Fort Lauderdale airport shooter Esteban Santiago did everything by the book, right up to the time he opened fire on people in an airport baggage claim. Everything. He had the permit, he checked the gun, and the weapon was registered.
And yet... "Everything was legal until he began shooting..."
Igor Volsky and Mark Glaze, writing for Guns Down, an advocacy group for stronger and better gun laws, in today's USAToday
Tragedies like this underscore the innate danger of all 265 million guns in circulation. America is comparable to other nations when it comes to mental illness rates and crime rates, but we lead the world in several deeply troubling categories: We have more guns in the U.S. than adults. We use our many guns to kill each other at a rate that’s 25 times higher than people in any other high-income country in the world. And our gun-related suicide rate is eight times higher than in other high-income nations.
Furthermore, our guns are rarely used for self-defense.
Guns exist for the sole purpose of killing, and they’ll continue to devastate our families and communities until we dramatically reduce their availability and decrease the number of guns in circulation. It’s no coincidence that states with higher rates of gun ownership also face higher rates of gun violence.
Legally obtained or not, by individuals who are qualified to own them or not, guns are the problem.
Yes, they are. And the sooner we start figuring that out, the better. The sooner we defund the NRA, the better. They have too much power and pose too great a danger to us. Terrorists aren't the problem. Guns are.
