This CBS story is a great example of misrepresentations and bias. Yet, it is true the gun violence was up in 2020. Nor the article never mentions the total collapse of Portland and Seattle as civilized cities. Nor, does it tell about how Chicago is in total chaos with gun violence—while having the nation’s toughest gun laws. Then it says this could be solved if we had gun registration. Obviously the author of the story has as many problems as Joe Biden. We HAVE gun registration. Try buying a gun without an FBI background check and a ten day wait—of course criminals do not register their guns and can get one in a few minutes. Think gun registration stopped the San Jose massacre? It was Federal agencies that refused to tell local agencies about the crazy killer of workers.
Maybe we should be more like Texas than Chicago. Chicago has the toughest gun laws. Texas has laws that allow people to people to carry guns in public without a permit. In Texas when crazies enter an office, restaurant or workplace, the victims can shoot back. Texas saves lives. Chicago is a shooting gallery for criminal target practice.
By Elizabeth Elkind, CBS News 5/24/21
A record number of gun sales along with the disruption to normal life by the coronavirus pandemic have contributed to a 25% surge in homicides and non-suicide-related shootings in 2020, according to a gun control advocacy group.
“What we know is the year will be remembered for two conflicting, compounding public health crises — COVID-19 and gun violence,” said Nick Suplina, the managing director for law and policy of Everytown for Gun Safety.
A report released earlier this month from the group found there were nearly 4,000 more firearm deaths and more than 9,000 firearm-related injuries in 2020 than 2019.
Speaking to CBSN on Monday, Suplina said the pandemic “exacerbated so many of the causes of gun violence.”
“Stress levels were high, opportunities for employment were lower,” he said.
The pandemic’s economic impact on gun violence was particularly felt in Black communities because, according to Everytown’s findings, “they are overrepresented in jobs that cannot be done remotely—jobs that needed to be cut as the pandemic worsened.”
“This kind of economic distress has a significant bearing on all forms of gun violence, as research shows that neighborhoods with high unemployment or high poverty rates have higher rates of gun homicide,” the group states.
Suplina also added that spikes in gun violence are common over the summer months, when the academic year is over — which last year was also severely affected by COVID-19.
“School was out months early this year. Summer youth employment was down. So we saw a number of the factors that typically contribute to increases in gun violence over a much longer period of time.”
He added that 2020 also saw “record increases in gun sales.”
An estimated 22 million guns were purchased in 2020 — a 64% increase over the previous year, according to Everytown’s report.
“We know that some of those sales are stretching our background check system thin. Many of them are not undergoing a background check at all,” Suplina said.
Those guns are also crossing state lines. After studying five years of data trends involving guns used in crimes, one troubling conclusion of the group’s research released Monday is nearly one-third of traced guns were brought across state lines before being used in a crime.
Three-quarters of the firearms used in a crime that came from other states were from states that do not require background checks on all gun sales.
With more guns being purchased and trafficked than ever, Suplina is calling for a nationwide mandate on background checks, “so that gun traffickers and criminals don’t go shopping across state lines.”
“We know that action needs to happen at the federal level — I think Democrats and Republicans in the Senate understand that too,” Suplina said. “We believe that there are negotiations occurring in Congress, that are occurring in good faith.”
“Not only is it popular, but it is critically necessary.”
