A recent glance at Columbian.com served as a small reminder of the need to address gun violence, illuminating a scourge that plagues not only our community but the entire nation.
“Man wounded, downtown Vancouver residents lose power in two drive-by shootings,” a headline at the top of the website read Monday afternoon. The article was about a pair of incidents Saturday, and the power loss was the result of a bullet hitting a Clark Public Utilities conduit.
Next to that article was another headline, “Man injured in apparent drug deal gone wrong.” One person was arrested after allegedly firing a gun and creating debris that injured a man in a Sunday incident.
In one sense, the fact that these stories warrant headlines is encouraging. When we reach the point that shootings in our city are so common that they are not news, then we truly will be lost. Shootings remain rare, and yet they are far too frequent for our residents to feel comfortable or for us to be confident that gun violence is something that only happens elsewhere.
The United States’ obsession with guns is epidemic, leading to one of the highest rates of firearms deaths among developed nations. According to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey, there are nearly 400 million citizen-owned guns in the United States — about 120 for every 100 people. And whether by country or by state, the rates of gun deaths track with the rate of firearms.
In 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 864 firearms deaths in Washington. The rate of 10.9 deaths per 100,000 in population ranked as the 12th-lowest in the nation. By comparison, Mississippi had 28.6 gun deaths per 100,000 residents, the highest in the country, followed by Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri and Alabama. While Washington’s rate of gun violence is preferable to that in many states, it remains too high.
And it is growing worse. Whether because of pandemic stress or economic uncertainty or the unraveling of the social fabric that ties us together, gun violence is increasing throughout the country. That fact is one reason President Joe Biden wisely stressed during last week’s State of the Union address: “The answer is not to defund the police. It’s to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with resources and training. Resources and training they need to protect their communities.”
But additional measures are needed. The Legislature last week approved a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines, sending the bill to Gov. Jay Inslee. The move does not prohibit the possession of those magazines, but only the sale of them. It will not prevent gun violence, but it will lessen the possibility of high-casualty mass shootings.
In recent years, lawmakers or voters also have approved background checks on all gun sales, increasing the minimum age for some gun purchases, and requirements regarding the safe storage of weapons.
None of these measures will end gun violence, but they represent a sensible approach to dealing with what should be regarded as a public-health crisis. State Sen. Marko Liias, who sponsored the ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines, said: “For too long we have accepted gun violence as an inevitable part of life. . . . This is a commonsense policy that will save lives, and I am grateful for all of the years of advocacy that led to its passage.”
As we see frequently in our own community, addressing gun violence is long overdue.
