(NewsNation) — Debate has raged for the past decade about how to prevent gun violence in America, leaving Americans divided over two central theories: the proliferation of guns and the mental health crisis.
The conversation was part of a NewsNation town hall Monday night focused on crime in America, where mayors and law enforcement personnel fielded questions about what they’re doing to protect their communities.
Toledo, Ohio Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz criticized Republicans who suggest gun violence is solely a mental health problem and ignore an oversaturation of guns.
“We’re the only country in this history of the world where there are more guns than people,” the Democratic mayor said.
Indeed, the U.S. gun ownership rate is the highest in the world, at roughly 120 guns per 100 people, according to a 2018 report from the Small Arms Survey. The Geneva-based organization estimates that U.S. gun owners possess 393.3 million weapons, more than the country’s population of 330 million.
The gun ownership rate is more than double that of second-ranked Yemen (52.8 per 100), and the total number of guns is more than five times that of India, which has 71.1 million guns among its 1.4 billion people.
“There’s one country, only one country, that has so fundamentally given up on doing anything … it shouldn’t be going out on a limb to try to take AR-15s away from the mentally ill and terrorists, but yet our U.S. Senate won’t do it and our U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t seem to care,” Kapszukiewicz said. “Disagreements that used to end in black eyes or bloody lips on the playground now end in homicides.”
“I’m all in on mental health, but I don’t like when” politicians suggest it’s the only problem, he added.
Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Lamb countered that guns are “inanimate objects” that are being used by people exhibiting bad behavior.
“Guns in the wrong hands are bad; guns in the right hands are good,” Lamb said. “We have far more fatalities (by car accidents) than we do gun crime.”
Calls for reform have grown louder in the wake of tragedies at public malls, workplaces and schools, including Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
In the five years since the shooting there, the Trump administration issued a ban on “bump stocks,” while Congress in 2022 passed the most sweeping federal legislation in decades.
Gun reform advocates have also pushed for red flag laws, which allow judges to issue orders that prevent gun ownership, at least temporarily, from people who have shown signs of violent intent.
Lamb suggested solutions including more school resource officers and limiting the number of entries at schools.
“We do a far better job of protecting our airports and planes than we do our children in our schools, and I think that’s where we’ve deviated as a society,” Lamb said. “What we need to do is just do a better job of getting to our children that we notice are starting to have mental health (problems).”