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On Right to Life, Freedom and Personal Security

2019-06-20copyfrom:en.humanrights.cnauthor:
The following is an excerpt of the US Human Rights Record from 1999 to 2021 on right to life, freedom, and personal security:

2000

The United States, the only country where carrying a private weapon is a constitutional right, is a society ridden with violence.
 
The United States is the world's number one "gun nation" with more than 200 million private guns, or nearly one for each American.
 
The number of registered weapon vendors in the country exceeds 100,000, more than the total number of overseas outlets of fast food giant MacDonald's.
 
A tracking investigation of 70,000 guns conducted annually by a US agency has shown that about 50,000 of them were used in assaults, and the rest turned up in criminal investigations: 5,000 were used in murders, 5,000 for assaults, several thousand were used in thefts and robberies, and some were used in drug-related assault incidents.
 
The excessive number of privately owned guns has resulted in countless gun-related assaults, resulting in tragedy for many innocent people:
 
On February 29, 2000, a six-year-old boy in the state of Michigan killed a girl, one of his classmates.
 
On April 18 that year, a man in suburban Detroit, who became angry when his neighbors complained about him, fired on the office of the apartment complex, leaving three women dead or injured.
 
At the night of April 24, seven children were senselessly slaughtered by a gunman at the Washington National Zoo.
 
On December 28, four masked gunmen broke into a home in Philadelphia fatally shooting seven people and injuring three.
 
This year on January 9, a gunman killed three people in Houston, Texas, and on February 5, another gunman killed four people and injured four others at a factory near Chicago.
 
Statistics have shown that over 31,000 people in the United States are killed by guns each year, and over 80 people are killed in gun-related incidents every day.
 
Police brutality is not uncommon in the United States.
 
Each year, thousands of allegations of police abuse are filed across the country, but relatively few police officers who violate the law are held accountable.
 
Victims seeking redress faced obstacles that ranged from overt intimidation to the reluctance of local and federal prosecutors to take on police brutality cases.
 
During 1999, about 12,000 civil rights complaints, most alleging police abuse, were submitted to the US Department of Justice, but over the same period just 31 officers confessed or were convicted.
 
The judicial system in the US is extremely unfair, with the death penalty exercised in 38 of the 50 US states.
 
By July 1, 2000, there were 3,682 people on death row in the nation, 90 percent of whom had been victims of sexual abuse and assault.
 
Most of them had to rely on officially appointed lawyers as they were too poor to pay for their own attorneys.
 
After reviewing the 5,760 death penalty cases over a period of 23 years starting 1973 in the US, a team of Columbia University professors revealed on June 12, 2000 that 68 percent of the death penalty sentences in the country did not fit the crimes.
 
They said that on average more than two of every three death penalty sentences were overturned on appeal.
 
The rate of erroneous judgment on death penalty in the state of Florida was 73 percent, while the figures rose to as high as 100 percent in the states of Kentucky, Maryland and Tennessee, said the professors.
 
A total of 660 people have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 by the Supreme Court of the United States; 500 people were executed in the past eight years.
 
In 2000, over 70 people were executed, accounting for 11 percent of the total.
 
The United States violates international conventions by convicting and executing juvenile and mentally retarded offenders, and failing to provide defendants facing execution with competent attorneys.
 
Thirty mentally retarded people have been executed in the United States in the past decade.
 
Citing figures from the US Department of Justice, the American newspaper USA Today reported in its August 8 edition that about 6.3 million men and women in the US were on probation or parole, or were in jail or prison at the end of 1999.
 
The figure represents 3 percent of the adult population of the United States. The "correctional population" increased 2.7 percent from 1998 and 44.6 percent from 1990, according to the newspaper.
 
Under US law, whose who are serving prison terms and former inmates out on probation or parole are disenfranchised, and one quarter of the states denied the right to vote of those who had served their sentences.
 
It is estimated that over one million Americans who have finished serving their sentences are deprived of their right to vote.
 
A report of a US judicial policy research institute showed that more than two million men and women were behind bars by February 15, 2000, up 75 percent from the 1.14 million reported 11 years ago, accounting for one-quarter of the total across the world, and ranking first in the world.
 
The US Department of Justice also revealed in August 2000 that the rate of incarceration had reached 690 inmates per 100,000 residents by the end of 1999, also the highest in the world. The state of Louisiana took the lead with 736 inmates per 100,000.
 
Despite huge spending that far exceeds the federal budget for education, US prisons are overcrowded, prison violence is rampant and prisoners are badly treated.
 
Statistics show that in 1998, 59 inmates in the US were killed by other inmates, and assaults, fights, and rapes injured 6, 750 inmates and 2,331 prison staff.
 
Estimates by non-governmental groups in the state of California have shown that over 10,000 sexual assaults occur daily in US prisons, and male inmates are sexually assaulted by their roommates. In the most extreme cases, the raped inmates were literally the slaves of the perpetrators, being "rented out" for sex, "sold," or even auctioned off to other inmates.
 
Despite the devastating psychological impact of such abuse, perpetrators were rarely punished adequately.
 
A report released in September 2000 by the US Department of Justice said an "institutional culture that supports and promotes abuses" was in place in US prisons.
 
Frequent reports of physical abuse by prison guards include brutal beatings by officers and officers paying inmates to beat other inmates.
 
At Wallens Ridge State Prison, Virginia's super-maximum security prison, 50,000-volt stun guns were often used against inmates.
 
The Virginia Department of Corrections reported that between January 1999 and June 2000, prison guards at Red Onion State Prison, Virginia's super-max security prison, shot a total of 116 blank rounds and 25 stinger rounds of rubber bullets and discharged stun guns on 130 separate occasions.
 
At Corcoran State Prison in California, eight prison guards drove a group of inmates to a small playground for a wrestling match that resulted in several deaths.
 
Over 20,000 inmates were placed in solitary confinement in special maximum security facilities, where they were locked alone in small and sometimes windowless cells and released for only a few hours each week.
 
They were handcuffed, shackled and escorted by officers whenever they left their cells.
 
At Wisconsin's new super-maximum prisons, inmates were subjected to round-the-clock confinement in isolation, subject to constant fluorescent lighting in their cells and 24-hour video monitoring.
 
2001
 
Violence and crimes are a daily occurrence in the US society, where people's life, freedom and personal safety are under serious threat. According to the 2001 fourth issue of Dialogue published by the US Embassy in China, in 1998, the number of criminal cases in the United States reached 12.476 million, including 1.531 million violent crime cases and 17,000 murder cases; and for every 100,000 people, there were 4,616 criminal cases, including 566 involving violent crimes. From 1977 to 1996, more than 400,000 Americans were murdered, almost seven times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. During the years since 1997, another 480,000 people have been murdered in the country. According to a report carried by the Christian Science Monitor in its January 22, 2002 issue, the murder rate in the United States at present stands at 5.5 persons per 100,000 people. According to data provided by police stations in 18 major US cities, the number of murder cases in many big cities in 2001 increased drastically, with those in Boston and Phoenix City increasing the fastest. In the year to December 18, 2001, the number of murder cases in the two cities increased by more than 60 percent over the same period of the previous year. The number of murder cases increased by 22 percent in St. Louis, 17.5 percent in Houston, 15 percent in St. Antonio, 11.6 percent in Atlanta, 9.2 percent in Los Angeles and 5.2 percent in Chicago. According to the same report of the Christian Science Monitor, on campuses of colleges and universities in the United States in 2001, the number of murder cases increased by almost 100 percent over 2000, that of arson cases by about 9 percent, that of break-ins by 3 percent.
 
The United States is the country with the biggest number of private guns. On the one hand, worries about the threat of violence have led to rush buying of guns for self-protection; on the other hand, the flooding of guns is an important factor contributing to high violence and crime rates. Statistics of the FBI show that sales of weapons and ammunition in the United States in the three months of September through November of 2001 grew anywhere from 9 percent to 22 percent. October witnessed a record 1,029,691 guns registered. Statistics also show that shooting is the second major cause of non-normal deaths after traffic accidents in the United States, averaging 15,000 deaths annually. Over the history of more than 200 years, three US presidents were shot, with two dead and one wounded seriously. There is much less personal safety for common people in the United States. Since 1972, more than 80 people have been shot dead every day on average in the United States, including about 12 children.
 
On March 5, 2001, a 15-year-old student killed two and wounded 13 fellow students at Santana High School in California. This is the deadliest school shooting following one in a high school in the state of Colorado in April 1999, in which 13 were killed. Two days later, that is, on March 7, a 14-year-old girl student shot dead a schoolmate of hers in the cafeteria of a Roman Catholic school in Pennsylvania. On the same day, police overpowered a gunman who was about to shoot on the campus of the University of Albertus. On April 14, a 43-year-old man with two rifles and two short guns fired madly at a bar and its car park, killing two and wounding 20. On September 7, a gunman burst into a family on the outskirts of Simi Valley of Los Angeles and shot three people dead and wounded two. Earlier on August 31, a demobilized policeman shot dead another and set fire on himself. FBI called Los Angeles "the freest city for crimes." On December 7, a worker at a woodworking factory shot one fellow worker dead and wounded six others in Indiana.
 
On January 15, 2002, a teenage student fired at fellow students at Martin Luther King High School, seriously wounding two. This coincided with the 73rd anniversary of Martin Luther King, leader of the human rights movement in the United States and an advocator of non-violence. More ironically, on March 4, 2002, the very day when the US State Department published its annual report, accusing other countries of "human rights violations," another shooting took place: in New Mexico, a four-year-old boy, while watching TV in his bedroom, shot dead an 18-month-old baby girl with his father's gun.
 
The US media are inundated with violent contents, contributing to a high crime rate in the United States, especially among young people. Young people in the country get used to violence and crimes from an early age. With the extensive use of cable TV, video tapes and computers, children have more opportunities to see bloody violent scenes. A culture beautifying violence has made young people believe that the gun can "solve" all problems. An investigative report issued on August 1, 2001 by a US non-governmental watchdog group -- Parents Television Council (PTC) -- says that violence in television programs from 8 to 9 p.m. in the recent one-year period was up by 78 percent and abusive language up by 71 percent. Even CBS, regarded as the " cleanest" TV network, had 3.2 scenes of violence and abusive language per hour. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, TV stations and movie houses in the United States exercised some restraint on the broadcasting and screening of programs and films of violence. But it was hardly two months before violence films, which have top box-office value, staged a comeback. International Herald Tribune reported that one American youth could see 40,000 murder cases and 200,000 other violent acts from the media before the age of 18. A survey by California-based Ethical Code Institute shows that over the past year, most American youth had the experience of using violence, including 21 percent of the boys in high schools and 15 percent of the boys in junior middle schools who had the experience of taking arms to school for at least once. The US National Association of Education estimates that about 100,000 students in the United States take arms to school every day.
 
In recent years, voices for controlling guns and eliminating the culture of violence have been running high. On Mother's Day on May 14, 2000, women from nearly 70 cities in the United States staged a "Million Moms Mother's Day March," demanding that the US Congress enact a strict gun control law. However, voices of the common people can hardly produce any results. 
 
2002
 
In American society, excessive violence has resulted in ineffective protection of life and security of the person.
 
According to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Oct. 28, 2002, the United States recorded 11.8 million crime offenses in 2001, a 2.1 percent increase over 2000.
 
The offenses included four violent crimes (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault), and three property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft). Firearms were involved in 26.2 percent of violent crime cases, and murder cases increased by 2.5 percent.
 
There was an offense in every 2.7 seconds, and there were 44 murders, 248 rapes and 26 hate crimes each day. Among the crime offences were 15,980 murders and 90,491 forcible rapes.
 
Crime in many major American cities went up in 2002. In Washington D.C., drug abuse, gang violence and prostitution ran rampant, and crime went up by 36 percent from 2001; in Boston the crime rates increased by 67 percent, and in Los Angeles, by 27 percent.
 
The murder rate in the United States was five to seven times higher than most industrial nations.
 
During January-November 2002, New York City reported 489 murder cases; Chicago registered 485 homicide cases, in which 515 people were killed; and Detroit reported 346 murders.
 
During the same period Los Angeles reported 595 murder cases with 614 people killed, up 11.3 percent and 20.5 percent compared to the same period in 2001 and 2000, respectively (Los Angeles, Nov. 21, 2002, AFP).
 
The Constitution of the United States provides that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and the constitutions of 44 states in the nation include provisions safeguarding citizens' right to possess guns.
 
In the United States, guns owned by private individuals exceed 200 million, averaging nearly one for every citizen. In 2002, the numbers of gun buyers across the United States went up by 13 percent to twice over previous years, and the number of rifle owners increased even faster.
 
The National Rifle Association of the United States has over 2.8 million members. Excessive gun ownership has led to frequent shootings, and victims of firearms-related crime number more than 30,000 a year.
 
