Whether it’s due to anger or fear, gun experts worry America is becoming a “shoot-first” country.
A 16-year-old Kansas City honors student was shot in the head by a complete stranger last week for ringing the wrong doorbell while trying to pick up his younger brothers from a sleepover.
Two days later, a 20-year-old woman was shot dead by a homeowner after she and her friends pulled into the wrong driveway in Hebron, upstate New York.
And on Tuesday, two Texas cheerleaders were struck by gunfire after one of the young women opened the door to a car she mistook for her own.
According to Josh Horwitz, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, unless Americans are willing to get serious about modern-day gun culture, the senseless shooting of innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time will become the new norm.
“We have a shoot-first society,” he said. “We have a culture of fear.”
Horwitz says the proliferation of firearms, concealed weapons permits and “stand your ground” laws contributes to increased gun violence. He also believes the conservative media’s relentlessly profitable fear-mongering — a recipe of formulaic race-baiting and histrionic reporting on crime — leads to paranoia and killing.
“They’re saying ‘the bad guys are after us,’ and that plays into this whole thing,” Horwitz explained.
When 84-year-old Andrew Lester shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl last week in Kansas City, the white homeowner claimed he was “scared to death” when he saw the Black teenager on his porch.
One of his grandsons told CNN the shooter was radicalized by right-wing media and, in his opinion, “holds racist tendencies and beliefs.” Prosecutors have also said there was a racial component to the shooting.
It’s unclear if Lester — accused of firing through a storm door — will argue he was standing his ground. There’s no indication he was in danger.
“If you have an opportunity to spare a life, you don’t have to,” Horwitz laments.
He said the trifecta of aforementioned recent shootings is no coincidence, but rather the “predictable consequences” of increased gun sales.
“More guns in more hands equal more death,” according to Horwitz.
Horwitz seemingly agrees with Gun Violence Archive director Mark Bryant — whose Kentucky-based organization tracks national gun violence — when he says firearm training reduces needless shootings.
According to Bryant, the shocking incidents in Kansas City, upstate New York and Texas could be coincidental. But he sees possible similarities.
“People are just angry,” Bryant told the Daily News. “So you have anger and access to a gun. That makes the outcome so much harder, so much faster.”
When a gunman is already upset about something, and someone disrupts their routine, they’re more likely to open fire, Bryant said. He too believes its a “mathematical fact” that more guns equal more shootings.
So what are people angry about? Just “listen to talk radio,” Bryant suggested.
Bryant, 68, says he has owned guns for at least 50 years, and while he doesn’t think gun control measures will stop senseless killings, he does believe they can lessen the frequency.
He agrees with Horwitz’s theory that fear may be a factor in shootings like the one in Kansas City last week. But Bryant has a hard time believing a man who shoots unarmed cheerleaders did so fearing for his life. Same goes for the New York man who opened fire on a 20-year-old woman in his driveway.
“That was just a jerk,” he said of the latter.
According to Bryant, gun training helps gun owners make better decisions. When his wife’s car was recently being broken into, Bryant said he dialed 911 rather than grabbing a 9mm and going “out to say hi.”
Bryant said his father taught him at a young age to pull a gun on someone only if he intends to take a life. That lesson stuck.
Anger may not go away so long as the internet, AM radio and cable news keep people in information “echo chambers,” according to Bryant. But he thinks firearm discipline can be the difference between an eye-roll and a shooting.
“You’ve got gun owners who are hardcore liberals, you have gun owners who are hardcore conservatives, and you have a whole bunch of people — you don’t know what they are because they don’t yap,” he said. “They own guns. It’s not their life. It’s not their cult. They have one, or two... or three, or four.”
Bryant said that his guns mostly collect dust.
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