“Along with schools, hospitals, churches, and government buildings, America’s businesses have become contested terrain as gun-rights groups battle reformers over the public spaces in which firearms can be legally wielded,” The Trace’s ever-so-helpful email blast proclaims (leaving the definition of “reformer” unspecified). “When state laws open retail and hospitality establishments to their customers’ guns, they also create the potential for those guns to go off inside.” Yup . . .
Guns “going off” — ’cause that’s what guns do! What The Trace does oh-so-well: seize on any firearms-related injury or death as proof that civilian disarmament must be “reformed” out of existence. Don’t ask for whom the [death and injury] toll bells, it bells for gun control. Or something like that.
So far this year, 71 people have been unintentionally shot at businesses across the United States, according to Gun Violence Archive data. Seven of the shootings proved deadly.
The locations include hotels, grocery stores, gas stations, theaters, and fast-food restaurants where Americans conduct their daily affairs. The total works out to about one person every four days. And it does not factor in the additional 28 people who have been shot — one fatally — at businesses where the presence of guns would be expected, such as gun ranges and gun stores.
The bottom line: according to the stats above, you’re 21 times more likely to be accidentally shot — or shoot yourself — in a grocery store than a strip club. Of course, there are other dangers: salmonella vs. syphilis. You pays your money, you takes your chances.