On March 26, a retired sheriff's deputy in Merced County, California, shot and killed his 5-year-old daughter and his three stepchildren while his estranged wife was out for a walk, then committed suicide with the body of one of the youngsters in his arms.
 
On May 30, a gunman opened fire inside a grocery store at a Top Valu Market near the downtown marina in Long Beach, California, killing a woman and a 7-year-old girl and wounding four others before he was fatally shot by police (Long Beach, California, May 31, 2002, AFP).
 
From October 2 to October 22, serial gun shooting cases occurred in Washington D.C. and neighboring Maryland and Virginia states, in which ten people were killed and three others were seriously wounded.
 
The number of gun shootings went up by 40 percent in Los Angeles in 2002 over 2001. Between the evening of November 19 and the early morning of November 20, five separate cases of gun shooting took place in downtown Los Angeles, leaving two people dead and seven others wounded.
 
Crime rates among juveniles in the United States have remained high, with youngsters accounting for 20 percent of violent crime.
 
Drug abuse among youngsters has kept increasing. Drug abuse among tenth-grade high school students in the United States went up from 11.6 percent in 1991 to 22.7 percent in 2001, and 34.4 percent of senior high school students in New York City have at least taken marijuana once.
 
In 2001, there were 638,000 narcotics-related cases, and drug abuse accounted for 25 percent of violent crime in the United States.
 
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, crime in schools decreased as most schools have installed metal detectors and videocameras, but it was reported that 6 percent of the students still carried guns to school.
 
Violence in schools such as bullying rose by 12 percent, and at least 10,000 students in the United States choose to stay at home once in a month for fear of being bullied ("School Crime Decreasing, US Says, But Students Still Fear Bullying, Reports Show", Dec. 10, 2002, Sun).
 
Violence in nursing homes for the aged in the United States is worrisome. In March 2002, a report submitted to the U.S. Congress said that inmates in some of such homes had suffered splash of cold water, battery and sexual assault.
 
However, such acts had never been regarded as crime, and most of them had not been prosecuted. Statistics show that there are 17,000 homes for the aged and similar institutions in the United States, housing 1.6 million aged Americans.
 
Violations of law have been found in about 26 percent of them, and two percent of which have caused physical injuries. 
 
2003
 
The United States has long been in a violent, crime-ridden society with a severe infringement of the people's rights by law enforcement departments and with a lack of guarantee for the life of people, their freedom and personal safety.
 
The United States is a country plagued most seriously by violence and crimes. According to the statistical figures released in June 2003 by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a total of 11.9 million criminal cases were reported in 2002 in the United States, including homicides, rapes, robbery and theft. Of these cases, 19,940 cases were reported in Detroit, where 2,073 people committed crimes in every 100,000 people. In Baltimore, where 2,055 people committed crimes in every 100,000 people. With regard to personal offenses, cases of murders and rapes rose by 0.8 percent, and 4.0 percent, respectively, over 2002(see The Sun, USA on June 18, 2003).
 
On Sept. 15, 2003, US Surgeon General Richard Carmona admitted at a workshop that the United States has always ranked first in the world in terms of homicide incidence. In August 2003, the US Department of Justice acknowledged in a report that a total of 15,586 homicide cases occurred around the country in 2000, as against 15,980 in 2001, and 16,110 in 2002, indicating a rising trend yearby year (see the edition of USA Today on Aug. 25, 2003).
 
In a report released by the FBI in December 2003, the FBI said the overall incidence of offenses in the U.S. somewhat dropped, whereas the number of people murdered across the country grew by 1.1 percent during the first half of 2003 (see the edition of USA Today published on Dec. 16, 2003).
 
From January to August of 2003, 166 homicides were reported in Washington D.C., up 5.1 percent year on year. In Chicago, which is known as America's "homicide capital", there were 648 homicides in2002, compared with 599 in 2003, or an average of 22.2 people victimized in every 100,000 residents (AP dispatch from Chicago on Jan. 1, 2004). In New York, the number of people murdered in 2003 amounted to 596 (AP dispatch from Chicago on Jan. 2, 2004)). In California, the number of murder cases for 2002 went up 11 percent. The US Justice Policy Institute held that the existing legal system could not ensure the safety and health of community residents.
 
The United States ranked first in private ownership of guns, resulting in drastic rise in gun-related crimes. According to a survey of crime victims, 350,000 criminal cases involving the use of guns were reported in the United States in 2002, and guns were used in 63 percent of the 15,980 killings in 2001. On Aug. 27, 2003, a jobless man carrying a gun broke into a car part supplying company, killing seven of his former colleagues. Statistical figures from US National Center for Health Statistics showed that 56.5 percent of Americans who committed suicides in 2000 with the use of guns, involving 16,586 people (see Gun Violence, Related Facts. www.jointogether.org).
 
Improper management of firearms led to the frequent occurrence of juvenile offenses involving the use of guns. At least 18 people in American public schools were reportedly killed in violence with50 others wounded in mid Aug. of 2003. According to data from US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 50 percent of the murderers in campus shootings in the United States used guns owned by their families or friends, while over 80 percent of the guns used by students for suicides came from their families or friends (Most Guns Used in School Shootings from Family, Friends, www. jointogether.org).
 
Unrestrained evil social forces and widespread drug abuse endangered the people's life and safety. According to a report released by US National Youth Gang Center, there were altogether 21,500 sinister gangs in the United States in 2002 with a combined membership of 731,000. In April 2003, an innocent woman was killed in a gang shootout in New York. Police had to impose a state of citywide emergency in the summer of 2003 due to frequent gang-related violence (see the edition of USA Today on Dec. 16, 2003).
 
Drug-related crimes have been on the rise, with new characteristics involving a growing number of gangs, intensified violence and trans-national smuggling and collaboration with terrorist groups. The rate of crimes induced by drug abuse has risen year by year. Relevant data released by the US Department of Justice showed that over half of the inmates in federal jails have something to do with drug-related crimes (see Washington Post on July 28, 2003).
 
According to the outcome of a survey released by Washington D.C.Mayor Anthony A. Williams, 60,000 people out of the 600,000 population in Washington used drugs and indulged in excessive drinking, causing an annual economic loss of 1.2 billion US dollars. Half of those people arrested on charge of violence in Washington D.C. took drugs (see Washington Post on Dec. 2, 2003).
 
In recent years, the number of AIDS patients has also increased partly due to the widespread drug abuse. Statistical figures released by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that the number of people diagnosed as AIDS carriers across the United States in 2002 rose by 2.2 percent over the previous year to reach 42,136 (see Washington Post on July 28, 2003).
 
The infringement of lawful rights constitutes a malignant obstinate disease of American society. Random assaults committed by the police resulted in the frequent occurrence of tragedies with heavy casualties. The New York City Police was reported for several willful shooting cases when chasing suspects in January 2003. Four people were killed by the police in the city from Jan. 1 to 5 last year. In Dec. 2003, a black man named Nathaniel Jones was beaten to death by six policemen in Cincinnati, causing a great uproar against police brutality across the country.
 
According to an AP report, a woman in the city of Detroit had one of her fingers cut off and another finger injured by the police simply for a dispute with them in a parking lot. The report said the police also boxed her ears and tore her hair.
 
The United States issued the Patriot Act in name of land security and anti-terrorism after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, and many substantial contents of this act encroached upon rights and freedom of citizens, especially the people of ethnic minorities. Under the authority of the Patriot Act, the government departments are empowered to wiretap phone calls of citizens, trace their online records, read their private mails and e-mails. The FBI is even allowed to keep a watch on people's reading habits. They check the booklists of what people borrow from libraries, so as to judge whether they have been influenced by terrorism. A resolution passed by Cambridge, Massachusetts, explicitly noted that the civil rights of the American people are being jeopardized by the Patriot Act and, therefore, the Sun in Aug. 2003 set forth an appeal for "freedom to read" (see the Sun on Aug. 18, 2003).
 
The United States claim itself as a paradise for free people but the ratio of inmates in the United States has remained the highest in the world. The number of inmates in the country exceeded 2.1 million in 2002, a year-on-year rise of 2.6 percent, according to the statistical figures released by the Department of Justice in July 2003. The jails nationwide receive 700 new inmates every week in the U.S. where 701 out of every 100,000 people are in prison (see Washington Post on July 28, 2003).
 
Inmates have received inhumane treatment in the overloaded jails. An International Herald Tribune story said the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Minnesota, Iowa, Texas and Arizona had lowered the food supply standards of inmates so as to curb the huge government budget deficit. They reduced the calorie of each meal in jail and cut three meals a day to two on weekends and holidays. According to a report by Amnesty International, more than 700,000 inmates were held in high security prisons and there they are compelled to stay in wards for 23 hours a day and even longer, subjected to ruthless and inhuman treatment and humiliation. Last year, at least three inmates were hit to death by prison guards with guns of high voltage electric prods (2003 Report: United States of America, Amnesty International, www.amnestyusa.org).
 
Sexual harassment and encroachment are common in jails in the United States. A report issued by Human Rights Watch in Sept. 2003said that one in five male inmates in the country had faced forced sexual contact in custody and one in 10 has been raped. For women inmates, they are objects of sexual assault of jail guards, and one fourth of the women inmates are sexually assaulted in a few jails (see Editorial, Doing Something about Prison Rape, http:// www.hrw.org, 26/09/2003).
 
Nine girls in a juvenile delinquent center of the state of Alabama accused the guards of assaulting and raping them and compelling them to have forced abortion. They also said male guards watched girls take bath and unclothe themselves for so-called frisk. They had to have sex with male guards in the hope for better treatment, for instance, to get a can of cola or food.
 
According to another Human Rights Watch report, one in six US inmates suffer various kinds of mental illnesses. Many of them suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and serious depression. The proportion of inmates with mental illness in the prison population is over three times higher than in the general population (see United States: Mentally Ill Mistreated in Prison, www.hrw.org/2003/10/US102203.htm). The total population of these patients has reached as high as 200,000 to 300,000. "Prisons have become the nation's primary mental health facilities," said Human Rights Watch. The prisoners with mental illness are likely to be picked on, physically or sexually abused and manipulated by other inmates. For example, a female inmate named Georgia, who is both mentally ill and retarded, has been raped repeatedly in an exchange for small items such as cigarettes and coffee.    
 
2004
 
American society is characterized with rampant violent crimes, severe infringement of people's rights by law enforcement departments and lack of guarantee for people's rights to life, liberty and security of person.
 
Violent crimes pose a serious threat to people's lives. According to a report released by the Department of Justice of theUnited States on Nov. 29, 2004, in 2003 residents aged 12 and above in the United States experienced about 24 million victimizations, and there occurred 1,381,259 murders, robberies and other violent crimes, averaging 475 cases per 100,000 people. Among them there were 16,503 homicides, up 1.7 percent over 2002, or nearly six cases in every 100,000 residents, and one of every 44 Americans aged above 12 was victimized.
 
The Associated Press reported on June 24, 2004 that the number of violent crimes in many US cities were on the rise. In 2003 Chicago alone recorded 598 homicides, 80 percent of which involvedthe use of guns. The Washington D.C. reported 41,738 murders, robberies and other violent crimes in 2003, averaging 6,406.4 cases per 100,000 residents. In 2004 the District recorded 198 killings, or a homicide rate of 35 per 100,000 residents. Detroit,which has less than 1 million residents, recorded 18,724 criminal cases in 2003, including 366 murders and 814 rapes, which amountedto a homicide rate of 41 per 100,000 residents.
 
In 2003 the homicide rate in Baltimore was 43 per 100,000 residents. The Baltimore Sun reported on Dec. 17, 2004 that the city reported 271 killings from January to early December in 2004.It was reported that on Sept. 8, 2004 that by Sept. 4, 2004 there had been 368 homicides in the city, up 4.2 percent year-on-year. The USA Today reported on July 16, 2004 that in an average week inthe US workplace one employee is killed and at least 25 are seriously injured in violent assaults by current or former co-workers. The Cincinnati Post reported on Nov. 12, 2004 that homicides average 17 a week and there are nearly 5,500 violent assaults a day at US job sites.
 
The United States has the biggest number of gun owners and gun violence has affected lots of innocent lives. According to a survey released by the University of Chicago in 2001, 41.7 percentof men and 28.5 percent of women in the United States report having a gun in their homes, and 29.2 percent of men and 10.2 percent of women personally own a gun. The Los Angeles Times reported on Jul. 19, 2004 that since 2000 the number of firearm holders rose 28 percent in California.
 
About 31,000 Americans are killed and 75,000 wounded by firearms each year, which means more than 80 people are shot dead each day. In 2002 there were 30,242 firearm killings in the UnitedStates; 54 percent of all suicides and 67 percent of all homicideswere related to the use of firearms. The Associated Press reportedthat 808 people were shot dead in the first half of 2004 in Detroit.
 
