Article author:
Associated Press
Michael Tarm And Brin Anderson
The Associated Press, Alabama — A national reality wonder in the terrible mass shootings in the United States Murder rates are often seen more clearly in death, which never makes national news.
In Chicago this weekend. On Monday, rooftop shooters fired at a crowd gathered for an Independence Day parade on the outskirts of Chicago, killing at least seven people and injuring about 30. Just before midnight on Monday, the city between 6 pm on Friday. Eight of them died.
Most gun violence in the United States is associated with seemingly ordinary conflicts where someone goes out of control and aims at a gun. Victims and shooters often know each other. They are colleagues, acquaintances, brothers and neighbors. They are killed in rural areas, small towns and crowded cities.
They are the fathers of four 51-year-old small towns who are suffering from addiction and are said to have been shot by an acquaintance and abandoned in an Alabama forest near a place called chicken. Some people like David Guess. Foot mountain.
His killings received little attention outside the countryside of northern Alabama, where Guess grew up and later worked as a mechanic and truck driver. But his death smashed many lives.
For the Guess family, "it was absolutely devastating," said his brother Daniel Guess. Their 72-year-old father, Larry, now rarely leaves home and often does not get out of bed.
Daniel not only lost his brother in the shooting.
"I lost my dad, too," he said. "It's killing my father."
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Compared to many developed countries, America is a murderer. The United Nations estimates that the homicide rate in the United States is three times that of Canada, five times that of France, and 26 times that of Japan. According to some studies, there are more guns in America today than humans.
But the reality is more complicated when Americans often see the streets of the country as a more dangerous mass slaughter scene than ever before.
While genocide occupies most of the attention, more than half of the approximately 45,000 firearm deaths in the United States each year are due to suicide. Mass shootings (defined as four or more dead, excluding shooters) have killed 85 to 175 people each year in the last decade.
In addition, there was a surge in US gun killings in 2020, but recent statistics show that gun killings are declining in many cities this year.
More complex: Data on firearm killings are terribly incomplete, with more than 60% of national law enforcement agencies reporting crime statistics to the FBI's national database.
"It's devastating because of the lack of shooting data to understand the tendency of gun violence," said Jeff Asher, a data analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics. I am saying. The company is trying to avoid some by creating its own crime database. Of those shortcomings. "This is a government issue, but citizens are forced to develop workarounds." To get a clearer picture of what is happening.
The FBI collects national criminal data, but participation is voluntary at the federal level and thousands of law enforcement agencies do not send any or partial information. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention carefully counts homicides, but data on each death is limited.
Therefore, politicians say whether AR-15 style rifles lead to more killings, or extended magazines carrying more bullets lead to more deaths. No one is really sure when discussing whether. For example, according to the 2020 CDC statistics, authorities know what types of weapons were used in only 24% of firearm deaths. On the other hand, both sides of the gun control debate can assemble what facts are there to suit their purpose.
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People are afraid all over the United States.
According to a 2019 survey by the American Psychological Association, nearly one-third can't go anywhere without worrying about being victims of mass shootings. Almost a quarter say they changed their lifestyles to avoid mass shootings, sometimes avoiding public events, malls and cinemas.
But are they afraid of doing something wrong?
"The press gave people the impression that things are different today. We have never actually experienced these (mass murders) before, but we. Has. Now more common, but still very rare, "said the population, along with AP Communications and USA Today, a crime at Northeastern University that has been tracking genocide since 2006. Said scholar James Alan Fox.
He believes that the news coverage of hyperventilation contributed to the horror, confusing the overwhelming live coverage of the shootings with the mass shootings that injured multiple people. There is a report that it is doing. He said that only 5% of mass shootings ended with more than four deaths.
Fox does not downplay the fear of mass slaughter and the pain it causes to victims, families and communities. But he is worried that American reactions (eg, active shooting training and schools like bunkers) will create massive horror and wasted resources.
They also give people the wrong impression of how Americans are dead. According to him, most murders are killing one person and another.
And one thing is certain: I haven't heard of most of the shooting victims.
They are people like O'Neill Anderson, the owner of a love-cut hairdresser in Miami Gardens, Florida. There is a Leslie Baylor. His husband allegedly shot her repeatedly at her home in central Pennsylvania in April and then reported to her police. She was dead when they arrived. Eighteen-year-old Jailyn Logan-Bledso was shot dead two weeks ago at a gas station in the suburbs of Chicago by two men who stole her car and disappeared.
On June 26, Atlanta police say Brittany Macon, a 26-year-old employee of a subway sandwich shop, was shot dead when a customer fired angry. .. He injured another employee. According to police, customers were angry that the sandwich had too much mayonnaise.
Murder cases are often associated with big cities like Chicago. According to police, the majority of murders are related to gang rivalry. However, Chicago's homicide rate is high, with nearly 800 people killed in 2.7 million cities last year, with a lower per capita homicide rate than in many smaller cities.
Gun death is far from just a big city phenomenon. According to the CDC, about 30% of gun deaths in 2020 occurred in small cities and rural areas of the country. Half were in big cities and their suburbs, and about 20 percent were in medium-sized cities and counties.
In Lawrence County, Alabama, where Guess was killed, two others were killed in March of the same week. Sheriff Sanders told reporters in March that this is more than the average number of people killed in a year in a county of 33,000.
Sanders could not explain the murder surge. One is that his husband shot his wife during a quarrel and then claimed his life. The other is accused of beating her mother with ashtrays throughout her house because her son kicked out the dog and refused to meet her girlfriend.
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David Gest's death began with a debate over auto parts.
Guess was suffering from addiction, but was clean for more than a month before his death, his brother Daniel said. He adopted three of his four children and was once thinking of becoming a preacher. For the past few weeks he has lived in a camper park parked next to his father's mobile home.
He said his brother "carry a shirt on his back."
On March 5, court documents indicate that David Guess drove a dusty county road near the town of Hillsboro to the man's house he knew. Later that night, another man, Charles Alan Kiel, arrived. He claimed that Guess owe $ 1,500 to the catalytic converter. Catalytic converters are valuable as scrap metal due to the expensive metal inside.
Kiel, 43, beat Guess with his 17-year-old son and another man, and police say someone hit his head with a pipe. Police say Kiel shot him with a pistol when Guess tried to escape. Five people have been charged, but only Kiel is facing murder.
Two days later, the delivery truck driver found that David Guess remained near a forest road two miles from where he was killed. A burnt black rubber ring was noted where police said the keel and several accomplices put tires on their bodies and set them on fire.
Sit at a tattered wooden dining table and remember David's phone call to him around midnight on March 5th, tears in Larry Ges's eyes. David asked his father to bring him $ 1,500 right away.
"Otherwise he will kill me," David said. Larry replied that he couldn't make money so quickly.
The last word he heard from his son before Rhein died was David Guess's begging someone nearby, "Don't hit me again with that pipe."
