According to Gun Violence Archive there have been more than 200 mass shootings in 2023. A mass shooting is defined as having four or more people killed or injured. An average of fifty people a day are killed in the United States by a gun, surpassing Australia, Canada, England and many other countries. There have been more than 600 mass shootings per year in the last three years, averaging nearly two a day.
How many guns are there in America? A Swiss-based research project called Small Arms Survey, estimates in 2018 there were approximately 390 MILLION guns in circulation! That was five years ago! How many more are in households now? And how many more are military grade assault weapons?
Recently, there were two more mass shootings in Texas, five people were killed at a private home, eight more at a shopping mall near Dallas. Here in the “Live free or Die” state, four people were shot on Saturday, May 13 around 4:50 pm. They were attending a college graduation party in Manchester. There were about thirty people in attendance, which included babies and young children. Most of the people were outdoors when a vehicle drove up to the house. Out jumped two people, masked and wearing hoodies, who began to shoot at the attendees. Luckily, all four victims are expected to recover.
Yes, we might be THISCLOSE to becoming another Texas, or Ohio, or Kentucky, or Louisiana, or Florida, or . . . the list goes on. But it doesn’t have to, at least not here in New Hampshire. We need to show a lot of these NH House members and Senators the door in ’24 for not voting in gun violence prevention laws that would keep us safe not only in schools, but at the grocery store, a shopping mall, a church, a party, any neighborhood in any city or town.
Three years ago, Gov. Sununu vetoed the red-flag bill, which would have permitted concerned relatives or police to petition a court to TEMPORARILY remove guns from a person threatening to harm him/herself or others. The suicide rate in NH is rising faster than anywhere else, this red-flag law could have been utilized in cases of extreme risk. To justify the veto, Sununu claimed he would continue to work on mental health issues and suicide prevention, but not at the expense of a gun owner’s constitutional rights. Your right to life clearly means nothing.
This past April at the NRA Leadership Forum in Indianapolis, Indiana, Sununu gleefully claimed to the audience, “Yeah, well they gave me a red-flag law and I gave them a red veto pen”, which elicited applause. Sununu needs to be shown the door in ’24.
A point to remember, “Shooters do not act alone. They are assisted by fifty Senators, 210 House members and the NRA.”