Police violence and infringement of human rights by law enforcement agencies also constitute a serious problem. At present,5,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States use TASER -- akind of electric shock gun, which sends out 50,000 volts of impulse voltage after hitting the target. Since 1999, more than 80people died from TASER shootings, 60 percent of which occurred between November 2003 and November 2004.
 
A survey found that in the 17 years from 1985 to 2002, Los Angeles recorded more than 100 times increase in police shooting at automobile drivers, killing at least 25 and injuring more than 30 of them. Of these cases, 90 percent were due to misjudgment. (The Los Angeles Times, Feb. 29, 2004.)
 
On Jul. 21, 2004 Chinese citizen Zhao Yan was handcuffed and severely beaten while she was in the United States on a normal business trip. She suffered injuries in many parts of her body andserious mental harm.
 
The New York Times reported on Apr. 19, 2004 a comprehensive study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which the convicted person was exonerated suggests that there are thousands of innocent people in prison today. The study identified 199 murder exoneration, 73 of them in capital cases. In more than halfof the cases, the defendants had been in prison for more than 10 years.
 
The United States characterizes itself as "a paradise for free people," but the ratio of its citizens deprived of freedom has remained among the highest in the world. Statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last November showed that the nation made an estimated 13.6 million arrests in 2003. The national arrest rate was 4,695.1 arrests per 100,000 people, 0.2 percent up than that of the previous year (USA Today, Nov. 8, 2004).
 
According to statistics from the Department of Justice, the number of inmates in the United States jumped from 320,000 in 1980to 2 million in 2000, a hike by six times. From 1995 to 2003, the number of inmates grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the country, where one out of every 142 people is behind bars. The number of convicted offenders may total more than 6 million if parolees and probationers are also counted. The Chicago Tribune reported on Nov. 8 last year that the federal and state prison population amounted to 1.47 million last year, 2.1 percent more than in 2003. The number of criminals rose by over 5 percent in 11states, with the growth in North Dakota up by 11.4 percent and in Minnesota by 10.3 percent.
 
Most prisons in the United States are overcrowded, but still cannot meet the demand. The country has spent an average of 7 billion US dollars a year building new jails and prisons in the past 10 years. California has seen only one college but 21 new prisons built since 1984.
 
Jails have become one of the huge and most lucrative industries,with a combined staff of more than 530,000 and being the second largest employer in the United States only after the General Motors. Private prisons are more and more common. The country now has over 100 private prisons in 27 states and 18 private prison companies. The value of goods and services created by inmates surged from 400 million US dollars in 1980 to 1.1 billion US dollars in 1994.
 
Abuse of prisoners and violence occur frequently in US jails and prisons, which are under disorderly management. The Los Angeles Times reported on Aug. 15 last year that over 40 state prison systems were once under some form of court order, for brutality, crowding, poor food and lack of medical care.
 
The NewsWeek of the United States also reported last May that in Pennsylvania, Arizona and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of others before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. Male inmates are often made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation. New inmates are frequently beaten and cursed at and sometimes made to crawl.
 
At a jail in New York City, some guards bump prisoners against the walls, pinch their arms and wrists, and force them to receive insulting checks nakedly. Some male inmates are sometimes compelled to stand in the nude before a group of women guards. Some female inmates go in shackles to hospital for treatment and nursing after they get ill or pregnant, some give births without amidwife, and some are locked to sickbeds with fetters after Caesarean operation.
 
Over 80,000 women prisoners in the United States are mothers, and the overall number of the minor children of the American womenprisoners is estimated at some 200,000. The country had more than 3,000 pregnant women in jails from 2000 to 2003 and 3,000 babies were born to the prisoners during this period (see Mexico's Milenio on Feb. 21, 2004). It is estimated that at least more than40,000 prisoners are locked up in the so-called "super jails", where the prisoner is confined to a very tiny cell, cannot see other people throughout the year, and has only one hour out for exercise every day.
 
Sexual harassment and encroachment are common in jails in the Unite States. The New York Times reported last October that at least 13 percent of inmates in the country are sexually assaulted in prison (Ex-Inmate's Suit Offers View Into Sexual Slavery in Prisons, The New York Times, Oct. 12, 2004). In jails of seven central and western US states, 21 percent of the inmates suffer sexual abuse at least once after being put in prison. The ratio ishigher among women inmates, with nearly one fourth of them sexually assaulted by jail guards. 
 
2005

 
For a long time, the life and personal security of people of the United States have not been under efficient protection. American society is characterized with rampant violent crimes. Across the country each year, 50,000 suicides and homicides are committed (Va.Violent Deaths Are Mostly Suicides, The Washington Post, October12, 2005).
 
The U.S. Justice Department reported on Sept. 25, 2005 that there were 5,182,670 violent crimes in the United States in 2004. There were 21.4 victims for every 1,000 people aged 12 and older, which amounts to about one violent crime victim for every 47 U.S. citizens (Crime Rate Remains at 2003 Level, Study Says, The Washington Post, September 26, 2005).
 
According to figures released by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), murder increased by 2.1 percent across the United States during the first six months of 2005, compared with the same period of 2004. A total of 4,080 murders were reported in cities with more than 10,000 people, while homicides were up 13 percent in cities with a population of 10,000 or less (Murder Rate in Small Cities Jumps 13%, USA Today, Dec. 20, 2005).
 
The Washington D.C., with a population of less than 600,000, had 194 slayings in 2005 (D. C. Area Slaying Climbed In 2005, The Washington Post, Jan. 2, 2006).
 
In Chicago, the number of various crimes exceeded 125,000 from January to September of 2005, including 352 murders, 11,564 robberies, 8,903 assaults and 534 arsons (http://egov.cityofchicago.org).
 
From January to mid-November of 2005, 334 persons were murdered in Philadelphia, exceeding the total number of murderees in the city in 2004 (Philly: 334 Killings So Far This Year, Philadelphia Daily News, Nov. 14,2005).
 
During the first half of 2005, 198 murders were reported in Los Angeles, 11 percent more than the same period of 2004 (Los Angeles Times, July 2, 2005).
 
Seventy-two people were murdered in Compton, California, with a population of only 96,000 (Compton Killings Highest in Years, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 2, 2006). Camden in New Jersey has become the most dangerous city in the United States, with its homicide rate more than ten times the national average and robbery rate, more than seven times the national average (Camden, N.J., Ranked Most Dangerous U.S. City, The Washington Post, Nov. 22, 2005).
 
The United States has the largest number of privately owned guns in the world. According to statistics released in June 2005 by the Brady Campaign, an organization aiming to prevent gun violence, there were approximately 192 million privately owned firearms in the United States (Firearm Facts, Issued by The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, June 2005, in: http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/factsheets/).
 
A survey conducted by the Washington Post and the American Broadcasting Company showed that about ten percent of the surveyed were once shot, and 14 percent threatened by guns.
 
According to figures released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Justice Department in 2005, in the year 2004 the United States recorded 339,200 firearm-related crimes, including 11,300 murders, 162,900 robberies, and 165,000 assaults (Statistics Crimes Committed with Firearms, Issued by U.S. Bureau of Justice, in: http://www.ojb.usdoj.gov/bjs).
 
The Washington Post reported on Dec. 25, 2005 that every year nearly 12,000 Americans use guns to kill people. In the reports of crimes received by American police in 2004, 70 percent of the murders, 41 percent of the robberies and 19 percent of assaults on persons were committed with firearms.
 
The unchecked spread of guns has caused incessant murders. In February 2005, mother and husband of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow were shot to death at home in Chicago.
 
In March, a rape suspect killed one judge and two others at a courthouse in Fulton County in Atlanta and hijacked four cars to escape.
 
On March 12, a gunman opened fire at a church service being held at the Sheraton Hotel in Brookfield, Wisconsin, killing seven people and injuring four.
 
On March 21, 17-year-old Jeff Weise killed his grandparents and went on a shooting rampage at the Red Lake High School in Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, killing another eight persons including school security guard, teacher and students and injuring14 others (CNN, March 21, 2005).
 
On April 25, a 14-year-old girl shot her father to death in Colorado. On Christmas Day of 2005, a man shot and killed his mother at home in the suburb of Washington and then drove eight miles to another home and killed three other people, before turning the gun on himself (Washington, AP April 30, 2005).
 
2006
 
The life, property and personal security of people of the United States are affected by rampant violent crimes.
 
The U.S. Justice Department reported on September 10, 2006 that there were 5.2 million violent crimes in the United States in 2005, up 2.5 percent from the previous year, the highest rate in 15 years. Statistics released by the U.S. Justice Department in 2006 showed that in 2005 American residents age 12 or above experienced 23 million crimes; for every 1,000 persons age 12 or older, there occurred one rape or sexual assault, one assault with injury, and three robberies (Bureau of Justice Statistics Criminal Victimization, in: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs). Murder, robbery and other violent crimes reported in the United States jumped 3.7 percent in the first half of 2006 over the same period in 2005, with robbery alone up by a starling 9.7 percent. Murders that occurred in cities with population of between 500,000 and 1 million in the same period were up by 8.4 percent year on year (FBI: Violent Crimes up in 1st Half of '06. MSNBC.com, December 19, 2006, in: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11497293). In the first half of 2006 murder was up a whopping 27.5 percent in Boston. In Memphis murder increased 43 percent in 2006. In Cincinnati murder was up 19 percent in the first six months of 2006. Robbery increases for the first half of 2006 across the United States were stunning: Rochester, N.Y., up 47 percent; suburban Montgomery County, Md., up 37 percent; Minneapolis up 36.8 percent (Startling New Stats Show Cross-Country Crime Spike. ABC News, October 12, 2006). From January 1 to December 10, there were 384 slayings in Philadelphia, and the number exceeded the total toll of victims in 2005 (City Effort Needs to Grow. Editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer, December 12, 2006). During the first 11 months in 2006, 147 murders were reported in New Orleans. That means the New Orleanians were murdering each other at a rate of 73.5 murders per 100,000 residents, exceeding that of the nation's most murderous city Compton, California, whose rate was 67 murders per 100,000 people in 2005 (Crime Takes Hold of New Orleans. USA Today, December 1, 2006). Orlando, Florida, reported 42 murders in the first 10 months in 2006, nearly double the 22 slayings last year in the city of 200,000 people (USA Today, November 1, 2006). And in Washington, police department declared a crime emergency and a 10 p.m. curfew for juveniles in July 2006, after the city had 11 homicides in 13 days (Police Chiefs Cite Youths in Crime Rise, Call for More Federal Funds. The Washington Post, August 31, 2006). The Washington Post reported on December 14, 2006 that there had been 35 bank robberies in Montgomery County in 2006, with three banks robbed on December 13 within minutes of each other.
 
The United States has the largest number of privately owned guns in the world. The unchecked spread of guns has caused incessant murders. A report released by the U.S. Justice Department in 2006 said that in 2005, 477,040 victims of violent crimes stated that they faced an offender with a firearm. A Washington metropolitan police department report stated in 2006 that from 2001 to 2005, 901 of 1,126 homicide victims, or about 80 percent, were fatally shot, while the percentage in New Orleans was 92 percent (District Slaying Usually with Gun. The Washington Times, November 17, 2006). Chicago was hit with five slayings and three injuries on late May 20 and early May 21, 2006 (Weekend Shooting Kill 5. The Chicago Tribune, May 22, 2006). On November 16, Detroit reported two people killed and three injured within 10 minutes in the western part of the city (Detroit Man Charged with Murder, Assault in Apparently Random Shooting Spree That Killed 2. AP, November 20, 2006). In Kansas, Missouri, a man shot five people to death on December 16, including his longtime girlfriend and three of their children. He then killed himself (Man kills 5 in Family, Then Self. The Kansas City Star, December 17, 2006). And on Christmas Eve of 2006, a gunman opened fire at shopping people in a shopping mall in Florida, and then on the police, killing one man (Mall Shooter Likely Knew Victim, Police Say. CNN.com, December 24, 2006).
 
Campus shootings are rampant in the United States. The country reported three campus shootings in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Colorado within one week from the end of September to the beginning of October 2006. Five girls were fatally shot and six others injured during the shooting incident in an Amish school in Pennsylvania on October 2, 2006 (Man Shoots 11, Killing 5 Girls, in Amish School. The New York Times, October 3, 2006).   
 
