Guns Leading Killer of Kids: With MSU Massacre, U.S. Averages More Than One Mass Shooting a Day

This is yet another horrific symptom of layer upon layer of unaddressed trauma ― trauma which stretches back through time since the earliest days of colonialism, slavery, genocide of Indigenous peoples, and an economic system which has always been dependent upon the oppression, suffering, and subjugation of other human beings. The longer the United States evades, denies, minimizes, deflects, distracts from the truth of the shadow side of our country, the greater the strength of what has long, long been causing preventable and extreme suffering and injustice, poverty and greed, racism and inequality, ignorance and inequity, destruction and death, and all of the many forms of violence and trauma. This must change. It must. We have a long ways to go to actually live up to and embody the values we process to have as a nation. ― Molly

The Michigan State University community is in mourning after a mass shooting on campus Monday in which a gunman killed three students and severely wounded five more. In response to Monday’s killings, both Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and President Joe Biden have called for tighter gun laws to restrict the purchase of weapons. Monday’s bloodshed came just a day before the fifth anniversary of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, highlighting the ever-present risk of gun violence in the lives of young people in the United States. “Young people now experience gun violence multiple times throughout our lives,” says gun violence prevention advocate Robert Schentrup, whose sister Carmen was killed in the 2018 Parkland massacre. We also speak with pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, who teaches at Michigan State and says gun violence must be seen as a public health crisis. “The number one killer of children is guns,” says Dr. Hanna-Attisha.

DR. MONA HANNA-ATTISHA: Yeah, so, the number one killer of children is guns. It exceeds motor vehicle accidents. It exceeds cancer. It exceeds anything I treat in my clinic. The number one killer of children is guns. We have more guns than we have people in this country. And it is impacting our children in so many ways. Any mass shooting triggers trauma for our children. I have two little kids. And when they have drills, they come home on edge. You know, it is a community-level trauma.

Please go here for the full original interview and transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/2/15/msu_parkland_shootings