“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”

At a time when building walls is a controversial issue (think Trump), Americans might have forgotten about the other types of walls they have built. I think we should listen to the advice Robert Frost offers in the above poem, and reflect. Among these “walls” Americans have built, is one for discussing gun control; nothing quite kills the conversation at a cocktail party like bringing up gun control. As a student at Iowa State University, even in an academic setting, most students have little interest in discussing the issue. But we should. If you don’t believe me, consider the fact that: as of 2013, on average, there has been one school shooting a week [everytownresearch.org].

However, the focus of this paper is a type of gun violence called a “mass shooting” which is not exclusive to school shootings. And I have gathered my data from cases which can be found in an archive on the internet [gunviolencearchive.org]. In this public archive, the term mass shooting refers to a case where “. . . 4+ victims [are] injured or killed excluding the subject/suspect/perpetrator, [in] one location.” In this paper, I shall discuss some of the under-reported aspects of gun violence in America; the appropriate reaction to mass shootings; and I shall leave you with my thoughts on what to do about the issue. In doing so, I hope to tear down the walls we have when it comes to discussing sensible gun laws.

These publicly available records on mass shootings include the following data: the number of people injured and deceased in each of them, the exact location (in America), the date it occurred, the age of the victims, and very little information about the perpetrator (although there is usually always a link to a source which has more information). And, of course, we don’t want to incentivize murder with fame in Iowa. So, that’s not the focus, either; I wrote this paper to show you what was hiding in the data on mass shootings.

If you do the math, you should find that out of the 312 victims of mass shootings (and counting) of 2017, 75% of them were only injured; however, each time people died, it was a considerable number of victims. There have been, on average, 3 people killed in each of these deadly mass shootings this year. (Technically it is 2.9 fatalities per deadly mass shooting.)

This can be compared to a car accident where 3 people in the car died and one or more was injured. And I invite you to imagine what would happen if this kind of car “accident” occurred all too often for it to be an accident (25% of all accidents). Do you think the rich, car manufacturing companies would take responsibility, trying to lower that number and improve their brand? I know I do. And although this issue is not specific to Iowa, I think it is worth taking some prophylaxis here at home.

I think most Iowans can agree that gun control, in general, is an important and controversial topic, especially in the light of events such as the Columbine and Sandy Hook school shootings. I bet we can all remember our former president, Barack Obama, crying (off script) at the podium during his speech in response to the Sandy Hook shooting. Yes, he cried, but he also spoke candidly about assault weapons. That was the appropriate reaction. It took me a whole 2 minutes after thinking about the numbers, while just reading through these reports—I began crying, too! I cried because of how young and innocent some of these victims are (were).

As far as I can tell, we still need to talk about preventing mass shootings, but especially the deadly ones. And that seems doable, right? Only 25% of them are deadly! I hope you take this data into consideration when you hear more mainstream arguments concerning gun control, but long before a shooter enters your school, or this issue hits closer to home. (I hope never.) I hope we can get a grip on Iowa’s current gun laws before then.

It should not be very hard for us to make sense of this data when you consider how easy it is for local terrorists and other criminals to get assault weapons such as AR-style rifles and AK-47 semi-automatic rifles, things which are not made for self-defense—things designed for killing people effectively. Why is it that our reaction to this issue is not proportional to its detriment on society? In fact, why don’t we care for a change?