
The widespread availability of guns is the reason for the shooting and killing of children and adults in Chicago, Boston, Ferguson, New York City and in other major cities. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence reports that « in 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour. [In addition], 73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds in 2010. » (7) And the toll of gun violence on young people is truly heartbreaking with almost 30,000 young people killed in a 10-year period, which amounts « to nearly 3,000 kids shot to death in a typical year. »(8) According to a Carnegie-Knight News21 program investigation,For every US soldier killed in Afghanistan during 11 years of war, at least 13 children were shot and killed in the United States. More than 450 kids didn’t make it to kindergarten. Another 2,700 or more were killed by a firearm before they could sit behind the wheel of a car. Every day, on average, seven children were shot dead. A News21 investigation of child and youth deaths in the United States between 2002 and 2012 found that at least 28,000 children and teens 19-years-old and younger were killed with guns. Teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 made up over two-thirds of all youth gun deaths in the United States. (9)
Source: Murder, Incorporated: Guns and the Growing Culture of Violence in the US, by Henry A. Giroux « Algérie Résistance
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