How to Stop the Killing

The United States has had the industrial world's highest homicide rate for some 170 years. Mass murderers target Americans once every two weeks on average, in assaults that span from robberies to mass killing crises like the massacres in Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Aurora and Sandy Hook, according to USA Today. Compared to the United Kingdom's 5.9%, the homicide by firearm rate calculated by per 100,000 citizens, the United States had a much higher homicide by firearm rate in 2008 at 67% per 100,000 according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The United States' gun violence has made the streets of Urban America a more deadly killing field for young African-Americans than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been for U.S. troops. Annually about 7,000 African-Americans are murdered, more than nine times out of 10 by other African-Americans, 88% of whom know each other. But America does not have a black on black violence problem, we have an all-inclusive killing problem. The reason is plain to see considering 12,000 Americans a year, or 33 a day, die from gun violence, 16 being children, and an estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault each year. Violence is violence. Whether it is gun violence or domestic violence, it should not be tolerated.