2008
 
Widespread violent crimes in the United States pose serious threats to its people's lives, property and personal security.
According to a report published in September 2008 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the country reported 1.4 million violent crimes, including 17,000 murders (The Washington Post, June 10, 2008), and 9.8 million property crimes (The World Journal, September 16, 2008) in 2007. Throughout 2007, the estimated number of robberies counted 445,125, a 7.5 percent rise over the last five years (The Washington Post, September 16, 2008). In cities with 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, the number of murders increased by 3.7 percent than 2006 (The Washington Post, June 10, 2008). In those with populations of 10,000 to 30,000, the number of violent crimes rose 2.4 percent than 2006 (The Washington Post, September 16, 2008). U.S. residents age 12 and older experienced an estimated 23 million crimes of violence or theft. The violent crime rate in 2007 was 20.7 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older; for property crimes it was 146.5 per 1,000 households. (Criminal Victimization, 2007, U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cv07.htm). Among cities with relatively high violence and murders rates, New Orleans reported 95 murders per 100,000 population, Baltimore 45, Detroit 44, St. Louis 40, Philadelphia 27.8, Houston 16.2, and Dallas 16.1 (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 10, 2008). In the United States, one murder is committed every 31 minutes, one rape in every 5.8 minutes, and one burglary every 14.5 seconds (The Washington Post, September 16, 2008).
 
Guns are widespread in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court asserted that Americans had an individual right to possess and use firearms, even when the guns are not related to service in a government militia, the Christian Science Monitor reported on June 27, 2008. Statistics show that the U.S. citizens own about 200 million private guns, including 60 to 65 million pistols. A total of 48 states in the United States allow its residents to bear guns (The China Press, October 16, 2008), while it is believed that one can buy a gun at gun shows in 35 states without a background check (United Press International, October 3, 2008). A gun store outside Nashville, Tennessee, sold 70 guns on November5, 2008 alone (http://www.usqiaobao.com). More than 20 airports in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities allow people with gun permits to carry firearms in the general public areas of the terminal (The China Press, October 15, 2008). A local high school in north Texas even let some teachers carry concealed weapons (The New York Times, August 29, 2008). The Washington Post reported on December 5, 2007 that 10 states, including Virginia, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Mississippi, supplied 57 percent of the guns that were recovered in crimes in other states in 2007. The 10 states with the highest crime-gun export rates had nearly 60 percent more gun homicides than the 10 states with the lowest rates.
 
The frequent occurrences of gun killings were a serious threat to the lives of U.S. citizens. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.35 million high school students in 2007 were either threatened or injured with a weapon at least once on school property (United Press International, October 3, 2008). Young people represent an expanding proportion of all shooting victims, from 13 percent in 2002 to more than 21 percent in 2007. According to a Harvard University survey of high school students in 2006, a fifth of the 1,200 questioned in schools across Boston had witnessed a shooting. More than 40 percent believed it was easy to get a gun, and 28 percent said they did not feel safe on the bus or train (The Boston Globe, September 18, 2008). In the 2007-08 school year, a record 34 Chicago Public School students were killed (The Chicago Tribune, April 2, 2008). Within a week from February 7, 2008, the United States had seven shooting incidents, leading to 23 deaths and dozens of injuries. On March 27, 2008, five people in Georgia and Kentucky were shot dead (The Associated Press, March 27, 2008, March 28, 2008). On the night of April 18, nine shootings were reported in a period ofless than two hours in Chicago (The Chicago Tribune, April 21, 2008). In November, Baltimore had 31 shootings (The Baltimore Sun, December 2, 2008). On December 24, 2008, a man dressed in a Santa costume shot at a Christmas Eve party at his ex-parents-in-law's house, causing eight deaths, three injuries and three missing persons (The China Press, December 26, 2008).
 
2009

 
Widespread violent crimes in the United States posed threats to the lives, properties and personal security of its people.
 
In 2008, U.S. residents experienced 4.9 million violent crimes, 16.3 million property crimes and 137,000 personal thefts, and the violent crime rate was 19.3 victimizations per 1,000 persons aged 12 or over, according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2009 (Criminal Victimization 2008, U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov). In 2008, over 14 million arrests occurred for all offenses (except traffic violations) in the country, and the arrest rate for violent crime was 198.2 per 100,000 inhabitants (Crime in the United States, 2008, http://www.fbi.gov). In 2009, a total of 35 domestic homicides occurred in Philadelphia, a 67 percent increase from 2008 (The New York Times, December 30, 2009). In New York City, 461 murders were reported in 2009, and the crime rate was 1,151 cases per 100,000 people. San Antonio in Texas was deemed as the most dangerous among 25 U.S. large cities with 2,538 crimes recorded per 100,000 people (The China Press, December 30, 2009). The murder rate rose 5.5 percent in towns with a population of 10,000 or fewer in 2008 (http://www.usatoday.com, June 1, 2009). Most of the United States' 15,000 annual murders occur in cities where they are concentrated in poorer neighborhoods (http://www.reuters.com, October 7, 2009).
 
The United States ranks first in the world in terms of the number of privately-owned guns. According to the data from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), American gun owners, out of 309 million in total population, have more than 250 million guns, while a substantial proportion of U.S. gun owners had more than one weapon. Americans usually buy 7 billion rounds of ammunition a year, but in 2008 the figure jumped to about 9 billion (The China Press, September 25, 2009). In the United States, airline passengers are allowed to take unloaded weapons after declaration.
 
In the United States, about 30,000 people die from gun-related incidents each year (The China Press, April 6, 2009). According to a FBI report, there had been 14,180 murder victims in 2008 (USA Today, September 15, 2009). Firearms were used in 66.9 percent of murders, 43.5 percent of robberies and 21.4 percent of aggravated assaults (http://www.thefreelibrary.com). USA Today reported that a man named Michael McLendon killed 10 people in two rural towns of Alabama before turning a gun on himself on March 11, 2009. On March 29, a man named Robert Stewart shot and killed eight people and injured three others in a nursing home in North Carolina (USA Today, March 11, 2009). On April 3, an immigrant called Jiverly Wong shot 13 people dead and wounded four others in an immigration services center in downtown Binghamton, New York (The New York Times, April 4, 2009). In the year 2009, a string of attacks on police shocked the country. On March 21, a 26-year-old jobless man shot and killed four police officers in Oakland, California, before he was killed by police gunfire (http://cbs5.com). On April 4, a man called Richard Poplawski shot three police officers to death in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On November 29, an ex-convict named Maurice Clemmons shot four police officers to death inside a coffee shop in Parkland, Washington (The New York Times, December 1, 2 and 3, 2009).
 
Campuses became an area worst hit by violent crimes as shootings spread there and kept escalating. The U.S. Heritage Foundation reported that 11.3 percent of high school students in Washington D.C. reported being "threatened or injured" with a weapon while on school property during the 2007-2008 school year. In the same period, police responded to more than 900 calls to 911 reporting violent incidents at the addresses of Washington D.C. public schools (A Report of The Heritage Center for Data Analysis, School Safety in Washington, D.C.: New Data for the 2007-2008 School Year, http://www.heritage.org). In New Jersey public schools, a total of 17,666 violent incidents were reported in 2007-2008 (Annual Report on Violence, Vandalism and Substance Abuse in New Jersey Public Schools by New Jersey Department of Education, October 2009, http://www.state.nj.us). In the City University of New York, a total of 107 major crimes occurred in five of its campuses during 2006 and 2007(The New York Post, September 22, 2009). 
 
2010
 
The United States reports the world's highest incidence of violent crimes, and its people's lives, properties and personal security are not duly protected.
 
Every year, one out of every five people is a victim of a crime in the United States. No other nation on earth has a rate that is higher (10 Facts About Crime in the United States that Will Blow Your Mind, Beforitsnews.com). In 2009, an estimated 4.3 million violent crimes, 15.6 million property crimes and 133,000 personal thefts were committed against U.S. residents aged 12 or older, and the violent crime rate was 17.1 victimizations per 1,000 persons, according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Justice on October 13, 2010 (Criminal Victimization 2009, U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov). The crime rate surged in many cities in the United States. St. Louis in Missouri reported more than 2,070 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, making it the nation's most dangerous city (The Associated Press, November 22, 2010). Detroit residents experienced more than 15,000 violent crimes each year, which means the city has 1,600 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. The United States' four big cities - Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York - reported increases in murders in 2010 from the previous year (USA Today, December 5, 2010). Twenty-five murder cases occurred in Los Angeles County in a week from March 29 to April 4, 2010; and in the first half of 2010, 373 people were killed in murders in Los Angeles County (www.lapdonline.org). As of November 11, New York City saw 464 homicide cases, up 16 percent from the 400 reported at the same time last year (The Washington Post, November 12, 2010).
 
The United States exercised lax control on the already rampant gun ownership. Reuters reported on November 10, 2010 that the United States ranks first in the world in terms of the number of privately-owned guns. Some 90 million people own an estimated 200 million guns in the United States, which has a population of about 300 million. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled on June 28, 2010 that the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms that can not be violated by state and local governments, thus extending the Americans' rights to own a gun for self-defense purposes to the entire country (The Washington Post, June 29, 2010). Four U.S. states - Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia and Virginia - allow loaded guns in bars. And 18 other states allow weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol (The New York Times, October 3, 2010). Tennessee has nearly 300,000 handgun permit holders. The Washington Times reported on June 7, 2010 that in November 2008, a total of 450,000 more people in the United States purchased firearms than had bought them in November 2007. This was a more than 10-fold increase, compared with the change in sales from November 2007 over November 2006. From November 2008 to October 2009, almost 2.5 million more people bought guns than had done so in the preceding 12 months (The Washington Times, June 7, 2010). The frequent campus shootings in colleges in the United States came to the spotlight in recent years. The United Kingdom's Daily Telegraph reported on February 21, 2011 that a new law that looks certain to pass through the legislature in Texas, the United States, would allow half a million students and teachers in its 38 public colleges to carry guns on campus. It would become only the second state, after Utah, to enforce such a rule.
 
The United States had high incidence of gun-related blood-shed crimes. Statistics showed there were 12,000 gun murders a year in the United States (The New York Times, September 26, 2010). Figures released by the U.S. Department of Justice on October 13, 2010 showed weapons were used in 22 percent of all violent crimes in the United States in 2009, and about 47 percent of robberies were committed with arms (www.ojp.usdoj.gov, October 13, 2010). On March 30, 2010, five men killed four people and seriously injured five others in a deadly drive-by shooting (The Washington Post, April 27, 2010). In April, six separate shootings occurred overnight, leaving 16 total people shot, two fatally (www.myfoxchicago.com). On April 3, a deadly shooting at a restaurant in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, left four people dead and two others wounded (www.nbclosangeles.com, April 4, 2010). One person was killed and 21 others wounded in separate shootings around Chicago roughly between May 29 and 30 (www.chicagobreakingnews.com, May 30, 2010). In June, 52 people were shot at a weekend in Chicago (www.huffingtonpost.com, June 21, 2010). Three police officers were shot dead by assailants in the three months from May to July (Chicago Tribune, July 19, 2010). A total of 303 people were shot and 33 of them were killed in Chicago in the 31 days of July in 2010. Between November 5 and 8, four people were killed and at least five others injured in separate shootings in Oakland (World Journal, November 11, 2010). On November 30, a 15-year-old boy in Marinette County, Wisconsin, took his teacher and 24 classmates hostage at gunpoint (abcNews, November 30, 2010). On January 8, 2011, a deadly rampage critically wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Six people were killed and 12 others injured in the attack (Los Angeles Times, January 9, 2011).
 
2011
 
The United States has mighty strength in human, financial and material resources to exert effective control over violent crimes. However, its society is chronically suffering from violent crimes, and its citizens' lives, properties and personal security are in lack of proper protection.
 
A report published by the U.S. Department of Justice on September 15, 2011, revealed that in 2010 the U.S. residents aged 12 and above experienced 3.8 million violent victimizations, 1.4 million serious violent victimizations, 14.8 million property victimizations and 138,000 personal thefts. The violent victimization rate was 15 victimizations per 1,000 residents (www.bjs.gov). The crime rate surged in many cities and regions in the United States. In the southern region of the United States, there were 452 violent crimes and 3,438.8 property crimes per 100,000 inhabitants (in 2010) on average (The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2011). Just four weeks into 2011, San Francisco saw eight homicides -- compared with five during the same time of the previous year, with Oakland racking up 11, when the previous year in the same period it had four (The San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 2011). Grand larcenies in the subway in New York City increased from 852 in 2010 to 1,075 cases in the first nine months of 2011, a 25 percent jump (The China Press, September 24, 2011). Homicide cases in Detroit in 2011 saw a 13.5 percent rise over 2010 (www.buzzle.com). Between January and October 2011, a total of 123,924 serious crime cases took place in Chicago (portal.chicagopolice.org). An anti-bullying public service announcement declared in January 2011 that more than six million schoolchildren experienced bullying in the previous six months (CNN, March 10, 2011). According to statistics from the Family First Aid, almost 30 percent of teenagers in the United States are estimated to be involved in school bullying (www.familyfirstaid.org).
 
