Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
We have discussed the thousands who have been killed by guns in this country on several occasions on Professor Turley’s blog and we have seen some of the same responses from both sides of the discussions about reasonable restrictions on gun ownership and use. Some say that any restriction on gun ownership, no matter how small, is a violation of their Second Amendment rights.
Some of those who are in favor of reasonable gun control measures, point to the sheer numbers of women and children and men who die each day due to senseless murders and sorrowful accidents. Emotional arguments and reasons have been offered by both sides of the discussion, but yet not a single worthwhile National gun control measure has become law and the killings and deaths continue unabated.
To my dismay and shock, not even the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, where 20 small school children and 6 staff members lost their lives to an arguably mentally ill shooter, produced any resulting legislation that could be argued offers some relief in the ever larger numbers of gun deaths.
While researching this article I had trouble finding articles written on this subject after April of 2013. There were many articles, including articles on this blog from December of 2012 through April of 2013, but very little since. In light of the dearth of media interest since April of this year, I am curious about what it will take for the United States of America to decide it is time to stop killing itself?
In June of this year, I did find one article that discussed how little had been done since Sandy Hook and the article argued that the number of gun deaths since Sandy Hook has continued unabated.
“In the first week after the Newtown, Conn., massacre on Dec. 14, more than 100 people in the U.S. were killed by guns. In the first seven weeks, that number had risen to at least 1,285 gunshot killings and accidental deaths. A little more than three months after Newtown, there have been 2,244. The Huffington Post has recorded every gun-involved murder and accidental shooting death reported in U.S. news media since Newtown, revealing an epidemic that shows no signs of abating. The horrors cannot be contained behind yellow police tape or find resolution in a courtroom. For the victim’s families, the grief deforms all it touches. There’s the fear that the radio will play her favorite ballad. An airplane overhead, like the kind he flew, will strike panic. Home is not safe. One month, two months, two years, nine years since those fatal shots — the grief never leaves.” Huffington Post
The Huffington Post article that I have linked to above, discusses several shootings over the years and the damage it has done to families of the decedent’s and how difficult it has been to cope with their respective losses. It is always hard to lose a loved one, but it seems that losing a loved one to gun violence, misuse or accident is especially hard to recover from.
My intention with this article is not to argue the plusses and minuses of gun control legislation and to instigate partisan arguments as to who has the better argument about why Americans seems obsessed with guns. My intention is to discuss when will Americans do something, anything, to reduce gun violence?
The killing of 20 little children produced a hue and cry around the country and indeed, around the world. However, legislation to possibly ameliorate this epidemic of gun killings never materialized. You may blame Congress and its inability to pass any legislation on any subject. You can blame gun owners and gun manufacturers for their alleged stubbornness to back substantive gun control measures. You can even blame the conditions in the inner cities that seem to breed violence on the streets.
I submit the blame belongs in the lap of every American citizen. This epidemic of gun killings can’t be attributed to just one cause or one political party. It can’t be blamed on just one gun manufacturer or gun lobbyist. Only the collective pressure from an engaged citizenry can produce enough political power to attack the problem on all fronts.
Getting into politician’s faces, gun lobbyists faces, gang members faces and yes, our children’s faces and engaging and educating all concerned that if we do not take a stand after so many deaths, when will we? It may take reasonable gun control legislation. It may take reeducating our young people and it may take increased job opportunities to reduce poverty and the despair that goes with poverty. But without all of us drawing the line and saying that this country will no longer accept needless deaths, the change will never happen.
Stand up in your communities and let your fellow townspeople and city councils know that nothing will stand in your way to reduce the epidemic of gun deaths in almost every community. Educate your children about the dangers of misusing or playing with guns and make locking up your guns a reality. Let your legislators know that mental illness can’t be ignored. What do you think you can do to reduce gun deaths?
Can gun control legislation help reduce the number of deaths? Can Second Amendment advocates cooperate with gun control proponents to find a reasonable, yet effective middle ground? Are there any amendments to the Constitution that could somehow help reduce the number of gun deaths? Can America actually look to other countries for examples of a better way to handle guns in a civilized society?
