Editor:

Another mass shooting in Florida expectantly accuses guns, the NRA and Trump for the carnage. Since this latest shooting is being tried in the court of public opinion, let’s lay out some facts and statistics for the jury. Each year in America, some 31,000 people die from firearms, two-thirds of which are suicides. More than 16,000 teens die in America each year for various reasons. Out of that number, 2,500 are from car accidents. Just less than 1,000 die from drug overdoses. More than 4,300 die from excessive alcoholic drinking. Approximately 1,300 die from guns.

Out of that 1,300, 53 percent are from homicides, 38 percent are suicides and 6 percent are from accidents with guns. School-related homicides with guns make up less than 2 percent. Out of all homicides using guns, 82 percent are male. In crunching some of these numbers, perhaps there is more of a testosterone problem among young males over that of a gun problem.

As horrific as school shootings are, that gun-death ratio comes up last in overall teen deaths. For every grieving parent wondering why school shootings are on the increase, many more parents are wondering why teens are committing suicide by a far greater number. Angry parents are on TV ranting at Trump to do something to make schools safer. What if a comprehensive study concluded violent computer games are what really needs to be banned? If the solution was smart and easy, the answer would have been in place already. What’s being done about the 5,000 teens a year who die from drugs and alcohol? Where is the solution to stem that ever-rising tide of deaths?

This Parkland shooter had red flags waving all over. Since 2010, police had been to see him 39 times from various complaints. The FBI had been forewarned this man was threatening a school shooting. “See something/say something” advice didn’t work here by the highest office in law enforcement. This shooter had done everything short of having a neon hat saying he was about to commit mass murder, and it was all ignored.

To be expected, the media is on a crusade to ban assault-style weapons. The conversation on this topic is so juvenile, it’s comparable to having fifth-graders talking about air combat maneuvers with F-18 Hornets. There isn’t one person in a thousand intelligent enough to have in-depth conversations on guns, in general, and fewer still on assault rifles, in particular. The 90 mass shootings the U.S. had since 1982 could have been carried out with equal-or-greater effect with ordinary hunting (shotgun) type weapons.

Any Google search will spill out the following … So few people are killed by assault-style weapons in the U.S. each year that there was no “assault rifle” stats heading. Thus, deaths by that particular weapon were lumped under “rifles,” comprising less than 1 percent of all annual U.S. homicides involving guns. There are 1.3 million assault rifles sold every year, and an estimate of 20-30 million are presently in private hands. Considering this volume, assault-style weapons have a remarkable record as the least-used weapon involved in homicides, dwarfed, by far, by blunt force or knife deaths. Pistols top out all deaths by firearms at 80 percent.

It’s easy to collect data on the number of people killed by all guns each year and build up a national anti-gun sentiment by the liberal media and Democrats propelled by their anti-gun agenda. Another figure to tabulate and one never brought up is how many lives do guns save each year? Once again, Google spits out that guns save 2.5 million lives in America every year … vastly more lives than they take. An estimate of 440,000 people die from medical malpractice each year in the U.S. Still, there is no talk about banning doctors and hospitals. Like guns, their good far outweighs their bad.

Karl Schmidt

Farmville