Press Release
What American Children and their Parents Fear Most is American Children with Guns, Not Islam

The U.S. suffered two murder attacks involving armed children in the first week of October. At a school in the state of Oregon, 9 people were killed and 7 injured, and in the state of Tennessee an 11-year-old boy shot an 8-year-old girl from his school in an argument over a puppy. The violence we have seen in the U.S. lies in the following observations and assertions:

First, the massacres in the states of Tennessee and Oregon are only the latest in a long string of similarly mindless murders. The shocking truth is that gun violence has caused 559 child deaths or injuries in the U.S. since the beginning of the year, and this statistic is only for child victims aged 11 or under! In the year leading up to last week's Oregon massacre there have been 45 shootings at U.S. schools, and in the U.S. as a whole, 294 gun shootings occurred. In total, 9,956 people were killed in the U.S. in the first 9 months of this year.

In the wake of another school massacre where 20 people were killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama addressed the nation calling for "meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this," and he complained that Americans, "as a nation, we have endured far too many of these tragedies in the last few years," and yet his words have made no difference: there have been 142 shooting incidents at U.S. schools since the Sandy Hook massacre and clearly the bloodshed has no end.

Second, to put the killings into perspective, let us compare the number of U.S. gun deaths with terrorism, which has been raised as the number one priority of the U.S. since the 11th September, 2001, attack on World Trade Towers in New York. Despite the huge loss of lives as a result during that year, terrorism accounted for one fifth of the homicides. In the years that followed until 2011, the gun homicide rate remained steady while the deaths due to terrorism were consistently much lower. In 2011, for example, 17 U.S. citizens were killed by terrorism, whereas 11,101 were killed in homicides according to U.S. Justice Department figures.

Third, to give an even clearer idea how dangerous it is to live in the U.S. today. The most costly war on a human level in U.S. history was its Civil War (525,000 deaths) followed by the Second World War (405,399 deaths) and yet this is still only a fraction of those killed in the U.S. by guns outside of war. The BBC wrote that "so many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country".

Fourth, the false sanctification of Freedom as an absolute value and as a criterion for action has paralysed the U.S. into protecting the supposed right of any American citizen to legally own and carry guns despite the fact that about 100,000 Americans being killed or injured by these guns every year, and even the children are killing and being killed by these guns. The National Rifle Association at the head of America's gun lobby, which calls for free access to all forms of deadly firepower, receives millions of dollars each year from American gun manufacturers. This indicates the deadly presence of corruption in democracy itself, as the rich and powerful manipulate the political process to deliver legislation that benefits themselves to the exclusion of others.

Fifth, these killings are driven by empty rage, and these horrible massacres at schools and other places in the U.S. are considered an indication that the ideology, which America sanctifies and tries to force upon the whole world, is a hollow ideology unable to provide tranquillity to humanity and unable to provide a higher purpose. The U.S. is diverting all its energy now in the fight against Islam and scaremongering about Islamic terrorism to cover its weakness and failure of claiming a true leadership in the world, while Islam is the true ideology of peace and security for the world.

The Central Media Office
of Hizb ut Tahrir