Day-to-day violence is lost amid national gun debate
LARGO, Md. — Florena Carter’s shattered life didn’t make national news.
Her son was killed on his 28th birthday in 2009. Carter’s brother pulled the trigger. Her father shot himself soon afterward.
The horrifying family tragedy became one more private story in America’s plague of gun violence. That year, 9,146 other people nationwide lost their lives in shootings.
The vast majority died in the type of daily gun violence that does not grab national headlines in the same way as the December massacre of 20 young children and six teachers at an elementary school in Connecticut, or the mass shooting last July in a Colorado movie theater that killed 12 people and wounded 70.
Those attacks became the focus of a bitter national debate over guns, which culminated with the defeat in the U.S. Senate of several proposals backed by President Barack Obama to tighten gun control laws, including banning militarystyle assault weapons and expanding background checks to stop criminals and the mentally ill from buying firearms.
Often lost in America’s divisive gun control politics are the stories of people whose urban communities suffer the most from shootings every day. Although violent crime has been declining in the United States, it still far outstrips the rate of other developed countries. FBI figures show 8,583 people were killed by guns in 2011, the last year for which numbers were available. That is nearly 24 people a day. The figure is far higher when counting the number of people who kill themselves with guns. The federal Centers for Disease Control listed 19,392 gun suicides in the United States in 2010, the latest figures available.
Among the hard-hit places is Prince George’s County, the Washington, D.C., suburb where Stefan Carter was killed by his uncle 31⁄ years ago. The county in the state of Maryland has long suffered under a reputation for violent crime, even though the U.S. Census Bureau lists it as the wealthiest majority AfricanAmerican county in the country.
Support for gun control tends to run high in places like Prince George’s County. In other parts of the country, particularly states with large rural populations, people say firearms are essential for hunting and personal safety, a right that has been protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution for more than 200 years.
As the American frontier expanded westward, gun ownership became culturally entrenched, and for many citizens, it remains a way of life.
Florena Carter, a 24-year veteran police officer, has concerns about the easy access to handguns for civilians. She is convinced that simply owning a gun made her brother more likely to use it.
Her son and her brother had been out celebrating Stefan’s birthday. When they were heading home, she said, her son tried to stop her brother from driving because the older man was intoxicated. They fought and Carter’s brother pulled a handgun and shot Stefan.
Carter was at a loss to explain how the dispute escalated. The two men had been close; neither was prone to violence, Carter said. “All I can think is that it was the alcohol and that he had a gun,” she said.
Maryland is among several states that passed tougher gun control measures in response to the Connecticut school shooting, even as the push for stricter federal laws died in the Senate. Among them was Colorado, a state with a proud frontier tradition where gun ownership is common.
Carter dabbed away tears as she recalled the early December morning 31⁄ years ago when the phone rang with the news of her son’s death.
In the passing weeks, Carter said she noticed that her father appeared increasingly depressed. She figured it was a natural reaction to the tragedy — until he killed himself.
Her brother will be out of prison in about two years, serving a sentence shortened because he accepted a plea deal. Carter doesn’t know if she can forgive him.
“I love my brother. I’ve known him longer than my son. I changed his diapers,” she said. But when he’s released, “I just can’t see us having a relationship.”