Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

EDITORIAL:

Residents must lead the way on action against gun violence

April 1 — Marcus Thomas Jr., age 3 1/2 weeks, is shot and killed when a gunman sprays his parents’ car with bullets outside a North Las Vegas apartment building.

April 25 — A 4-month-old is struck in the hand by a bullet fired through the wall of an apartment near the Las Vegas Strip.

June 2 — A 2-year-old is injured at an apartment complex near UNLV after an argument between two men leads to gunfire.

In Las Vegas and across the U.S., children are paying in blood for the nation’s refusal to control firearms and reduce gun violence.

A study last month in the journal Pediatrics showed that guns were the third-leading cause of death among children, ahead of heart disease, asthma and pneumonia and behind only motor-vehicle accidents and injury-related deaths. Nearly 1,300 people under 18 are killed by guns each year, and 5,790 are treated for gunshots, the study found, meaning that guns are responsible for more than 1 in 10 deaths of children and adolescents in the U.S.

The slaughter of children is a national disgrace, one for which the National Rifle Association and its horde of gun-rights extremists deserve the bulk of the blame.

By treating any attempt to deal with gun violence like an existential threat to Americans’ freedom, the gun lobby has helped create a glut of firearms while attacking measures designed to help keep guns out of the wrong hands.

As a result, guns are everywhere — estimates say there are more guns than Americans in this country — and are shamefully easy to obtain.

That’s led to levels of gun violence and firearms accidents that are off-the-charts compared with those of other wealthy nations. According to another frequently cited study based on statistics from 2010, 91 percent of the firearms-related deaths of children in the world’s 23 richest countries that year occurred in the U.S.

Even more alarming, the study in Pediatrics showed that Nevada had a higher-than-average rate of both homicides and suicides by firearm.

Enough.

Although Congress is so terrified of the NRA lobby that it won’t take action — this is the same group that rejected several reasonable gun-control proposals after the horror at Sandy Hook Elementary School — Nevadans proved last year that they had the political will to effect change when they approved a ballot measure calling for expanded background checks.

Unfortunately, the state’s leaders haven’t pressed forward. Not only have they failed to find a workaround for a requirement for the FBI to conduct the checks, something it generally doesn’t do for states, but they largely ignored gun violence during the 2017 legislative session.

Meanwhile, an average of 15.5 kids nationwide are being sent to the hospital each day with gunshot wounds. Another 3.5, on average, are being sent to the morgue.

It’s time to wake up the state’s leaders. We’d encourage readers to contact officials and make sure they’re aware of the study.

Contact Nevada’s leaders

Gov. Brian Sandoval:

• Web email form: http://gov.nv.gov/Contact/Email-the-Governor/

• Las Vegas office: 702-486-2500

Attorney General Adam Laxalt:

• Email address: [email protected]

• Las Vegas office: 702-486-3420

Find your legislator:

mapserve1.leg.state.nv.us/whoru

https://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/

Note: The Nevada Legislature’s mapping site, the first listing above, was inoperative as of press time due to disrupted network connections. The second mapping site is from Open States, an independently operated organization that aggregates information from state and federal government.

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