I love this time of year!

It can be festive, joyous, sometimes quiet and peaceful, and a moment when many of us step back from our routine lives and concentrate on family and friends. I also enjoy the annual look back over the year that was — “best of” lists, memories of the notables who left us, retrospectives that make us say “aha!,” and personal tours of what happened to us and ours over the past 12 months.

It is also a time when we look ahead to the year to come, wondering what it will bring us individually and collectively. We Americans are fortunate in so many ways and outliers in others. One outlier status that impacts our nation negatively, that destroys families and communities, and divides us as a people is our gun problem.

As we move into 2023, Americans have more guns than human beings, the only nation on God’s green earth with that status. The Swiss-based Small Arms Survey reports that there are 120 guns for every 100 Americans. Statista reports that North Carolina ranks 8th in the United States for the number of registered firearms, and no one knows, of course, how many illegal weapons are in North Carolina or the United States.

Equally, if not more alarming, is the fact that guns are now the number 1 cause of death for our children, infants to age 19, more than accidents, illnesses and congenital issues. Canada is a distant second, whose gun death rate for the same age group is nine times lower than ours. The Kaiser Foundation recently reported that the U.S. accounts for 97% of gun-related child deaths, and that no other wealthy nation has guns in the top four causes of child deaths. It is certainly fair to say that accidents happen. It is also fair to say the more guns we have, the more gun accidents we will have.

Mass shootings and deaths in schools, malls and other public places grab headlines at home and internationally — other nations wonder with horror what is happening in the United States — but most American shootings do not make news.

The majority are actually suicides made impulsively easy by gun availability. Others are homicides, also impulsively easy because of gun availability. Still others are tragic accidents, like the death of a toddler in nearby Benson earlier this year. The boy found a loaded gun in his father’s truck and shot himself.
The random nature of many of these deaths came close to home recently when someone near and dear to me stood in his kitchen in a quiet neighborhood about six o’clock one afternoon when a bullet apparently fired from a nearby apartment complex blasted through his living room wall and shattered onto his floor. Police were called. Evidence was taken. We all knew, though, that there is virtually no chance the shooter will ever be identified, much less prosecuted for his/her careless endangerment.

Unlike most other nations, our Constitution expressly protects gun ownership, and many law abiding and responsible Americans, including my own sons, are hunters and enjoy shooting sports. But it is also true federal and state gun laws are lax, and state gun laws are a hodgepodge. My sincere hope for our nation in the coming year is that our elected leaders will thoughtfully consider, without hysteria, more thorough background checks, “red flag” laws for people who are dangers to themselves and/or others, and restrictions on assault weapons designed for mass killings.

Wishing us all a happy, healthy and safe 2023.