Killing Time in the USA - October 9 Roundup

We keep an eye on the killings that occur in the US resulting from gunshots. Every week, we try to shed a little sobering thought on the issue.

See the following excerpt from Brian Cloughley, writing at The Smirking Chimp:

- prh, ed.

... The Washington Post notes that 991 people were killed by US police in 2015, and that so far in 2016 a further 715 have died. A typical incident took place on September 27, when, according to CNN, an unarmed black man who the police said “not acting like himself” was tasered and shot by two policemen.

The 100 unarmed black people killed by US police shooters in 2015 are a tiny proportion of those who died by gunshots in the United States that year. The BBC recorded that “13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured.” The Archive further states that up to September 28 this year there had been 10,757 deaths and 22,372 injuries by gunshots.

The world at large refrains from comment on US internal affairs, and it is not often that the US mainstream media deviates from the mantra of the “greatest country that has ever been created on the face of the earth for all of history”, but it is interesting to reflect on some facts presented by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times when he recorded that, amongst other ghastly revelations, that “more Americans die in gun homicides and suicides every six months [emphasis added] than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.” ...

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