The United States prioritizes the right to keep and bear arms over the protection of citizens' lives and personal security and exercises lax firearm possession control, causing rampant gun ownership. The U.S. people hold between 35 percent and 50 percent of the world' s civilian-owned guns, with every 100 people having 90 guns (Online edition of the Foreign Policy, January 9, 2011). According to a Gallup poll in October 2011, 47 percent of American adults reported that they had a gun. That was an increase of six percentage points from a year ago and the highest Gallup had recorded since 1993. Fifty-two percent of middle-aged adults, aged between 35 and 54, reported to own guns, and the adults' gun ownership in the south region was 54 percent (The China Press, October 28, 2011). The New York Times reported on November 14, 2011, that since 1995, more than 3,300 felons and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors had regained their gun rights in the state of Washington and of that number, more than 400 had subsequently committed new crimes, including shooting and other felonies (The New York Times, November 14, 2011).
 
The United States is the leader among the world's developed countries in gun violence and gun deaths. According to a report of the Foreign Policy on January 9, 2011, over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence and another 200,000 Americans are estimated to be injured each year due to guns (Online edition of the Foreign Policy, January 9, 2011). According to statistics released by the U.S. Department of Justice, among the 480,760 robbery cases and 188,380 rape and sexual assault cases in 2010, the rates of victimization involving firearms were 29 percent and 7 percent, respectively (www.bjs.gov). On June 2, 2011, a shooting rampage in Arizona left six people dead and one injured (The China Press, June 3, 2011). In Chicago, more than 10 overnight shooting incidents took place just between the evening of June 3 and the morning of June 4 (Chicago Tribune, June 4, 2011). Another five overnight shootings occurred between August 12 evening and August 13 morning in Chicago. These incidents have caused a number of deaths and injuries (Chicago Tribune, August 13, 2011). Shooting spree cases involving one gunman shooting dead over five people also happened in the states of Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Nevada and Southern California (The New York Times, October 13, 2011; CNN, July 8, 2011; CBS, July 23, 2011;USA Today, August 9, 2011). High incidence of gun-related crimes has long ignited complaints of the U.S. people and they stage multiple protests every year, demanding the government strictly control the private possession of arms. The U.S. government, however, fails to pay due attention to this issue.
 
2012
 
The U.S. was haunted by serious violent crimes in 2012 with frequent occurrence of firearms-related criminal cases. Its people's lives and personal security were not duly protected.
 
According to statistics released by the FBI in September 2012, an estimated 1,203,564 violent crimes occurred in the U.S. in 2011, about 386.3 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants. Aggravated assaults accounted for 62.4 percent of violent crimes reported to law enforcement. Robbery reached 29.4 percent of violent crimes, forcible rape accounted for 6.9 percent, and murder amounted to 1.2 percent of estimated violent crimes in 2011. And firearms were used in 67.7 percent of the nation' s murders, 41.3 percent of robberies, and 21.2 percent in all crimes in the U.S.
 
Americans are the most heavily armed people in the world per capita. According to a CNN report on July 23, 2012, there were an estimated 270 million guns in the hands of civilians in the U.S. and more than 100,000 people were shot by guns each year. In 2010, there were more than 30,000 deaths caused by firearms. However, the U.S. government has done little in gun control. In 2008 and 2010 landmark Supreme Court rulings on two firearms-related cases dramatically diminished the authority of state and local governments to limit gun ownership. Roughly half of the 50 U.S. states have adopted laws allowing gun owners to carry their guns openly in most public places. And many states have 'stand your ground' laws that allow people to kill if they come under threat, even, in some cases, if they can escape the threat without violence. According to an article on the website of the Hindu on August 7, 2012, in population-adjusted terms, civilians in some parts of the U.S. are more likely to become the victim of a firearms-related murder than their counterparts in war-torn regions like Iraq or Afghanistan. On January 16, 2013, the U.S. president announced 23 steps on gun control to take immediately without congressional approval. And the president signed three of the measures. But the public opinion generally believes that the gun-control measures will encounter great resistance.
 
According to a report on the USA Today's website on October 17, 2012, the violent crime rate went up 17 percent in 2011. Firearms-related violent crimes posed as one of the most serious threats to the lives and personal security of the U.S. citizens. Statistics showed that an estimated 14,612 people fell victims of murder in 2011 and 9,903 of them were firearms-related murder victims (Website of the Congressional Research service, www.fas.org, November 14, 2012). The U.S. witnessed more firearms-related violent crimes in 2012. According to NYPD statistics published on September 2, 2012, there had been 1,001 shootings so far that year in New York, about 3.4 percent more than the 968 reported at the same time the previous year (NY Daily News, September 9, 2012). According to statistics from the website of Chicago Police Department, there were 2,460 shooting incidents in Chicago in 2012, up 10 percent year on year. Some of the shootings were quite bloody and terrifying, such as the movie theater shooting in Colorado and the school shooting in Connecticut.
 
On July 20, 2012, James E. Holmes, 24, entered a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, carrying an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and at least one handgun. He sprayed people at the theater who were watching a movie, leaving at least 12 dead and 59 wounded. A witness said: "He was just literally shooting everyone, like hunting season." According to a CNN report on July 21, law enforcement documents showed that the weapons were purchased legally by Holmes at sporting goods stores in the Denver area over a six-month period before the shooting happened. According to a CNN report on July 23, in wake of the shooting rampage in Colorado, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: "I don't think there's any other developed country in the world that has remotely the problem we have."
 
On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He committed suicide after that. But before he came to the school, he had shot and killed his mother. The incident was the second deadliest school shooting in the U.S. history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre which left 32 killed.
 
2013
 
The U.S. was haunted by an increasing number of violent crimes in 2013 with frequent occurrence of firearms-related criminal cases, public information show. American citizens' lives and personal safety are threatened by an increasingly dangerous environment.
 
The number of violent crimes has risen sharply. According to the Uniform Crime Reports, released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2013, the U.S. registered 1,214,464 violent crimes in 2012, of which 14,827 are murders and nonnegligent manslaughters, 84,376 forcible rapes, 354,522 robberies and 760,739 aggravated assaults. According to statistics revealed by the Bureau of Justice on October 24, 2013, the rate of violent victimization increased from 22.6 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older in 2011 to 26.1 in 2012.
 
On April 15, 2013, twin bombings ripped through Boston Marathon, leaving three dead and 264 injured. Among the killed was an 8-year-old. U.S. authorities called the bombings a terrorist attack (USA Today, December 6, 2013).
 
The Washington Post reported on January 1, 2014, that Robert Senquan Spencer, 21, was dead from a shotgun blast on a Southwest Washington street, becoming the District's 80th homicide victim of 2013. The District had 103 homicides in 2013 - a sharp increase from 88 in 2012.
 
American citizens keep the world's largest number of privately owned guns. According to figures released by the FBI in 2013, the total number of background checks conducted for gun sales in 2013 add up to 21,093,273, beating the previous 2012 record of 19,592,303 by 1,500,970 (www.townhall.com, January 7, 2014). As of 2013, there were about 300 million guns in the U.S.. On average, more than 100,000 Americans are being shot each year, and 30,000 deaths are caused by the use of guns. Victims are either killed in gun-related crimes or died in suicide or nonnegligent manslaughter. The U.S. government failed to take effective measures to control guns.(www.gunfaq.orgwww.guncrimestatistics.com).
 
After the mass shootings in Colorado and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, there were strong calls in the United States for stricter controls on firearms. On April 17, a bipartisan bill to support expanded background checks on firearms was blocked in the Senate. Previously, plans for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines had already been removed from the gun-control bill (www.bbc.co.uk, April 17, 2013). At the same time, states in the U.S. continue to loosen their gun laws. On January 5, Illinois became the last state in the U.S. to allow average citizens to carry around concealed firearms. Anyone with firearm owner's identification card in the U.S. is allowed to pack heat in places except the no-go zones including schools, parks and restaurants (www.usatoday.com, January 8, 2014).
 
Gun violence is rampant in the U.S.. There are 11,000 Americans killed by gun violence every year (www.telegraph.co.uk, December 17, 2013). Information collected regarding types of weapons used in violent crime showed that firearms were used in 69.3 percent of the nation's murders, 41 percent of robberies, and 21.8 percent of aggravated assaults, according to the Uniform Crime Reports released by the FBI in 2013. Every year, there is serious gun violence in the U.S.. On October 21, 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder said the average number of mass shooting incidents has tripled in recent years. According to Justice Department figures on mass shootings, 404 people were shot and 207 people were killed from 2009 to 2012 (www.huffingtonpost.com, October 21, 2013). According to a report published on the USA Today on December 16, 2013, 137 people died in 30 mass killings - four or more people killed, not including the killer - in 2013.
 
On September 16, 2013, civilian contractor and military veteran Aaron Alexis, a resident of Texas, went on a shooting rampage after he entered the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C. in the morning, killing 12 people and injuring several others. An eye witness said the gunman began shooting from a fourth-floor overlook in the hallway and was aiming down at people in the building's cafeteria on the first floor. Aaron Alexis was shot dead in a 30 minutes' exchange of gunfire with authorities (www.usatoday.com, September 17, 2013).
 
2014
 
In the U.S., problems concerning respecting and protecting civil rights are severe. The nation is haunted by spreading guns, frequent occurrence of violent crimes, the excessive use of force by police that infringed on citizens' personal rights, as well as wide criticism of illegal eavesdropping that violated citizens' right of privacy.
 
Civil rights are threatened by rampant violent crimes. According to the "Crime in the United States" released by the FBI, there were an estimated 1,163,146 violent crimes reported to law enforcement in 2013, of which 14,196 are murders, 79,770 are rapes, 345,031 robberies and 724,149 aggravated assaults (http://www.fbi.gov.) There were an estimated 367.9 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013. The Market Watch announced 10 most dangerous cities in America (www.marketwatch.com, November 20, 2014)). The lowest ranking of the ten was Birmingham in Alabama, where 1,345 crimes were reported for every 100,000 residents, while in Detroit, 2,072 violent crimes were reported for 100,000 residents, the highest in the nation in 2013. In 2014, Los Angeles's overall total of violent crimes was up 7.6 percent by early October, compared with the same time in 2013 (The Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2014). There was about 1,500 violent crimes registered a month in 2014. Meanwhile, gang violence in the U.S. was at an all time high. There were currently an estimated 1.7 million gang members spread throughout the country (www.insidermonkey.com, November 1, 2014).
 
The rampant use of guns was not contained. Though the FBI had launched federal background checks to block groups like fugitives and felons, from buying firearms, local law enforcement authorities did not report arrest warrants to the database used to screen gun buyers (The USA Today, April 23, 2014). Consequently, tens of thousands of fugitives including those facing serious charges can pass the background checks and bought firearms. Statistics showed that the use of firearms was behind about 69 percent of the murders in the U.S., while for robberies, the figure was 40 percent, and for aggravated assaults, 21.6 percent (edition.cnn.com, September 24, 2014). A total of 2,215 people were shot in Chicago in the first 10 months of 2014 (www.insidermonkey.com, November 1, 2014,). There were 30 shooting cases reported in three days in a week in the city (projects.aljazeera.com, November 19, 2014).
 
Law enforcement authorities were run with a loose rein, with some even turning a blind eye to fugitives. Police officers were ignoring sex crimes on a regular basis. A report released in November by the inspector general of New Orleans found that of 1,290 sex crime calls for service assigned to five New Orleans police detectives from 2011 to 2013, 840 were designated as miscellaneous, and nothing at all was done (The New York Times, November 13, 2014). Of the 450 calls that led to the creation of an initial investigative report, no further documentation was found for 271 of them. Police and prosecutors were allowing tens of thousands of wanted felons to escape justice merely by crossing a state border (The USA Today, March 12, 2014). A confidential FBI database chronicled 186,873 of these cases, including more than 3,300 accused of sex crimes. A total of 78,878 felony suspects won't be extradited from any place but neighboring states (The USA Today, March 12, 2014). Police indicated they would not spend the time or money to retrieve the fugitive from another state.
 
2015
 
Civil rights were wantonly infringed upon in the United States in 2015 with rampant gun-related crimes, excessive use of force by police, severe corruption in prisons and frequent occurrence of illegal eavesdropping on personal information.
 
Citizen's life and property security were threatened by violent crimes. According to the report "Crime in the United States" released by the FBI in 2015, an estimated 1,165,383 violent crimes occurred nationwide in 2014, of which 14,249 were murders, 84,041 were rapes, 325,802 robberies and 741,291 aggravated assaults. Nationwide, there were an estimated 8,277,829 property crimes, with the victims of such crimes suffering losses calculated at an estimated 14.3 billion U.S. dollars. The statistics showed the estimated rate of violent crime was 365.5 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants, and the property crime rate was 2,596.1 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants (www.fbi.gov). Many cities in the United States saw large jumps in crime during the first half of 2015: the murder rate rose 48 percent and 59 percent compared to the same period of the previous year in Baltimore and St. Louis, respectively, said an article carried by the Economist website on December 1, 2015 (www.economist.com, December 1, 2015). James Howell of the U.S. National Gang Center pointed out that in the past five years the United States had seen an 8 percent increase in the number of gangs, an 11 percent increase in members and a 23 percent increase in gang-related homicides (www.usnews.com, March 6, 2015).
 
Citizen's right of life could not be guaranteed with the rampant use of guns. Statistics showed that there were more than 300 million guns in the United States which had a population of more than 300 million. Over the past decade, more than 4 million U.S. citizens became victims of assaults, robberies and other gun-related crimes. According to a toll report by the Gun Violence Archive, there were a total of 51,675 gun violence incidents in the United States last year as of December 28, including 329 mass shootings. Altogether 13,136 were killed and 26,493 injured (www.gunviolencearchive.org, December 28, 2015). According to the report "Crime in the United States" released by the FBI in 2015, firearms were used in 67.9 percent of the nation's murders, 40.3 percent of robberies, and 22.5 percent of aggravated assaults in 2014 (www.fbi.gov).
 
2016
 
In 2016, the U.S. government exercised no effective control over guns, law enforcement departments abused their power, and crimes were not effectively contained. As a result, civil rights, especially the right to life, were seriously threatened and people's personal rights were continuously infringed upon.
 
Occurrence of gun-related crimes sustained a high level. According to data released by the FBI on September 26, 2016, firearms were used in 71.5 percent of the nation's murders, 40.8 percent of robberies, and 24.2 percent of aggravated assaults in 2015 (ucr.fbi.gov, September 26, 2016). According to a toll report by the Gun Violence Archive, there were a total of 58,125 gun violence incidents, including 385 mass shootings, in the United States in 2016, leaving 15,039 killed and 30,589 injured (www.gunviolencearchive.org, December 31, 2016). On June 12, 2016, a gunman opened fire inside a crowded nightclub in Orlando, killing 50 people and injuring 53 others in a rampage that was the deadliest mass shooting in the country's history (www.washingtonpost.com, June 12, 2016).
 
2017
 
Violent crime was on the rise in the United States, the government exercised no effective control over guns which caused continuous growth of gun incidents, power abuse by American police sparked mass protests, and government surveillance infringed individual privacy. As a result, civil rights of the American people, especially the right to life and freedom, were seriously threatened.
 
Violent crime was on the rise in the United States. According to the FBI’s annual report on national crime statistics released in September 2017, there were an estimated 1.2 million violent crimes in the United States in 2016, an increase of 4.1 percent from 2015. It showed the estimated rate of violent crime was 386.3 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants, up 3.4 percent compared with the 2015 rate. The estimated number of aggravated assaults, murders and rapes in the nation in 2016 increased 5.1 percent, 8.6 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively, when compared with the 2015 estimate (www.fbi.gov, ucr.fbi.gov, September 2017). 
 
Ineffective gun control has caused continuous growth of gun violence in the United States. A Pew Research Center survey showed that at least two-thirds of the surveyed Americans had lived in a household with a gun at some point in their lives (www.pewsocialtrends.org, June 22, 2017). Seventy-three percent of the homicides for which the FBI received weapons data in 2016 involved the use of firearms, according to the FBI’s annual report on national crime statistics released in September 2017(www.ucr.fbi.gov, September 2017). According to the Gun Violence Archive of 2017, as of December 25, the total number of incidents in the United States was 60,091, which killed 15,182 and injured 30,619. Among the incidents, 338 were mass shooting (www.gunviolencearchive.org, December 25, 2017). On October 1, 2017, a gunman, named as 64-year-old Nevada resident Stephen Paddock, opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas towards an open-air music festival attended by 22,000. Nearly 60 people were killed and about 500 injured in the mass shooting, the deadliest in modern U.S. history (www.bbc.com, October 2, 2017). The police found 42 guns, thousands of bullets, and explosives in Paddock's hotel room and his home. On November 5, 2017, at least 26 were dead and 20 were injured after a man dressed in black entered First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas armed with a rifle and opened fire on its congregation. Those shot ranged from 5 to 72 years old.
 
U.S. police abused their law enforcement power. According to statistics released by the FBI, law enforcement made an estimated 10,662,252 arrests nationwide in 2016. (Note: the UCR Program does not collect data on citations for traffic violations.) The arrest rate for the United States in 2016 was 3,298.5 arrests per 100,000 inhabitants (ucr.fbi.gov, September 2017). According to The Washington Post’s Fatal Force database, 987 people were shot by police in 2017. The Washington Post reported on July 26, 2017, that American police shot and killed a man while trying to serve a warrant at the wrong house. The man didn’t have a warrant out for his arrest or a criminal record. Statistics released by Pew Research Center on January 11, 2017, showed that since 2015, almost 500 blacks had been fatally shot by police (www.pewsocialtrends.org, January 11, 2017). Huffington post reported on November 7, 2017, that two American detectives Eddie Martins, 37, and Richard Hall, 33, were arrested on charges including raping a woman in a police van in New York after finding her in possession of marijuana and anti-anxiety pills.
 
Violent law enforcement by American police sparked mass protests in the United States. On February 22, 2017, hundreds of people took to the streets of Anaheim, Calif., for a sprawling protest that was sparked by video footage showing an off-duty Los Angeles police officer firing his gun during a confrontation with teenagers a day earlier. Police said they had arrested 23 people during the protests that followed (www.washingtonpost.com, February 23, 2017). Protesters in St. Louis on the night of September 15, 2017, blocked highways, damaged public and private property, broke windows, threw rocks at the mayor's house and threw bricks at police officers after a white former police officer earlier in the day was acquitted in the 2011 fatal shooting of a black man. Thirty-two protesters were arrested. “Time and time again, African-American men are killed by police, and nobody is held accountable,” said one protester (abcnews.go.com, September 16, 2017).
 
Online surveillance by the U.S. government infringed individual privacy. According to a report by Daily Mail on April 6, 2017, Twitter refused a government demand to reveal who was behind an account opposed to President Donald Trump's tough immigration policies. The company filed a federal lawsuit to block the order, citing freedom of speech as a basis for not turning over records about the account. The New York Times reported on September 13, 2017, that there were nearly 15,000 forced searches of phones and laptops in the United States from October 2016 to March 2017, compared with 8,383 in the same period a year before. According to a report by the Independent on September 27, 2017, the American government quietly announced that it was planning on continuing to collect social media information on immigrants in America, a policy that has experts worried about privacy abuses and inefficiency. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an associate professor of law at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, said that monitoring social media accounts could have a chilling effect on free speech. The U.S. Department of Justice was investigating protesters who exercised their First Amendment rights of free assembly at Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017. The Justice Department has demanded the company DreamHost turn over some 1.3 million IP addresses of people who visited a website coordinating Inauguration Day protests(edition.cnn.com, August 17, 2017). 
 
2018

Frequent Infringement on Civil Rights

The United States reported frequent occurrence of violent crime cases, rampant gun crimes and the abuse of power by public officers, while surveillance was unchecked and unscrupulous and press freedom was hollow.
 
Serious violent crimes took place frequently. According to the 2017 edition of the FBI’s annual report, Crime in the United States, released in September 2018, there were an estimated 1,247,321 violent crimes, including 17,284 incidents of murder, 135,755 rapes, 810,825 aggravated assaults, as well as 319,356 robberies. Among the cases, 72.6 percent of murders, 40.6 percent of robberies, and 26.3 percent of aggravated assaults were committed with firearms (www.ucr.fbi.gov). Chicago was named as one of the most dangerous big cities in the United States, as hundreds of people were murdered each year in recent years. On August 4 and 5, 74 people in the city were shot, and 12 of them died. Tens of thousands of young Americans fled from the cities with rampant violent crimes (Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2018).
 
Gun violence continued to be rampant. According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, the United States reported 57,103 incidents of gun violence, resulting in 14,717 deaths, 28,172 injuries, including casualties of 3,502 juveniles (www.gunviolencearchive.org, data recorded on February 24, 2019). On May 18, in a mass shooting in the Santa Fe High School near Houston, Texas, 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis killed 10 people and wounded more than 10 others with a shotgun and a pistol. Explosive devices were found inside the school and nearby (www.washingtonpost.com, May 19, 2018). On November 8, Marine Corps veteran Ian David Long broke into a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, fatally shooting 12 people and wounding many (www.nbcnews.com, November 9, 2018). The Huffington Post reported on December 6 that gun violence has shortened the life expectancy of Americans by nearly 2.5 years, with shooting driving down the average lifespan of African-Americans by 4.14 years, based on official data on gun deaths between 2000 and 2016.
 
Press freedom suffered from unprecedented blow. According to a May 2, 2018 report from the international non-governmental organization Article 19, the environment for the press in the United States has further deteriorated, with journalists occasionally being attacked, searched, arrested, intercepted at borders, and restricted from publishing public information. The U.S. government has often publicly and vehemently accused the media and journalists of making "fake news," creating an intimidating and hostile environment. Thomas Huges, executive director of Article 19, pointed out that threats to press freedom in the United States have been climbing alarmingly in recent years (www.article19.org, May 2, 2018). Newsweek published a story on August 16 that the standoff between the U.S. government and media in the past year has eroded the country’s press freedom.
 
The legitimate rights of interviewing by reporters were infringed. On November 7, 2018, to stop White House correspondent from CNN from asking follow-up questions, staff at the White House attempted to take the microphone away from the correspondent and revoked his press pass (uk.reuters.com, November 19, 2018). The Columbia Journalism Review reported on January 19 last year that the United States arrested journalists 34 times in 2017, nine of whom were accused of felony. The equipments of 15 journalists were confiscated, while 44 journalists suffered from personal attacks.
 
Religious intolerance remarks were on the rise. The Guardian reported on October 22, 2018 that during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, anti-Muslim rhetoric increased dramatically, with report showing that conspiracy theories targeting Muslims have increasingly entered the political mainstream. "More than a third have claimed that Muslims are inherently violent or pose an imminent threat," the report found, adding that "just under a third of the candidates considered have called for Muslims to be denied basic rights or declared that Islam is not a religion."
 
Online surveillance by the U.S. government infringed individual privacy. It has become a common practice by the NSA, FBI, and CIA to gather and search through American's international emails, internet calls, and chats without obtaining a warrant. The PRISM program operates around the clock, wiretapping emails, Facebook messages, Google chats, Skype calls and the like without authorization (www.aclu.org, August 22, 2018).
 
A large number of protesters were arrested. The Chicago Tribune reported on June 28, 2018 that 575 people were arrested while protesting against the Trump administration's immigration policy in Washington D.C., most of whom were female. From September 4 to 6, U.S. Capitol Police arrested 212 people that protested Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, and another 300-plus protestors were arrested on October 4 (chicagotribune.com, June 28, 2018; thehill.com, September 6, 2018; edition.cnn.com, October 5, 2018). Reuters reported on December 11 that 32 religious leaders and activists were arrested at the U.S. border fence in San Diego during a protest to call for an end to the detention and deportation of the Central American migrants.
 
Miscarriage of justice resulted in wrongful convictions. In May, 2018 Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights for the UN, published a report saying that in the U.S. justice system, wealthy defendants are allowed to regain their freedom through bails while poor defendants have no choice but to stay in jail. The New Yorker reported on February 6 that a jury in Bronx of New York City vindicated Edward Garry's 23-year quest to clear his name, finding him not guilty of a 1995 murder (newyorker.com, February 6, 2018).
 
The Washington Post reported on December 19, 2018 that a man from Baltimore was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder. During the investigation of the case, local police did not investigate his alibi or other suspects, resulting in him serving 27 years in prison.
 
Public officers abusively exercised violence. According to reports released on the website of the U.S. Department of Justice on July 11 and November 8, former private prisoner transport officer Eric Scott Kindley committed, during his tenure, several armed sexual abuses or assaults on female prisoners, resulting in severe bodily and emotional harms to the victims. Several officers at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana were found to have beaten an inmate who was handcuffed and shackled, leaving the inmate with severe injuries. They also conspired to cover up the beating (www.justice.gov). The New York Daily News reported on December 18, 2018, citing the Associated Press, that two South Florida prison guards assaulted and intimidated several young inmates, severely infringing the rights of those detained.

2020

Incompetent Pandemic Containment Leads to Tragic Outcome
 
The United States claimed to be most abundant in medical resources and healthcare capacity, yet its response to the COVID-19 pandemic was chaotic, causing it to lead the world in the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and related deaths. 
 
