By Calling Out Community, Posted December 3, 2015.   Updated  December 8, 2015

According to the Washington Post, Wednesday’s horrific mass shooting in the Inland Regional Center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, California has been deemed the worst terrorist attack on American soil since September 11, 2011.

The child and adult victims of the Sandy Hill Elementary School shooting are mourned in 2012

The 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was more horrific, killing 20 children and 6 adults, but was not deemed to be a terrorist attack – though certainly it was  terrorizing to the general public.

A “mass shooting” is defined by the Guardian newspaper as “four or more people shot in one incident.” In speaking about this specific attack, President Barack Obama said:

“We should never think that this is something that just happens in the ordinary course of events”.

The Post doesn’t agree (and neither do we at the Calling Out Community), reporting the California shooting was the 2nd such mass shooting somewhere in the United States that day, the 3rd one that week…

and the 335th mass shooting within the United States in 2015, as charted below:

Even more horrific – the Guardian newspaper went back over the last 3 years, and found that there have been 1,052 mass shootings (with 4 or more victims, alive or dead) in the United States, as defined above, over the last 1,066 days.  That is almost exactly one mass shooting per day, every day, for the last three years.

But even the above statistics do not give a  complete picture of the horrific casualties caused by American gun violence.  According to 2013 data supplied by the US Centre for Disease Control, there were 33,636 gun-related deaths in the United States that year – an average of 92 deaths per day.  It is assumed gun-related injuries would also be extremely high.

In contrast, during the three-year Korean War (June 25, 1950 – July 27, 1953), a sobering 33,651 American soldiers were killed in action.

Stop and think about that for a moment:  Gun-related deaths in the United States in 2013 alone were virtually equivalent in number to all American soldiers killed during the entire three-year Korean War. 

Yet another statistic that I know the left-wing, gun-control friendly crowd out there don’t want you to know – the United States has been plagued with nearly 3 times more mass shootings in the last seven years, during the term of President Barack Obama alone, than under the combined terms of Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan – a total of 28 years:

• Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) – saw 11 mass shootings with 101 fatalities
• George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) – saw 12 mass shootings with 94 fatalities
• Bill Clinton (1993-2001) – saw 23 mass shootings with 141 fatalities
• George W. Bush (2001-2009) – saw 20 mass shootings with 158 fatalities
• Barack H. Obama (2009-2015 – 7th Year) – saw 162 mass shootings with 864 fatalities.  And he still has a year to go!

Is it also a coincidence that gun-related deaths during Democratic President Clinton’s 8 year terms were equivalent to the number seen during both Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s 12 years combined, previous to him?

Now, immediately upon letting this unbelievable picture of America’s violent heart sink in, one might be tempted to jump on the gun control bandwagon.  After all, less guns on the street would make us safer, right?

 That was the New York Times theory anyway, as they broke with tradition on Saturday, December 5 and ran an editorial on the front page of the paper, calling for more gun control – as we would expect from a very radically-left paper.  It was the first time since 1920 that they have put an editorial on the cover page.

Soon after, Nick Baumann, Senior Enterprise Editor of the Huffington Post, wrote a response piece – The Big Problem With The New York Times’ Gun Editorial – publically criticizing the Times:

On Saturday, The New York Times printed a front-page editorial – its first since 1920 – calling for greater restrictions on gun ownership in the United States. You can read the piece here, but be warned: It’s deeply flawed. (emphasis mine)

What was his issue with it?  The same issue people have used to criticized the gun control movement for decades:

Criminals do not register guns, do not buy guns legally, do not safely store and transport guns, and will often use them with absolutely no concern for the safety of anyone of any age around them.

Then, in what seemed to be a shocking twist, the Washington Post, considered another left-wing mouthpiece, also came out swinging against the New York Times article.  Or so it seemed. But they weren’t in any way attacking the position on gun control.  No, they thought the paper was foolish in using the front page of the paper for an editorial that basically “preached to the choir”:

…The Times has (at least temporarily) knocked down a wall by placing an editorial in a spot normally reserved for news. That does not mean the paper’s political reporters will suddenly abandon all sense of fairness as they cover candidates who staunchly back gun rights. But it does give those candidates new cause for suspicion — a cause they will almost certainly exploit on the campaign trail.

Whew, that was a relief – for a minute there, we thought that maybe they were going to taken the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. seriously.  Nah, just more stupid rhetoric on both sides.  The United States does not have a gun issue – guns don’t kill people.  People kill people, and America has an anger management issue.

The country seems to be angrier under Democratic Presidents – this conservative is not surprised.  Democrats are often seen as gun takers – and memberships at groups like the National Rifle Association have skyrocketed during Democratic Presidential terms.

Perhaps the most dramatic tell of all can be seen in the dramatic rise in gunmaker Smith & Wesson stocks, soaring 733% since 2012 alone.

It’s a good time to make guns.  It’s not a good time to be in the crosshairs of one.  America needs serious help – and gun control won’t make any difference.  Take away American guns – and we’ll soon need a steak knife registry as well.  The problem isn’t inanimate objects – it’s the power they provide to unstable, angry people holding them.  Until America learns how to deal with that, the violence will continue.