzker, Governor of Illinois for his thoughtless remarks.

As pointed out by Mayor Lightfoot, worst of all, Abbott's statement downplays the tragedy he was on hand to address. Uvalde is a small town where practically everyone has a connection to at least one of the victims of the massacre. I'm guessing that not a soul in Uvalde was comforted by learning that a lot of people are murdered in Chicago too. 

But these gun-loving yahoos press on with their empty rhetoric about good guys with guns, people killing people, not guns, and about that hellhole, Chicago.

You don't hear Ted Cruz or Greg Abbott, both with presidential aspirations of their own calling Indianapolis, Tuscaloosa, Menphis or Baton Rouge murder hell holes, even though those cities have higher murder rates than Chicago. 

For them. Chicago is an easy target as this city's violent reputation as every Chicagoan who has ever traveled abroad knows, precedes it. Besides they have nothing to lose as neither of them have a snowball's chance in hell of winning Chicago or Illinois in a presidential election. 

As I said, if there were any credence to the Chicago Line, it would be fair game. But there is not, it is a simplistic logical fallacy, deliberately cherry picked by unscrupulous politicians and their masters, the gun lobby, to empower and enrich themselves off the blood of innocent children, and to further divide the American people. 

So we can expect to keep hearing the same old bullshit Chicago Line ad nauseam.

Not that it will make a bit of difference but to that I will quote our mayor while adding a few choice embellishments of my own:

If you don't give a rat's ass about this city or its people, keep our name out of your fucking mouth.

With all due respect. 

The Lives They Lived

On Memorial Day we remember and honor the sacrifice of the men and women who gave their lives in service to our country. It is entirely appropriate that we do this. Memorial Day is even more poignant today as through the war raging in Ukraine, we are reminded on a daily basis of something we often take for granted, the ravages of war and the price that sometimes needs to be paid to maintain justice, democracy and liberty over the forces of oppression.

It is just as appropriate in my opinion, to remember and honor the people who through no fault of their own, get caught up in war. 

From my last post: 

Up until a couple months ago, the people of Bucha were going about their lives just as we do here, going to work, taking their kids to dance class, walking their dogs, doing the grocery shopping, in short, all the mundane things we do every day and take for granted. 

I wrote those words on the morning of Saturday, May 14. Later that day, a bunch of people were going about their lives on the east side of Buffalo, New York, when everything would change for them in the span of roughly six minutes, which to those who survived, must have seemed like an eternity.

The people shopping at Tops Grocery Store that tragic day were not caught up in a war between nations, but in a shooting war just the same. The man who killed ten Americans and wounded many more that day, is an avowed white supremacist who targeted his victims because they were black. He is by every definition of the word, a terrorist. 

Today is Memorial Day, May 30, 2022. I wrote the words you just read last weekend. My original intention was to devote a post to the victims of the Buffalo massacre.  But as I pointed out in the previous post, just like Rome, my posts aren't built in a day. In this case, I didn't know exactly which direction to go. Should I devote the post to the myth that we live in a "post-racial" America; should I write about the evils of white supremacy; should I write about the cancer of gun violence in this country; should I write about gun control or the lack of it; or should I write about the pandora's box of other issues that horrific crime brought up?

AP Photo/Joshua Bessex

In the midst of contemplating all this, the Buffalo tragedy was all but eclipsed by an even deadlier mass shooting, this one at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Last Tuesday, May 24, two teachers and 19 students, mostly fourth graders, died, and several more were injured but managed to survive.

I've checked the archives of this blog and after practically every mass shooting in our country, I wrote about my frustration over our nation's inability to come to a compromise over the issue of gun control. Frankly it shouldn't be that difficult, I don't think any reasonable person should object to things like background checks and registering gun owners. We do just that for automobiles. And how on earth can it be legal for an 18 year old who can't legally buy a beer, to walk into a store and buy a high powered military grade assault style weapon, whose bullets cause catastrophic damage to human tissue and organs which makes survival of a wound to the head or torso unlikely, and are capable of indiscriminately killing as many people as the amount of time it takes to pull the trigger? Frankly I don't think any private citizen should be allowed to own a weapon such as this, after all, lawn darts are illegal. I understand that neither automobiles nor lawn darts are specifically mentioned in the Constitution, (neither are assault weapons), but if you are against things like registering guns and gun owners, what part of the words "well regulated", the first words of the Second Amendment, don't you understand?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think for a second that even if the courts eventually override the Second Amendment, (which will never happen), would we see an end to these mass shootings. They have sadly become imbedded into of our nation's fabric, and anyone who wants to carry one out badly enough, will find a way. Besides, thanks to our supremely misguided and foolish interpretation of the Second Amendment, there are currently more guns than people in this country, and even if guns were banned, there would still be plenty of them around. 

And as long as we continue to permit these weapons of mass destruction to be manufactured and sold on the open market, there will be more and more of them available to young men (and I suppose women too) with a chip on their shoulder, to kill us and our loved ones. 

As I mentioned before in this space, there are many issues that need to be addressed if we intend to seriously tackle the issue of mass shootings which are an epidemic in this country and nowhere else. Mental health certainly is a big one, as is improving school security. 