Incompetent pandemic response led to dire consequences. A tally by Johns Hopkins University showed that as of the end of February 2021, the United States has registered more than 28 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, with related deaths exceeding 500,000. With a population of less than 5 percent of the world’s total, the United States accounted for more than 25 percent of all the confirmed cases and nearly 20 percent of the deaths. On Dec. 20, 2020, CNN reported that the state of California alone had reported 1.845 million COVID-19 cases and 22,599 deaths, which translates to roughly 4,669 known cases and 57 deaths for every 100,000 residents. Even these numbers don’t give the whole picture of the state, because many cases, including mild or asymptomatic infections, had not been diagnosed. Had the American authorities taken science-based measures to contain the pandemic, this could have been avoided. But since they had not, the pandemic, as epidemiologist and former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) William Foege had put it, is “a slaughter” to the United States.
 
National leaders ignored warnings from experts and downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic. According to the timeline of COVID-19 pandemic in the United States released by media outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Trump administration had repeatedly ignored alarms regarding the risks of the pandemic. In early January 2020, a National Security Council office had already received intelligence reports predicting the spread of the virus to the United States. In a Jan. 29, 2020 memo, then White House trade adviser Peter Navarro projected that a coronavirus pandemic might lead to as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses. A number of health officials, including then Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and medical experts also warned of the possibility of a pandemic in the United States. None of the aforementioned warnings brought the imminent pandemic to the Trump administration’s attention. Instead, the administration focused on controlling the message, and released misleading signals to the public by claiming “the risk of the virus to most Americans was very low,” suggesting that the coronavirus is no worse than the common flu, and stating the virus will “miraculously go away” when the weather gets warmer. Thus, the country lost crucial weeks for pandemic prevention and control. An article published on the website of The New York Times on April 13, 2020 commented that, then American leader’s “preference for following his gut rather than the data cost time, and perhaps lives.”
 
Government inaction led to uncontrolled pandemic spread. “There’s no need for that many to have died. We chose, as a country, to take our foot off the gas pedal. We chose to, and that's the tragedy.” So commented David Hayes-Bautista, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, after the pandemic death toll hit 300,000 in the United States. Disease modelers with the Columbia University also estimated that, if the United States had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, 2020, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, about 83 percent of the nation’s pandemic-related deaths would have been avoided. An editorial from the website of medical journal The Lancet, published on May 17, 2020, commented that the U.S. government was obsessed with magic bullets -- vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. At the same time, it noted that only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like testing, tracing, and isolation, would see the emergency brought to an end. Even when the pandemic is spreading in a vast area in the United States, the administration was hasty to restart the economy due to political concerns. According to news website Vox on Aug. 11, 2020, in April and May last year, several states rushed to reopen and caused the virus to shift to the South, West and eventually the rest of the United States. In addition, despite that experts had recommended people wear masks in public, the then American leader and some state officials had been extremely reluctant to issue any decree to make wearing masks mandatory.
 
Chaotic pandemic control and prevention measures caused confusion among the public. An article published by CNN on May 9, 2020 called the U.S. response to the pandemic “consistently inconsistent,” and noted that there were no national guidelines and no organized efforts to reopen the country beyond what measures states had taken. The article also said that in terms of pandemic control and prevention, public health officials say one thing while governors say another and the national leader says something else entirely. In addition, after the experts called for federal leadership, the then American leader left it to cities and states to solve national problems with testing and hospital supplies by themselves. When the federal government released a phased plan for reopening, the leader called on states to reopen faster. After the CDC recommended that people wear masks in public, the leader refused to do so for months. Even more ridiculously, the leader at one point advocated injecting bleach as a treatment.
 
National leaders shirked their responsibility out of arrogance. Despite one ludicrous idea after another, the then American leader refused to admit any fault. Instead, the leader invented all sorts of excuses to gloss over his mistakes while shirking from responsibilities. For one, the then leader insisted that the U.S. leads the world in COVID-19 cases because it tested more than any other country in the world. When asked about testing problems and rising deaths, the leader claimed he “doesn’t take responsibility at all.” However, White House adviser and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci admitted that the numbers didn’t lie and the United States had the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world.
 
Senior citizens fell victims to the government’s incompetent response to COVID-19. Senior citizens are a group more susceptible to the pandemic, yet they have been further marginalized in the U.S. pandemic prevention and control chaos, with their lives becoming valueless and their dignity trampled upon. On March 23 and April 20, 2020, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, told Fox News that he would rather die than see public health measures damage the U.S. economy and there are more important things than living. Furthermore, an Aug. 18, 2020 report published on The San Diego Union-Tribune website found that residents in long-term care facilities account for less than 1 percent of the U.S. population but more than 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths. A May 9, 2020 article from The Washington Post website called the U.S. pandemic control efforts “state-sanctioned killing,” where “the old, factory workers, and black and Hispanic Americans” were deliberately sacrificed.
 
The poor faced greater threat of infection. Researchers found that the Gini Index, an economic barometer that ranks income inequality from 0 (total equality) to 1 (total inequality), was a strong predictor of COVID-19 deaths. New York State, which had one of the highest Gini Index numbers also had the highest number of fatalities in the nation by a margin. The Guardian website reported on March 21, 2020 that in the wake of the epidemic, it’s the wealthy and powerful first get coronavirus tests, while low-paid workers, most of whom have no paid sick leave and can’t do their work from home, put themselves at greater risk of contracting the virus in order to earn a living. Public health officials said, in Los Angeles County, residents of low-income communities are three times more likely to die of COVID-19 than those in wealthier neighborhoods, according to a report published on the Los Angeles Times website on May 8, 2020. A Gallup survey revealed that one in seven American adults said that if they or their family members developed symptoms related to COVID-19, they would probably give up medical treatment because they were worried that they could not afford the costs. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, also pointed out that the poor in the United States were being hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. Low-income and poor people face far higher risks from the coronavirus due to chronic neglect and discrimination, and a muddled, corporate-driven federal response has failed them, he observed.
 
The handicapped and the homeless were in dire straits. A study released in November 2020 by the nonprofit FAIR Health found that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are three times more likely to die of COVID-19, compared to the general population. The website of the Los Angeles Times reported on May 14, 2020 that with the coronavirus-induced shock to the economy crippling businesses of all sizes and leaving millions of Americans out of work, homelessness in the United States could grow as much as 45 percent in a year. Many of the homeless Americans are elderly or disabled people. Given their originally poor physical health and bad living and hygienic conditions, they are susceptible to the virus. During the pandemic, the homeless were evicted and pushed into makeshift shelters. The website of Reuters reported on April 23, 2020 that the crowded shelters across the United States made it impossible for the homeless who lived there to maintain social distance, which made it easier for the virus to spread. The New York Times website reported on April 13, 2020 that in the New York City, a crisis has taken hold in homeless shelters, as more than 17,000 men and women are sleeping in group or “congregate” shelters for single adults, with beds close enough for people sleeping in them to hold hands. The Boston Globe website reported on May 4, 2020 that, about one-third of the homeless people who were tested have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
 
Outbreak in jails threatened lives of inmates. ABC News reported on Dec. 19, 2020 that at least 275,000 prisoners have been infected, of whom more than 1,700 have died, and nearly every prison system in the country has seen infection rates significantly higher than the communities around them. One of every five prisoners in facilities run by the federal Bureau of Prisons has had coronavirus, according to data collected by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the criminal justice system. They also found that 24 state prison systems have had even higher infection rates. Half of the prisoners in Kansas have been infected with COVID-19 — eight times the rate of cases among the state’s overall population. In Arkansas, four of every seven have had the virus.
 
Out-of-control pandemic brought Americans psychological pressure. The Trump administration’s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected Americans more than the virus itself, which has left people stressed and isolated. In a study published by the CDC on Aug. 14, 2020, due to stay-at-home orders, 40.9 percent of adults reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition, 30.9 percent reported either anxiety or depression and those numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. The same CDC study showed that 13 percent of people surveyed by the CDC during the same time said that they started or increased their substance use and 11 percent seriously considered suicide. A separate study released in June 2020 showed calls to suicide hotlines went up 47 percent nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic with some crisis lines experiencing a 300-percent increase.

Continuous Social Unrest Threatens Public Safety
 
The government failed to maintain proper law and order, and shootings and violent crimes, which were already high in incidence, recorded new highs during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing panic among members of the public. The police’s unrestrained use of violence in law enforcement triggered waves of protests that swept across the country. The police had abused their force to suppress protesters, and attacked and arrested journalists on a large scale, further fueling public anger and continuous social unrest.
 
Crime rates were on the rise amid the pandemic. While outdoor activities were down drastically as a result of various epidemic response measures, the crime rates were up in large cities amid the pandemic. According to the FBI’s Preliminary Uniform Crime Report released in September 2020, in the first half of 2020, the number of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter offenses increased 14.8 percent year on year, with cities with populations of 250,000 to 500,000 reporting an increase of 26 percent. During the same period, the number of arson offenses increased 19 percent year on year, while such offenses rose 52 percent in cities with populations of 1 million and over. Murders in Chicago spiked by 37 percent, while arson in the city was up 52.9 percent. New York City recorded an increase of 23 percent in homicides, while Los Angeles saw murders rise by 14 percent.
 
The number of violent crimes remained high. According to FBI reports released in 2020, more than 1.2 million violent crimes occurred in the United States in 2019, including 16,425 murders, 139,815 rapes, 267,988 robberies, and 821,182 aggravated assaults, translating to five murders, over 40 rapes, 80 robberies and 250 aggravated assaults per 100,000 inhabitants.
 
Gun sales and shootings hit record high. A study from the University of California, Davis found a significant increase in firearm violence in the United States associated with the coronavirus-related surge in firearm purchasing. A new destabilizing sense as virus fears spread had been motivating even people who had considered themselves anti-gun to buy weapons for the first time. The Washington Post reported on its website on Jan. 19, 2021 that, COVID-19 lockdowns, anti-racism protests and election strife had led to record gun sales of about 23 million in 2020, a 64 percent increase over 2019 sales. The 2020 numbers include purchases by more than 8 million first-time buyers, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. USA Today reported on its website on Dec. 18, 2020 that, with regard to gun homicides, the United States has historically reported a rate about 25 times higher than other wealthy nations. According to data from Gun Violence Archive, more than 41,500 people died by gun violence in 2020 nationwide, an average of more than 110 a day, which is a record. There had been 592 mass shootings nationwide, an average of more than 1.6 a day. Shootings in Chatham County of North Carolina, Riverside County of California, and Morgan County of Alabama each claimed seven lives. A deadly weekend in Chicago came at the end of May, when 85 people were shot, 24 fatally. In the afternoon of Jan. 9, 2021, 32-year-old Jason Nightengale went on a random shooting rampage in Chicago, leaving three people killed and four others wounded.
 
George Floyd’s death from police brutality sparked unrest. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man from Minnesota, died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for eight minutes during an arrest for forgery. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said what he saw was “wrong on every level,” noting, “Being black in America should not be a death sentence.” Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a statement, “This abusive, excessive and inhumane use of force cost the life of a man who was being detained by the police for questioning about a non-violent charge.” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said, “The depths of despair are enormous right now for black people in this country. You pile on unchecked police violence and it makes for a perfect storm.” The police brutality sparked visceral outrage, leading to protests in support of Black Lives Matter throughout the United States, as well as in other countries. The unrest escalated across the nation, with protesters blocking the streets and building barricades to confront the police. A large number of police stations, public institutions and shopping malls were looted. The Guardian reported on its website on June 8, 2020 that, since George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, about 140 cities in all 50 states throughout the United States have seen protests and demonstrations in response to the killing.
 
The demonstrators were suppressed by force. In the face of visceral public grievances, the then U.S. administration leader added fuel to the fire by deploying a large number of National Guard soldiers across the country and calling for shooting. Targeted with flying rubber bullets and tear gas on site, the public were horrified and the society fell into chaos. U.S. federal agents had been grabbing protesters seemingly without cause. More than 10,000 individuals had been arrested, including many innocent people. The disclosure of the shooting death of Breonna Taylor, an African-American woman, during a police raid fueled a renewed wave of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, with the city of Louisville alone reporting arrests of 435 individuals during the movement. The Guardian reported on its website on Oct. 29, 2020 that, at least 950 instances of police brutality against civilians and journalists during anti-racism protests had occurred since May 2020. The police had used rubber bullets, tear gas and “unlawful lethal force” against protesters.
 
Journalists had been subject to unparalleled attacks by law enforcement. There were at least 117 cases of journalists being arrested or detained while on the job covering anti-racism protests in the United States in 2020, a 1,200-percent increase from the figure in 2019. The Guardian reported on its website on June 5, 2020 that, reporters were beaten, pepper-sprayed and arrested by police in numbers never before documented in the United States. There were 148 arrests or attacks on journalists in the country within one week after the George Floyd incident, which was more than what was recorded during the previous three years combined. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement on Dec. 14, 2020 that, U.S. journalists faced unprecedented attacks in 2020, the majority by law enforcement.

