Newly released statistics by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention point to a sharp rise in 2020 gun homicides that disproportionately affected the nation’s poorest areas and Black communities — affirming what St. Louisans were able to see with their own eyes that year. It might also come as no surprise that Missouri, with some of the nation’s most firearm-friendly laws, ranked fourth in the country for the rate of gun homicides in 2020.
As long as the morally bankrupt National Rifle Association continues to dominate the campaign funding that bends national and state lawmakers — particularly Republicans — to its will, the nation’s gun laws are unlikely to change anytime soon. Those lawmakers approve the measures loosening gun restrictions and restraining efforts to keep firearms out of criminals’ hands, but they dump the burden on local law enforcers to deal with the bloody aftermath.
“Young persons, males, and Black persons consistently have the highest firearm homicide rates, and these groups experienced the largest increases in 2020,” a new CDC report says. “These increases represent the widening of long-standing disparities in firearm homicide rates.” Suicide continues to rank as the biggest contributor to gun death-rate statistics.
The mere fact that federal health authorities are able to collect and report such gun data is notable, even if the statistics aren’t surprising. Since 1996, federal law has prohibited devoting federal funds for research that might promote gun control. The law effectively blocked the CDC and National Institutes of Health from gathering data on gun-related health issues. Recent laws have helped loosen those restrictions.
Missouri ranked fourth in the nation with 23.9 deaths per 100,000 population. States with some of the most restrictive gun laws — such as California, New York and Connecticut — ranked lowest in the country for gun deaths per capita. Nearly all of the 13 states with the highest per capita gun-death rates have GOP-controlled legislative and executive branches.
Many of those states, including Missouri, also are preparing so-called “pro-life” trigger laws should the U.S. Supreme Court reverse its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights. Logic would suggest that any lawmaker truly devoted to protecting human life would also extend that philosophy to the non-embryonic population. But no such luck.
Poor Black families are statistically the ones most likely to experience disproportionately adverse effects from loose gun laws and tighter abortion restrictions. By forcing poor women to carry unintended pregnancies to term and raise children they cannot afford, lawmakers help perpetuate an intergenerational chain of poverty. Looser gun laws help ensure those children grow up in an environment of violence and tragedy.
Those same communities also tend to be among the least active in terms of political mobilization and voter participation. That has to change if conservatives are ever to feel the consequences of the oppressive laws they keep imposing on others.
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