But those are complicated and expensive fixes that are often fraught with peril and questionable results. Were it not for the obstinacy of a minority of people in this country, the pure greed of gun manufacturers and sellers, and the cowardice of the politicians they have in their deep pockets, the same cannot be said of controlling guns. As we saw at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last week, "good guys with guns" even if they are fully trained professional police officers, are sometimes no match for a guy toting a military grade weapon who is prepared to die. 

Getting rid of these weapons, or at least taking them out of the hands of people who have no business with them in the first place, is the very least we could do to honor the lives of those we lost this month and in the years since Bill Clinton's ban on assault style weapons was allowed to expire by Congress in 2004.

We could and should do something about this but unfortunately we won't. If nothing was done after Sandy Hook, Connecticut where even younger children and more of them, at Christmastime no less, were slaughtered, sadly nothing will be done now. 

This is a war as well, and unfortunately the good guys are losing. 

I wasn't going to go into all of that, after all, what's the use? So I'll stop my rant for now. Instead I thought on this Memorial Day, I'd devote this post to the victims of guns in our country, especially to those who died so tragically in Buffalo and Uvalde this month. 

Here are their names, their ages, and links to part of their stories:

Nevaeh Bravo, 10 Go Fund Me page for the family of Neveh Bravo.

 

Jackie Cazares, 9 Texas Shooting Victim Weeks Away from 10th Birthday, Father Says.

Celestine Chaney, 65 What the Racist Massacre in Buffalo Stole From One Family.

Roberta A. Drury, 32 Buffalo victim Roberta Drury, 32, is remembered as a great help to her family.

Makenna Lee Elrod, 10 Fundraiser for April Elrod by Allison McCullough : Our Precious Angel Makenna Lee Elrod.

Jose Flores, 10 Family remembers 10-year-old José Flores Jr. who was killed in the Texas elementary school shooting.

Eliana “Ellie” Garcia, 9 Eliana "Ellie" Garcia.

Irma Garcia, 49, 'Joe died of a broken heart': Husband of beloved teacher killed in Texas shooting dies two days later - CNN

Uziyah Garcia, 10, 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, "the sweetest little boy," identified as one of the victims killed at Texas school.

Amerie Jo Garza, 10 , Girl Scouts Honor 10-Year-Old Uvalde Victim Who Died Calling 911

Jayce Luevanos, 10 'They're so young:' A grandfather in Uvalde, Texas, mourns 10-year old Jayce Luevanos.

Xavier Lopez, 10, 10-year-old school shooting victim received an honor roll certificate just hours before he was killed.

Andre Mackniel, 53 Andre Mackniel recalled as someone who 'loved his family'.

Katherine Massey, 72 Katherine Massey, Buffalo Shooting Victim, Wrote Passionately About Gun Control.

Tess Marie Mata, 10 How Tess Mata's family came to learn she'd been slain in Uvalde.

Maranda Mathis, 11 School shooting victim Maranda Mathis, 11 described as a "bright" and "spunky" girl.

Eva Mireles, 44, Texas teacher Eva Mireles died shielding students: daughter.

Margus D. Morrison, 52  Margus Morrison, a 'jokester' who loved to smile, celebrated at service.

Heyward Patterson, 67 Heyward Patterson, Buffalo shooting victim, a man of worship.

Alithia Ramirez, 10, Uvalde victim Alithia Ramirez remembered for her kind heart.

Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10, Jackie Cazares and Annabell Rodriguez were cousins and best friends. They died together in the Texas elementary school shooting.

Maite Rodriguez, 10 Mother of child killed in Texas: "Her favorite color was green".

Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, 10, 'There Is an Emptiness.' Uvalde Shooting Victim Lexi Rubio's Great-Grandfather Remembers Her 10 Years of Life.

Aaron Salter, 55 Aaron Salter Jr. remembered for heroic action in Buffalo mass shooting.

Layla Salazar, 10  Shooting Victim’s Family Moved to Uvalde for ‘a Safer Place for Her’ – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth.

Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10, Jailah Silguero Didn’t Want to Go to Robb Elementary School on Tuesday—She Died Beside Cousin Jayce Luevanos.

Geraldine Talley, 62 Celebrating the life of Geraldine Chapman Talley

Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10 Softball, Baseball Teams Honor Little Leaguers Killed in Uvalde Shooting.

Rojelio Torres, 10, 10-year-old shooting victim Rojelio Torres was an "intelligent, hardworking and helpful person," his aunt says.

Ruth Whitfield, 86  Oldest Buffalo massacre victim Ruth Whitfield honored at funeral service.

Pearl Young, 76  Remembering the victims: Pearl Young

We remember the dead on this day but should be ever mindful of the survivors who had to fight for their lives while personally witnessing their neighbors, friends, family members, colleagues and classmates and teachers being mercilessly slaughtered. 

We especially remember and honor those whom the dead left behind, their parents and grandparents, their children and grandchildren, and all who loved them. 

Then there is the collateral damage, much of it only to be revealed in the future when we least expect it.

And finally there is our troubled nation turning against itself, becoming less United every day.

If an act of home-grown genocide and nineteen dead fourth graders and their teachers can't bring us together as a nation, I'm afraid nothing will. 

This Memorial Day as much as anything, I'm mourning the loss of my country.

But all is not lost, I'm sending thoughts and prayers.