From CNN:

Gun homicides on the rise, CDC says

By Susan Scutti, CNN Updated 6:13 PM ET, Thu July 26, 2018 (CNN) Shooting homicides are on the rise, though other common methods of murder remain flat, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most common method of killing another person from 2010 through 2016 was by using a gun, Thursday’s CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates. … All three methods of homicide remained stable from 2010 through 2014. However, for the two-year period after that, gun homicides increased 31%, from 11,008 shooting deaths in 2014 to 14,415 in 2016. The two other top methods remained stable between 2014 and 2016. … Part of the sharp upward curve beginning in 2014 may be because of a surge of violence in a small number of cities, including Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis and Kansas City, said Daniel Webster, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Hmmhmmmh … Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis … Weren’t those in the news? Something to do with Black Lives Matter?

Each of these cities has experienced “fairly notable and large increases in homicides over the period in question,” while “other places have been more flat,” said Webster, who was not involved in the CDC report. … Gun violence is essentially contagious, he said: “Violence begets violence.”

Guns and violence both have moral agency. Murderers in St. Louis, Baltimore and Chicago, of course, do not. They are simply automatons at the command of Systemic Racism and/or Trump’s Climate of Hate.

When there is a shooting or two in a given neighborhood in a short period, what often follows is a retaliation shooting or simply a lot of people feeling nervous who begin to carry guns, he said.

It’s all those redneck NRA members in Baltimore. Haven’t you watched The Wire?

“If more people are carrying guns and they think there are others out there going to kill them … they are going to shoot first and ask questions later,” Webster said.

No gun is illegal! Wait … that’s undocumented workers. Sorry. I confused my talking points.

Guns are a disease. There, that’s the right one.

Webster said the number of civilians who carry guns is another form of gun contagion or basic social influence, especially with changing gun laws. “Just like we admire people’s clothes or haircuts or whatever — ‘I think I’ll do that’ — the same thing happens with civilian gun carrying,” he said. “We now have 12 states for which you can carry a loaded concealed gun with you or in your vehicle with no license or no vetting, no nothing.” He noted that these laws apply only in cases in which the armed person is not a convicted felon and doesn’t fall into other prohibited categories.

Obviously, the incremental Chicago murderers of 2016 over 2014 were overwhelmingly not convicted felons or other individuals subject to gun control laws. No doubt they were Trump voters driving their SUVs in from small towns to shoot people in Chicago with their legal guns.

“The available data suggests that as we make it easier and easier for more and more civilians to carry guns wherever they want, we end up with more homicides and other firearm-related crimes,” Webster said.

Like in Chicago, every Walmart sells guns. I think … Right?

He added that infectious diseases share similar outbreak patterns, going up very rapidly and then coming down very rapidly. …

Although the majority of people who carry guns may be “perfectly safe and law-abiding people,” there’s always a “subset” who are not, Webster said: “Where there are more guns, more people get shot by them.”

Guns are the disease. Or maybe gun-owners are the disease.

Seriously, as I wrote way back in 2004: