America's Gun Obsession Continues to Wreak Carnage on America

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“England is a cup of tea./ France a wheel of ripened brie./ Greece a short, squat olive tree./ America is a gun,” wrote British poet Brian Bilston in 2016. On Sept. 4, his grim verses were appropriate when Winder, not far from Athens, became the latest American city to feel the tragedy of gunfire.The alleged gunman, 14 years old, shot and killed two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School and wounded nine others.

The young shooter was arrested and will be tried as an adult. Months before the murders in Winder, he had been questioned by authorities about threatening online posts, but the boy’s father nonetheless purchased a lethal AR-15 rifle for his son as a Christmas present last year. Now the father himself is in jail awaiting trial on charges relating to the deaths and injuries caused by the son’s Christmas present. Times were simpler and safer for all when dear old dad gave sonny boy an electric train for Christmas. Today’s active shooter drills for school children are somehow even more poignant than the “duck and cover” nuclear bomb drills practiced in America’s schools during the fearful Cold War of the 1950s.

The eyes of the nation were focused on Winder in the aftermath of the tragedy. Newspapers across the nation gave front-page coverage to the school shooting, and the sad event dominated evening television news coverage here in Georgia and across America. Winder is a charming Georgia town whose citizens responded with compassion when Winder joined a grim and ever-growing roster of towns, cities and rural hamlets that have been raked by American gunfire—places with names like Columbine, Newtown, Uvalde, Parkland, Buffalo and so many more.

The tragedies continue almost every day, but lessons remain unlearned. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said after the shootings in Winder, “Today is not the day for politics or policy.” Actually, politics and policy are exactly what is needed today in a state that has some of the most permissive gun laws in America, and where such pro-gun Republican politicians as Mike Collins and Athens gun merchant Andrew Clyde represent this area of Georgia in Congress. Common-sense measures like requiring safe storage of weapons are ignored in Georgia. Guns often fall into the hands of criminals who steal them from unlocked vehicles, but careless Georgia gun owners who leave their guns unsecured in their cars never have to worry about losing their gun permits or their drivers’ licenses.

Last year a report by the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association said that there were more than 4,000 mass shootings in the United States between 2014–2022. The FBI defines mass shootings as gun murders of four or more people during a single crime, and the murders in Winder on Sept. 4 fit that definition. Such crimes are nothing new in a nation where the cowboy with his six-shooter and the hard-boiled detective with his Magnum are part of our national mythology, and movies with titles like “Gun Crazy,” “Gun Fever,” “Gun Fury” and “Gun Glory” brought blazing gunfire to the silver screen.

On Sept. 6, 1949, a World War II combat veteran named Howard Unruh killed 13 people on what was called his “walk of death” through his Camden, NJ neighborhood. His weapon of choice was a German Luger pistol of the type favored by Nazi soldiers in the war. When apprehended by police, an angry cop asked Unruh if he was “a psycho.” Unruh replied, “I’m no psycho. I have a good mind.” The state of New Jersey disagreed. Unruh was confined to a mental institution until his death at age 88 in 2009.

On Aug. 1, 1966, gunman Charles Whitman killed 15 people from his sniper’s perch in a clock tower high above Austin, TX. Whitman’s sampler of death-dealing weapons included rifles, pistols and a shotgun. He was killed by police after a 90-minute siege.

Right here in Athens, on Apr. 25, 2009, three members of the local Town & Gown theater group were killed by gunman George Zinkham, a university professor who was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The carnage continues. “America is a gun.”

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