This commentary is by Paul Manganiello, M.D., emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, co-medical director of the Good Neighbor Health Clinic in White River Junction, and president of the GunSenseVT Education Fund. He lives in Norwich.
With the latest school shooting, at the Robb Elementary school, in Uvalde, Texas, so soon after the Tops grocery store mass shooting, in Buffalo, New York, it is hard not to despair over our current situation as it relates to gun violence not only in the nation overall, but also here in our own state of Vermont.
The recent May 24 article in The Washington Post, by Ashley Parker, Tyler Pager, and Colby Itkowitz, sadly outlined the ineptness of our legislators to adequately address the public health crisis we are facing because of firearm violence. The article catalogs the failure to act, beginning with the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.
GunSenseVT was organized as a result of that tragedy, out of the anger and frustration so many of us felt with the horrific deaths of those 26 first-graders along with six of the school’s staff. Their deaths have somehow become normalized and accepted as just part of living in the United States.
Since that time, there continues to be moral outrage with the growing list of firearm deaths and injuries, but as a country we lack the political will to do anything about it. We have been conditioned to be passive, feeling defeated, impotent, and unable to choose our own destiny. We are held captive to a minority of American citizens, who wrongly hold the Second Amendment to be absolute.
For too long, residents have bought into the myth that Vermont is a “safe haven” from firearm violence. The “almost” school shooting at Fair Haven high school dispelled that. Although many Vermont residents feel that gun violence really happens only to inner-city Blacks, they are ignoring the fact that majority of Vermont deaths by suicide are with a firearm.
We live in communities that are very similar to the more than 3,500 mass shootings that have occurred since Newtown. We can’t assume that every time our children or we go to school, a church, synagogue, temple, nightclub, cinema, Wal-Mart and or a grocery store, we will safely return home to our family and friends.
We need to confront those who simplistically point to the perpetrator as being a bad actor, or blaming his state of mind. We need to face up to the fact that this is a unique America problem. The incidence of mental illness in other comparably advanced countries is not less than here in the States. What is uniquely different in the U.S. is the number of firearms circulating in our streets, and their inherent lethality.
In 2020, more than 45,000 Americans had died either by homicide or suicide — by firearm. Contrast this with the number of U.S. fatalities for the duration of the war in Afghanistan. From 2001 to 2021, there were 2,461 fatalities, including civilians. During the Iraq War, from 2003 to 2018, there were 4,550 service members killed and 3,793 military contractors killed. We are literally living in a “war zone” of our own creation.
Firearms continue to be purchased in vast quantities. This has not resulted in our citizens and residents being any safer; it has only resulted in more firearm deaths, robberies and intimidations.
It is ironic that the same weapon used in the Newtown massacre, the Bushmaster AR-15, is the semiautomatic, which was used by the Buffalo white supremacist. He just modified it to have a larger magazine. This is not progress. We need to take a different path forward. As attributed to Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Gun owners and non-gun owners need to agree that human life is precious and we need to protect all of our neighbors from gun violence. We need to reduce access to lethal means for those individuals who are a danger to either themselves or others. This is not about gun control; this is about gun safety.
