Caption : While it has become popular to refer to gun violence in terms of an epidemic, current trends and statistics suggest it has more in common with an insurgency.

Caption : While it has become popular to refer to gun violence in terms of an epidemic, current trends and statistics suggest it has more in common with an insurgency.

America has a gun violence problem.

To hear many pro-gun groups discuss the issue, the problem is that there are not enough guns. They tacitly acknowledge gun violence by advocating for a well-armed public, leaving questions about root causes of that violence and the need to prevent it unanswered. They contextualize the issue entirely in terms of personal rights and perceived government incursion.

After the recent Nevada school shooting, US News raised the question of whether or not the issue should be viewed as a public health epidemic. This perspective on gun violence in the U.S. has gained traction in more than just the media. Speaking at a memorial service for victims of the Naval Yard shooting, President Obama called for an end to the “epidemic of gun violence.”

Framing the gun violence issue this way has drawn criticism from pro-gun groups, but also from some who believe that calling it an epidemic does not go far enough. Huffington Post contributor Brian Levin verbalizes it as “a pandemic” on his blog, a sentiment also echoed by Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler.

While some might argue that framing the gun violence issue in terms of an epidemic or pandemic is merely rhetorical semantics, the fact remains that words matter.

Words and terms stick in the mind long after statistics have faded from the headlines. Slate’s Gun Death Tally estimates that roughly 29,676 people have been killed by guns since the December 14, 2012 Newtown shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

To put this in perspective, the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009 (characterized as one of the most deadly flu pandemics since 1918) killed roughly 12,000 people in the U.S.

But perhaps it is time to stop framing the issue of gun violence in terms of epidemics or pandemics in favor of what it resembles most – an American insurgency.

The 2009 U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide defined an insurgency as the, “organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify or challenge political control of a region.” Certainly it cannot be argued that perpetrators of gun crime use violence to challenge the rule of law in the United States.

How do the numbers look when compared with military actions involving insurgents?

According to Slate’s gun-death data, the casualties caused by guns in the U.S. in just the last 320 days was over four times greater than the entire death total of U.S. soldiers in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (between 6,500-6,700 according to the Department of Defense and icasualties.org).

Sound familiar?

Gun violence is an insurgency, and it’s time to put aside the rhetoric and misdirection and focus on the problems that are costing the lives of tens of thousands of Americans each year.