For every American death in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are 43 deaths in the U.S. from gun violence

Transcript of a speech by Paul Helmke, Chair of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, delivered May 1 at the National Press Club Luncheon:

Gun violence: What Are We Going To Do About It?

by Paul Helmke

Thank you very much for inviting me here today.

Thirty-two people were murdered at Virginia Tech.

That number, in and of itself, was not extraordinary. Every day in our country, on average, about 32 people are murdered with guns. When you add suicides and unintentional shootings, the death toll from guns in America each day is about 80 people. And for every death there are another two or three seriously injured.

Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while about 3,700 of our soldiers have died overseas, over 162,000 of our citizens have died from gunfire here at home. The stories of these daily deaths are generally relegated to the inside pages of the local newspaper, if they are covered at all, and almost no one takes the time to think about how these lives could have been saved.

The stories come too frequently, and their volume brings a sense of inevitability and hopelessness about the toll of guns in America.

The gun epidemic is our monthly 9-11, our weekly Katrina, a continuing Iraq war on our streets and in our schools. It is our daily Virginia Tech. Yet we don’t focus on this threat until we get a Virginia Tech.

And then we allow our political leaders to slowly and deliberately delay, until we are all busy with other challenges. And then our leaders let us down, content that we’re no longer paying attention.

(The rest is here.)