Let’s hear how you would resolve America’s penchant for shooting its own people! This is a “war” that we cannot afford to lose.
Bob, good comment. Do you recall that shortly after one of the last few school shootings a man in China flipped out and took a knife to about 20 schoolchildren? He wounded most of them, the overwhelming majority of them. I searched around on the Internet looking for statistics (since I have insomnia anyway) and the thing that becomes quickly apparent is that while knife attacks are frequent in America, their lethality is low, very low compared to guns.
The guns that many people want tightly controlled, the semi-automatic and convertible to full auto guns, are not only made for taking out a maximum number of targets but guns are just more lethal than other weapons until you start talking about hand grenades and explosives.
******
Anna, welcome. You can’t easily get a car into a classroom, or an office, or a theater or just drive around an army base or campus looking for people to run over. Not for long anyway. Guns are available, lethal, portable, have good range of motion (point up, down, etc.) and concealable. The kind of spree murderers have targets, or classes of targets and it’s easier to get a gun to them than a car.
The NRA always tries to move the discussion away from guns and to mental health but are adamantly against universal background checks. Hmmmm, I thinks that’s called a shell game. The operator always wins.
Anna,
Sure. If all those kids lined up so that a car could run over them, and didn’t try to get away, perhaps a lot of them could be killed. But that doesn’t happen, does it?
What actually happens, is that some fool grabs a semi-automatic rifle, with large capacity ammunition attachments, and murders children.
The reason that the fool can get the semi-automatic rifle, with the large-capacity ammunition attachments, is that there are so damned many of them around. Does the fool, or his mother, need to pass a universal background check? Not if the firearm is purchased at a gun show. Why would such a weapon be laying around the house? Because it’s legal? Why would it be legal to possess the thing? Of what possible use is it to civilians?
Automobiles are not specifically designed for mass murder.
AR-15s, and their clones, are designed exactly for that. They’re designed to look menacing, so that people with manhood issues think they’re cool.
If we made huge-ammunition capacity attachments illegal, they couldn’t be sold without running the risk of arrest. They could be confiscated, if found.
There’s absolutely no valid civilian use, beyond paranoid fantasies, for these things.
It’s become a cliche, but it’s true. My right to live trumps your right to keep a macho, adolescent fantasy weapon of mass murder.
Oh, but they’re inanimate objects. So are nukes. Can I keep a nuke laying around, waiting for someone to steal, and use it? Or maybe I’ll just get frustrated and use it myself. 2nd amendment doesn’t say what kind of arms I can have, so I can have any I want.
Pull the trigger of a loaded gun. Do you call that an inanimate object? Or just drop it. Or leave it around for a kid to pick up. Not so inanimate.
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Try this experiment:
Make your hand look a bit like a gun – index finger extended, thumb up.
Point it at your head, and yell “bang!” Are you still there? I guess people don’t kill people.
Now put a loaded pistol in your hand, point it at your head, and pull the trigger. Are you still there?
Did a loaded gun kill you? Funny, you don’t answer. Could it be that people with guns kill people?
Gun restrictions only apply to law-abiding citizens? If it’s difficult to find a weapon of mass murder, because they’re out of circulation, then the criminals and insane will have a harder time getting them, too. The insane are very often law-abiding. Until they’re not.
Yes, taking high-ammunition-capacity firearms out of circulation will help. It’s difficult for a coward to quickly kill crowds of people from a distance, without such a firearm. How would “Everyone stand still while I throw this dynamite at you,” or “Just stand there, while I knife you, one-by-one,” or “I have a low-ammunition capacity firearm, so please don’t jump me while I reload,” work? Not so well, I think.
Universal background checks for any firearm sold, and mental-health care, would also help. There are many things that we could do, in concert, to reduce gun violence, if the NRA, our cowardly legislators, and gun-nuts would allow it.
But that’s not happening, is it? That’s a threat to firearms manufacturers.
Jes’ sayin’.
