It is easy to blame gun owners and the gun lobby for another shooting at a high school football game. We are averaging one such shooting per-week lately. Back in the 1970s quite a few Americans got really tired of endless gun violence but the gun lobby blocked the adoption of responsible gun laws in all but a few cities.

Since 1970 the gun murder rate in NYC is down by about 90% since they greatly-restricted handgun ownership. Everyone thinks that Chicago’s gun murder rate is high but really it is only half the average gun murder rate in Detroit over the last 50 years, even though Detroit’s average population over the last 50 years is less than 40% of that of Chicago. Even the murder rate in Youngstown, OH, population 64,000 people, is 50% higher than that in Chicago.

Back in 1975 Saigon had a murder rate in-excess of 250/100,000. The North Vietnamese greatly restricted the ownership of handguns and military weaponry but still allowed the private ownership of hunting rifles and shotguns. Gun owners had to take gun safety training and be licensed, and limits were set on the purchase of ammo too.

We always hear how if guns are made illegal only criminals will have guns. Nobody wants to make all guns illegal but the gun lobby doesn’t see it that way. Someday wouldn’t it be nice to move beyond an average of 100 gun fatalities every weekend in the US? If we could just beyond the need for lethal violence.

Five years ago the murder rate in Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon) had fallen to just 2/3rds that of NYC. Both NYC and Ho Chi Mihn City have populations almost double that of Alabama. Over the last 5 years NYC has averaged about 315 murders per-year. Ho Chi Mihn City (population 8.7 million) is only averaging about 200 murders annually and guns are only the 4th leading cause of murder there today.

How will ever-higher rates of gun ownership ever stop gun violence? In Detroit in the 1970s the gun ownership rate was high but the city was averaging 700 murders per-year with only 1.2 million people, about 1/8th the population of Alabama. One place many criminals get guns is by stealing them from good gun owners in burglaries and car thefts. That is why owning more and more guns doesn’t stop more and more gun violence.

The city of London, England has a population of 8.9 million people. Handgun ownership there is severely-restricted as is the ownership of military weaponry but residents there can own hunting rifles and shotguns. Over the last 5 years London has averaged 120 murders per-year, or about 1/5th of the number of murders that the State of Alabama averages annually with just over half the population that London has.

Yes, it is easy to blame gun violence at a high school football game on 5 decades of irresponsible gun ownership policy. Notice that I didn’t say anything about the color or ethnicity of anyone. Just think how many more Americans would still be alive today had we been brave-enough to take a far more-responsible course on ending gun violence 50 years ago? A half-million people, and quite likely that would also mean close to a half-million less people in prison too.