2021

A HEAVY PRICE FOR U.S. EPIDEMIC PREVENTION AND CONTROL
 
Despite having world's most advanced medical equipment and technology, the United States has the biggest number of COVID-19 infections and deaths globally. The U.S. government never rethinks its response measures and still lacks effective anti-epidemic plans. Instead, it stoked the origins-tracing of COVID-19, and has been keen on passing the buck, shifting the blame and political manipulation.
 
Disregard for people's rights to life and health. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, the epidemic prevention and control has been highly politicized, which has become a tool and a bargaining chip for Republicans and Democrats to attack, reject and confront each other. U.S. politicians focused only on their political gains in disregard of people's lives and health. The federal and local governments went their own way and constrained each other, which has not only made it very difficult to integrate and coordinate the management of medical resources, but also made people disoriented about epidemic prevention and control policies. And thus various anti-intellectual words and deeds that reject science and common sense have become prevalent. Misled by political manipulation, some Americans refused to wear masks, and even launched an anti-vaccine movement, which accelerated the spread of COVID-19. By the end of 2021, nearly 30 percent of Americans still had not been vaccinated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Associated Press (AP) reported on Dec. 19, 2021 that U.S. hospitals were overwhelmed as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations caused by infections among the unvaccinated continued to surge. States, local governments and the public "have now been left out on their own," American news website Vox said on Jan. 2, 2021. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, by late February 2022, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States had exceeded 78 million and the death toll surpassed 940,000. Its number of COVID-19 deaths recorded in 2021 has far surpassed the total for 2020. According to the analysis by researchers at the University of Southern California and Princeton University, the deaths caused by COVID-19 have reduced overall life expectancy by 1.13 years, the biggest drop since the Second World War. Life expectancy was estimated to fall by 2.10 years among African Americans and 3.05 years among Latinos, while the decline was 0.68 years among whites. The U.S. government's unscientific, unequal and irresponsible epidemic prevention and control conducts have seriously undermined its people's rights to life and health. The New York Times reported on Nov. 18, 2021 that the pandemic has proved to be a nearly two-year stress test that the United States "flunked," and that the American people's trust in their government has been "bankrupt."
 
People's mental health deteriorated due to the uncontrolled outbreak. A study published in The Lancet Regional Health -- Americas in October 2021 found 32.8 percent of U.S. adults experienced "elevated depressive symptoms" in 2021, compared to 27.8 percent in the early 2020 months of the pandemic and 8.5 percent before the pandemic. According to a public opinion poll, more than a third of Americans aged between 13 and 56 said the pandemic is a significant source of stress in their lives. The poll finds teens and young adults have faced some of the heaviest struggles as they come of age during a time of extreme turmoil, the AP reported on Dec. 6, 2021. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy was cited by The Los Angeles Time as saying on Dec. 9, 2021 that the number of suspected suicide attempts in 2021 was 51 percent higher among adolescent girls compared to the same period in 2019.
 
The number of the homeless is staggering. The Washington Post reported on Dec. 7, 2021 that "homelessness is one of the United States' greatest current challenges, no matter the region." The AP reported on Sept. 9, 2021 that the number of people without permanent shelter in Rhode Island had increased by more than 85 percent since January 2021. According to a report by the group Advocates for Children, more than 100,000 New York City schoolchildren were homeless at some point during the 2020-2021 school year. The total number of homeless students during the school year represented nearly one-tenth of the city's public school system. Some students had to live in cars, parks or abandoned buildings. The New York Times reported on Dec. 19, 2021 that in San Francisco one of every 100 residents was homeless.
 
The elderly' rights to life are flagrantly violated. U.S. politicians have followed the natural law of "selecting the superior and eliminating the inferior," declaring that "the elderly could sacrifice for the country" and that "the national economy is more important than the lives of the elderly." The U.S. CDC said that the vast majority of U.S. COVID-19 deaths have been among people aged 65 or older. According to Stat News, an American health-oriented news website, more than half a million elderly people in the United States have died from COVID-19, accounting for four-fifths of all fatalities. According to a report by Claudia Mahler, the United Nations independent expert on older people, on July 21, 2020, discrimination in the delivery of health care services, insufficient prioritization of nursing homes in responses to the virus, and lockdowns left older people more vulnerable to neglect or abuse. And there was "a significant undercount of nursing home deaths" in the United States during the pandemic.
 
Serious damage to the global anti-pandemic cooperation. Washington vigorously pursues "America First," not only withholding anti-epidemic materials from other countries, but also prohibiting the export of domestic medical materials and buying out the production capacity of drugs that may be used to treat COVID-19 patients. The United States has repeatedly coerced the WHO, interfering and dragging down global anti-pandemic cooperation.
 
The United States has engaged in "vaccine nationalism," pushing some underdeveloped countries and regions into a desperate situation of having no vaccines to administer.
 
Since March 2021, the United States has thrown away at least 15 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, significantly more than many poor countries have prepared for their whole populations, according to NBC News on Sept. 1, 2021.
 
"It's really tragic that we have a situation where vaccines are being wasted while lots of African countries have not had even 5 percent of their populations vaccinated," said Sharifah Sekalala, an associate professor of global health law at England's University of Warwick.
 
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa also slammed rich countries over their hoarding of vaccines, adding that "they are just giving us the crumbs from their table. The greed they demonstrated was disappointing."
 
The Biden administration is still pursuing U.S. interests in ways that are detrimental to the interests of the rest of the world, commented an article on the website of the U.S. Foreign Policy magazine.
 
ENTRENCHED VIOLENT THINKING THREATENS LIVES
 
The United States has consistently had one of the highest rates of violent crimes in the world. Gun control measures have been stagnant and gun violence has been rife. The police are discriminatory in law enforcement, killing innocent people and causing public anger. Law enforcement officers commit crimes with impunity, and judicial injustice has been widely criticized. Wrongful and unjust cases continue to exist without being corrected and compensated effectively. Prison inmates are abused, and domestic violence as well as youth violence has increased significantly. The American people live in fear of lack of security.
 
Deterioration of social order has accelerated the proliferation of guns. The United States is the country with the largest number of privately owned guns in the world. The U.S. public have lost confidence in the government's social security governance and felt extremely insecure, which drives many to purchase guns to protect themselves.
 
The Small Arms Survey (SAS) researchers estimate that Americans own 393 million of the 857 million civilian guns available, which is around 46 percent of the world's civilian gun cache.
 
There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the SAS. No other nation has more civilian guns than people.
 
Everytown for Gun Safety also reported on Dec. 21, 2021 that over 15 million guns were sold through October.
 
"Ghost guns," which are assembled from parts purchased by individuals online, are even more proliferating.
 
According to a report by The New York Times website on Nov. 20, 2021, over the past 18 months, ghost guns had accounted for 25 to 50 percent of firearms recovered at crime scenes.
 
By the beginning of October last year, the San Diego Police Department had recovered almost 400 ghost guns, about doubling the total for all of 2020 with nearly three months to go in the year.
 
It also reported that since January 2016, about 25,000 privately made firearms had been confiscated by local and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide.
 
Gun violence seriously endangers people's lives. The United States has the worst gun violence in the world. According to statistics released on Jan. 5, 2022 by the Gun Violence Archive website, the number of fatalities from shootings in the United States rose from 39,558 in 2019 to 43,643 in 2020, and further to 44,816 in 2021. In 2021, there were 693 mass shootings in the United States, up 10.1 percent from 2020.
 
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on Oct. 5, 2021 that children and teens in the United States are 15 times more likely to die from gunfire than their peers in 31 other high-income countries combined, quoting data from the Children's Defense Fund.
 
At least 30 shootings occurred on U.S. campuses during the school season from Aug. 1 to Sept. 15, 2021, killing at least five people and injuring 23, the highest number on record.
 
A total of 1,229 teens aged 12 to 17 were killed and 3,373 injured in shootings in the United States in 2021. On Nov. 30, 2021, four students were killed in a mass shooting at a Michigan high school by a 15-year-old suspect who used the same gun that his father bought on Black Friday.
 
CNN reported on Nov. 26, 2021 that Jason R. Silva, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at William Paterson University, said that the United States is the only developed country where mass shootings have happened every single year for the past 20 years.
 
Shooting incidents have caused a large number of casualties and posed a major threat to public safety. According to an April 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 48 percent of Americans see gun violence as a very big problem in the country today.
 
Police brutality tramples human life. According to data compiled by Mapping Police Violence, at least 1,124 people died in 2021 due to U.S. police violence. The majority of killings occurred during non-violent offenses or when there was no crime at all.
 
The USA TODAY website reported on June 21, 2021 that police in the United States fatally shoot about 1,000 people a year. Police have fatally shot more than 6,300 people since 2015, but only 91 officers have been arrested, or just 1 percent of those involved.
 
The USA TODAY website reported on July 8, 2021 that a poll showed that just 22 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. police treat all Americans equally.
 
Racial and ethnic groups are often subjected to unfair justice. The USA TODAY website reported on July 15, 2021 that a 20-year-old African-American man in Minnesota, Daunte Wright, was shot and killed by police after being pulled over outside Minneapolis for an expired license plate. Wright's death was one of a string of incidents in which African-Americans were pulled over for traffic violations and killed innocently.
 
A study of 20 million traffic stops in North Carolina over more than a decade shows that African American drivers are twice as likely as white drivers to be pulled over by police.
 
The USA TODAY website reported on May 24, 2021 that within a year of the death of George Floyd, who died after an officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes, enforcement killed hundreds of people of ethnic minorities in the United States.
 
According to the report, since the year 2000, there have been over 470 murders at the hands of law enforcement in Minnesota. Only one police officer was convicted in the history of Minnesota and that was a minority man that killed a white woman.
 
The Christian Science Monitor website reported on Nov. 23, 2021 that the Urban Institute found that homicides with a white perpetrator and a black victim are ten times more likely to be ruled justified than cases with a black perpetrator and a white victim.
 
Human rights violations by prison staff are commonplace. The United States has the highest incarceration rate and the highest number of incarcerated people in the world. An Associated Press investigation has found that the U.S. federal Bureau of Prisons is a hotbed of graft, corruption and abuse.
 
CTV News reported on Nov. 14, 2021 that crimes committed by federal prison staff in the United States are not uncommon. Since 2019, more than 100 U.S. federal prison staff members have been arrested and convicted of sexual abuse, murder and other offenses.
 
Prisoners held in U.S. private prisons are at risk of being abused. The UN News reported on Feb. 4, 2021 that in 2019, there were about 116,000 U.S. prisoners held in privately operated facilities, representing about 7 percent of all state prisoners and 16 percent of federal prisoners, quoting data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
 
On April 20, 2021, nine UN experts, including the UN Human Rights Council Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent, the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Independent Expert on the Enjoyment of all Human Rights by Older Persons, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Physical and Mental Health, issued a joint statement condemning U.S. human rights violations against Mumia Abu-Jamal, a prisoner of African descent.
 
The statement said Abu-Jamal, who has been in prison for 40 years, was a social activist and journalist. The 67-year-old suffers from a number of diseases including chronic heart disease, liver cirrhosis and high blood pressure. In February 2021, he was diagnosed with COVID-19. While receiving treatment for heart failure in late February, he was handcuffed to his hospital bed for four days; and when he was hospitalized again in early April for surgery, his family, lawyers and others were denied access to him.
 
The statement calls on the U.S. government to comply with its international human rights obligations, take urgent measures to protect Abu-Jamal's life and dignity, immediately stop the practice of withholding information, and allow outside visits to monitor his human rights situation.
 
It also calls on the U.S. government to take all necessary measures to protect the lives of all detainees, especially the elderly and disabled prisoners who are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.
 
The credibility of the U.S. judicial system is in tatters. According to statistics released by the U.S. National Registry of Exoneration on Jan. 11, 2022, 2,933 people have been wrongly convicted in the United States since 1989, with a combined 25,600 years of wrongly imposed prison sentences. However, 14 U.S. states lack legal provisions related to compensation for wrongful convictions.
 
The BBC reported on Nov. 23, 2021, that Kevin Strickland, 62, had maintained his innocence since his arrest at the age of 18. He was wrongly convicted of third-degree murder in June 1979, only to be found not guilty in 2021 before being imprisoned for more than 42 years, the longest wrongful imprisonment in Missouri history. But under the state's law, he is unlikely to receive any financial compensation.
 
The USA Today website reported on July 8, 2021, that a survey showed that only 17 percent of Americans believe the U.S. criminal justice system treats everyone fairly.
 

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