I read this blog all the time but never comment. Here’s my first. I don’t understand gun control because it is only effective with law-abiding citizens. It’s not like criminals are going to be deterred by another pesky law. What I have always wondered is why are we Americans so violent compared to other western countries. What makes us so predisposed to killing each other? I have traveled extensively and as an American, my home country is where I am most cautious. We kill each other whether it is with guns or other ways. We really are a violent nation.
I was thinking about Sandy Hook from the lead post. Then I remembered earlier today when I was stopped near a school as a crossing guard was leading a BUNCH of elementary students across the street. One nut in one car could have taken out more kids in one fell swoop in less time than Sandy Hook. There were at least 40 little elementary children crossing the street. I sat in my car worrying about kids leaving school.
We need to address the “why” not the “how.” There will always be a means to commit evil. Taking guns away won’t change a thing. People are not going to change unless we address the why.
jonolan,
your comment couldn’t be farther from the truth. Ending gun violence or reducing it is reducing or ending violence. I would love to end all violence. But if this country cannot even discuss reasonable restrictions on guns, not gun grabbing, but reasonable restrictions, we are doomed. Even Justice Scalia said reasonable restrictions could be constitutional in the Heller case so why don’t you agree with that gun grabber?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-16/born-libertarian-doug-casey-ron-paul-and-price-freedom
Bob, Raff,
I’m working on some other stuff, but come on now.
What no mention of after the fact this article gets posted news comes out of a further Sandy Hook “Cover Up” of “Evidence” & no mention here!
Yea, No, Phk all the Redcoat gun grabbin bullsheeet.
But thanks all the same. Maybe I’ll visit you guys in England or Mexico after you’ve moved to get away from people that have “Rights” to protect themselves… LOL I doubt you’ll see me …
OK, guys, you already verified what I said.
No need to keep proving it. That’s redundant.
Q: “How many 2nd Amendment “enthusiasts” (snerk, snerk) does it take to unscrew a lightbulb?
A: “Moar gunz!”
jonolan,
“…rafflaw and the other gun-grabbers…”
Oh, poor thing…has someone grabbed your gun?
No?
Has da gummint grabbed anyone’s gun?
No?
I have heard, several times, that Obama’s going to do a reverse-Santa-Claus, on Xmas Eve, and slide down the chimney of every home in the U.S.A., confiscating all firearms.
I know, from the truthiness of your other assertions, that you believe that.
I mean, you did, after all, advocate repeal of the 13th amendment, to curtail crime. Ha! Take that, Obama!
Better wait up for him. Under the bed.
I don’t “…fear and hate firearms and people with firearms.”
I don’t fear religion or firearms. I think you should leave both of them in your house, if you’re really insecure enough to need them. Try not to obsess over them. Maybe ask yourself why you need either one.
I don’t need no stinkin’ firearms. I ain’t frightened of black folks, muslim folks, or mythical home invasions.
I don’t fear home invasions, mostly because I don’t sell meth out of my home. Or anything else.
All, please remember that rafflaw’s post isn’t about ending violence. It’s just about ending “gun violence” … and therein lies the rub and the underlying logical fallacy that rafflaw and the other gun-grabbers have fallen victim to.
They fear and hate firearms and people with firearms. In their minds those tools are magic wands and the darkest sort.
Why this is I do not know? It doesn’t make sense to me, especially since most of them would need a firearm in order to put up any credible defense against an attacker, armed or not.
“But educated citizens of a civilized, sane country wouldn’t allow such ridiculous conditions.
But thanks very much for the verification.”
Nonsense. Nobody here has argued that we should allow people to use their guns “on anyone who gits on mah nerves”. And we DO already have laws against that sort of thing, do we not?
I live in Vermont. Up here, you don’t even need a permit to carry a concealed handgun. And we have one of the lowest gun violence rates in the country, despite having one of the highest gun suicide rates.
Explain to me how such a thing might be possible in your universe.
Bob, you can’t put the guns in jail. Yah cain’t shoot da guns dead.
