10/30/23

 Monday, October 30, 2023

In bed at 10:30, up at 6:09, tired, 6(?) ps during the night, IC.  30°, high of 36°😒, freeze warning till 10:00, sunny & windy day ahead.  AQI=24, wind NW ar 13 mph, 8-15/24. The wind chill is 20°😨  Sunrise at &:23, sunset at 5:46, 10+22.  Wintery temps week ahead.   

Really nasty CPP most of the morning.  I had to return to bed for a while.   Better in the afternoon but wiped out, but . . .

Treadmill  23:43 and 0.50

Our Dystopia.  From this morning's JSOnline, "Gun Deaths in Wis"

In fact, homicides, accidents and shootings deemed justified put together do not account for even one-third of all gunshot deaths in Wisconsin, according to state data.

Suicide is the missing piece. 

For every 100 fatal shootings in Wisconsin, on average 71 deaths are suicides, 25 are homicides, two are police shootings, one is deemed an accident and the balance are undetermined, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis of state health data.

In the past 18 years, the number of gun deaths in the state has been steadily rising. 

Last year, more than 800 people died from gunshot wounds, a 95% rate increase when adjusted for population growth since 2004, the analysis found.

The increase was driven by a well-documented surge in homicides, especially in Milwaukee during the pandemic, but also by a less-publicized increase in suicides. Last year for the first time, gun suicides resulted in more than 500 deaths in Wisconsin, preliminary state data show.

 When homicides, accidents and police shootings are the measurement, Milwaukee County tops the list.

But when gun suicides are included, the ranking changes and the state’s rural counties rise to the forefront of firearms deaths.

In Milwaukee County, the homicide vs. suicide picture is the opposite of state averages.

There were nearly 3,000 gun deaths over 20 years of data provided by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office. Homicides accounted for 70% of the total, while suicides accounted for 28%. Milwaukee had a low suicide rate compared to other counties; just six counties had a lower rate, state data shows.

In Milwaukee, for every one gun homicide, there are another four or five non-fatal shootings, according to the Homicide Review Commission. 

In a well-documented phenomenon, Americans bought 60 million guns between 2020 and 2022, with an estimated 5 million of those sold to first-time buyers, research shows. Gun sales essentially doubled in those months.

Surveys indicate there are now an estimated 400 million guns in the U.S. owned by roughly one-third of the population. There is at least one gun in an estimated 45% of homes, a figure that fluctuates somewhat over time and was slightly higher in the 1980s.

I'm wondering about that statistic of roughly 1/3rd of the U.S. population owning guns owning an estimated 400,000,000 guns.  Is that 1/3rd of the adult population or of the entire population, including children?  Is it 1/3rd of households or of raw population?  How many of our neighbors have loaded lethal weapons in their homes, or on them?

Why all the suicides and why largely concentrated in rural areas?  I know each case is unique but I suspect some nasty truths are lurking in the numbers, more than just the unavailability of mental health care providers.  What social, cultural, and economic conditions contribute to these "deaths of despair" in Wisconsin and in America?

This day last year, an entry in this journal:

War 

News today that because of drone attacks on Russian warships in the Black Sea, Russia is pulling out of the UN-brokered agreement permitting Ukrainian grain to be shipped out to the world.  So Russia retaliated for a bomb blowing up a strategic bridge between Crimea and Russia by raining down cruise missiles, bombs, and rockets on civilian targets throughout Ukraine and retaliates for an attack on warships by contributing to world hunger, especially in poor nations, i.e., punishing more non-combatant civilians, always claiming that their inhumane crimes are the fault not of their own decisions, but because of the West.  Also news of Russian forces blanketing battle areas with white phosphorus, "Willie Peter" as Americans called it when they used it in Vietnam, supposedly for illumination purposes only.  It burns through everything and everyone it lands on, from the skin down to the bone.  An American soldier who had fought in Ukraine reported that soldiers who were sprayed with it committed suicide rather than live with the burns.