By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS—Late on a Thursday night, someone went to the FedEx facility near Indianapolis International Airport.

The man had a gun.

He started shooting.

Bodies started to fall.

People began to flee and hide.

After a few minutes, the shooter killed himself.

There’s a lot we still don’t know as I write this.

But there are some things we do know.

We know that the shooter was a troubled young man. We know that police had confiscated a gun from once already, but—because this is Indiana, where our leaders want everyone, no matter how dangerous, to have a deadly weapon—he had no trouble getting his hands on another firearm.

We know that at least eight innocent people are dead. We know that at least another seven were wounded and likely will bear scars—physical, psychological or both—for the rest of their lives. We know that the people who lost loved ones will grieve for years. We know that even those who walked away physically unscathed—and those who love them—will remember the moments and hours of fear accompanying the shooting until they draw their last breaths.

Most of all, we know that this happened here.

In our state.

In our community.

In our home.

Worse, we know that this was almost inevitable. It had happened in so many other states, so many other communities, so many other homes.

It almost seems as if it was our turn.

After all, there have been five other mass shootings in the United States in as many weeks. Last year, we Americans racked up the worst gun violence numbers our nation has seen in at least two decades.

The National Rifle Association and the firearms lobby—who have been writing and controlling America’s gun laws and policies for more than a generation—keep insisting that guns cannot be part of the problem. They say that the more guns we have, the safer we all will be.

The numbers make that argument a sick joke.

There are roughly 330 million Americans. They own somewhere between 350 million and 500 million guns. (It is hard to know anything close to a precise figure on the number of guns in the United States because the NRA has been so determined to prevent registration and thus tracking of weapon sales and ownership.)

The United States has about 4.5% of the world’s population. Our people own more than 50% of the world’s privately owned guns.

If the gun lobby’s argument made any sense at all, we would be the safest nation on earth—10 times over, in fact.

Instead, we live in one of the most dangerous places in the world. We Americans are 20 times—that’s 2,000%—more likely to be killed by a gun than citizens of other industrialized nations.

And those horrifying numbers are getting worse.

The number of mass shootings declined in 2020—largely because the pandemic ruled out mass gatherings and kept people out of the workplace.

But, overall, the incidence of gun violence increased. Guns killed 40,000 people last year.

Now that the coronavirus pandemic may be receding and people are re-entering something resembling normal life, the mass shootings have come back again.

Like a different kind of pandemic.

A self-inflicted one.

The people defending our lax and self-destructive gun laws and policies say the aftermath of a tragedy such as the one at the FedEx facility is not the time to talk about changing those laws and policies. They say this while arguing that guns can’t be part of the problem and doing their best to shout down anyone who questions or disagrees with them.

But, if not now, then when?

And don’t the grief, the tears and the fears experienced by those who lost loved ones or waited in dread and terror while the gun blasted away buy them the right to speak?

After all, we know that this much happened.

We know that a man with a gun killed at least eight of our neighbors and fellow citizens.

Right here.

In our state.

In our community.

In our home.

FOOTNOTE:  John Krull is the director of Franklin Collee’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

The City-County Observer posted this article without bias or editing.