A Sickness Unto Death — Guns

By Howard BloomThe man who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, John Hinckley Jr, is reappearing in headlines after 41 years. Why? A federal judge plans to set him free on June 15th.

Hinckley’s reappearance is a reminder. It’s a reminder that America suffers from a pandemic of gun addiction. There are 330 million Americans and 390 million American guns.

Guns don’t mix with human nature. Put guns together with our insanities and you have a lethal mix. And we are all just a wee bit insane.

But the lethal mix of guns and human nature also explodes in people who are totally sane. We don’t yet know if the Uvalde, Texas, shooter who killed 19 children and two teachers on May 24th was sane. There are hints that he was delusional. But it appears as if the Buffalo, New York, shooter who killed ten was perfectly sane. Sane but infected with a poisonous ideology.

So whether guns are in the hands of sane Americans or insane Americans, guns in the hands of American citizens increases the number of murders in America. Massively. Look, England had 504 murders in 2021. Japan had 874. We had over 19,000. Yes, we had as many murders in a year as England has in…