- M. Matsemela-Ali Odom
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U.S. Militarism Leads to Gun Violence: The Teachings of the Late Michael Zinzun
From Draft NOtices, July - September 2019
-- M. Matsemela-Ali Odom, Committee Against Police Brutality, San Diego
The United States of America has a serious gun problem. That gun problem is deeply embedded in the nation’s history of slavery, settler colonialism, and imperialism. The deepening economic crises of the past five decades have hastened this problem. In the popular media, this is seen in the evidence of increased mass shootings.
There are multiple definitions of mass shootings. One definition defines them as events where four or more people are killed in an event not formally linked to a crime or terrorist organization. Another definition describes mass shootings as events where four or more people are shot. Using the former definition, there have been nearly 200 mass shootings in the last 50 years. Using the latter definition, there have been over 2,000 mass shootings in the last six years -- one per day. While devastating, those numbers pale in comparison to the overall numbers of people killed by gun violence. Since 1968, 1.3 million people have been shot to death in the U.S. That is twice the rate of other forms of death and 25 times the rate of gun deaths in all other Western nations.
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg built case law for equal rights for women under the 14th Amendment, she helped change the way we think about gender and equality in every aspect of our lives. She has been successful in many cases that have enhanced the quality of life for women, men and children in spite of great resistance. Protection under the law and cultural practices have changed incrementally, opening up opportunities for all genders that were unthinkable a generation ago.
