Needed conversation

Gun violence needs to be examined as a public health problem. It should be evidence-based, and solutions should be supported by facts. One group of politicians would tell us that it’s mostly a “mental health problem.” Another group of politicians would have us believe it’s caused by “inflammatory rhetoric by political leaders.”

The facts, the stubborn facts, are that mental health problems and inflammatory rhetoric exist in many countries in the world, but none have the levels of gun violence that we have here. Not even close. Certainly, mental health problems and inflammatory political rhetoric contribute to the problem, but they’re not the base cause.

What is the evidence? Irrefutably, gun violence is directly related to the number of guns held by civilians. There’s no country in the world that comes close to the United States in terms of number of civilian guns and resultant gun violence. It’s simple. More guns equal more gun violence of all kinds—suicides, accidental shootings, family disputes, gang warfare, mass murders.

The number of guns in our country is directly related to our interpretation of “Second Amendment rights,” which is that everyone has a “right” to own as many guns of whatever type they want. The founding fathers and Judge Antonin Scalia, in his 2008 landmark decision about the Second Amendment, stated the “right to bear arms” has to do with protection of the community and the individual. It would appear our current interpretation of the Second Amendment is failing to provide that protection.

This is the conversation we should be having.

GEORGE BENJAMIN

Siloam Springs