Imagine an America where instead of 30K killed with a gun, we had 151. Admittedly, that's not Japan good, but a 98% reduction in gun related deaths would be very impressive.
In the 10 years from 2000 through 2009, more than 298,000 people died from gunshots in the U.S., about 30,000 people a year.
http://www.forbes.com/...
Imagine an America where you knew the ONLY time you'd be afraid of gun violence, was if a crazy maniac was targeting a large group you randomly happened to be in.
151 dead, instead of about 10K murdered in a year, and 50K murdered with guns in 4 years, we'd have about 1500 or less a decade.
Imagine.
Now the flipside is that, if all we care about as a nation is mass shootings, and if we manage to stop ALL OF THEM, we're still accepting 48,500 murdered in four years with guns; heck we're not even lowering the total gun homicide rate by 5%. 55 would require lowering the gun murder rate by almost 450 a year.
151 killed in mass shootings in 2012, that's not even 2% of the total of 2011.
Which would you prefer, 151 or 30K?
Which are you demanding from your elected reps?
Will I cheer if we manage to stop all mass shootings? Yes, but it will be a bit hollow as I know we've probably blown our once in a decade chance to do something meaningful about guns.