Civilized, sane people recognize that inanimate hunks of metal can’t commit crimes.
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
― Samuel Adams
Roger Lambert, jonolan, and ron,
Thank you for supporting my answer to “when will we decide to stop the killings by guns?”
Never.
We’ll blame everything except the demented refusal to consider any reasonable laws for regulating ownership and use of guns.
Yes, I already know that the meaning of the 2nd amendment, the god-given holy-of-holys, has been perverted into, “Ah kin openly carry mah manhood into bars, churches, and coffee shops, and use it on anyone who gits on mah nerves.”
But educated citizens of a civilized, sane country wouldn’t allow such ridiculous conditions.
But thanks very much for the verification.
This was an essentially dishonest post.
The author speaks about rampage massacres and then quotes death and mishap statistics as if they are related to rampage massacres. They are not. This was a calculated emotional appeal and below the standards of this blog.
First of all, can we please acknowledge that the available statistics involving gun crime suck? Feel free to blame the NRA – they seem to be responsible. But, unfortunately, we simply do not have good data on gun-related crime, do drawing conclusions which might lead to intelligent reform is pretty much impossible.
Secondly, we do know that fully one-half of gun-related death is suicide. Personally, I don’t have a problem with this. But at least acknowledge this when you throw statistics around, OK?
Third, we don’t have great data, but it appears that the vast majority of non-suicide gun-related deaths and morbidity is drug and gang related. So, rather than implying, as the author of this post has done, that what we need to do is pass more restrictive gun laws, perhaps this article would have been more helpful if it had been talking about legalizing drugs and promoting social justice/income equality.
Because pushing for more restrictive gun laws instead of working to alleviate the underlying causes is only going to lose Democrats more elections. And we can’t afford to let that happen – there are much more important issues to attend to.
From the article:
My intention is to discuss when will Americans do something, anything, to reduce gun violence?
What do you think you can do to reduce gun deaths?
Let’s hear how you would resolve America’s penchant for shooting its own people! This is a “war” that we cannot afford to lose.
A) Let me assume, in good faith, you’re not asking the Eric Holder question of “How do we brainwash people to change the way they think about guns?”. (am I a sucker?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXwo9lARAgg
B) What can I do about gun deaths? Teach others how to defend themselves against attackers, by using guns, having situational awareness, proper maintenance of weaponry, etc.
C) Encourage the legal system to promote liberty, prosperity and justice (so that people feel less inclined to take such weights upon themselves), as opposed to the decades of fraud, abuse, control and waste that we have been stricken with.
D) Encourage people to rethink these gun free zones that produce so many victims in these mass shootings.Advocate people being armed at all times, in all circumstances.
“The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, …that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.” Thomas Jefferson writing to Major John Cartwright June 5, 1824
rafflaw,
No, I’m not talking about removing firearms from criminals; I’m talking about removing criminals from society.
As for the school shootings and similar, “exciting” killings – those are a tiny – sub 1/100th of a percent of the killings. The vast majority are done by normal criminals.
As for repealing or limiting the 13th Amendment – That was to point out the ridiculousness of attacking the 2nd Amendment since putting the Blacks back in chain would actually drop the firearm homicides by approximately 50% along with a similar drop in all forms of street crime. In other words, if we’re going to apply harsh treatments to symptoms, we should apply ones that would actual provide some real relief.
Bob Kauten, your definition of mental illness isn’t mine. All I can see is that most of the violent rhetoric and causes of extreme wealth disparity and an impoverished pubic space isn’t because guns are present or absent. Its because after the Civil War, the Southern Elite’s Ideology of neo-fedualism and setting people with small differences in socioeconomic status against each other and reinforcing it with church to to preserve it was not ended.
Changing demographics, increasing acceptance of interracial marriage and declining religiosity doom this method of maintaining economic dominance in much of the south. When that goes the need to set groups against each other will be much harder.
For more on this, pick up American Nations by Woodard.
rafflaw,
The troll says it’s against the abolition of slavery, to draw more attention to its pathetic self.
I can’t think of a suitable response to counter its brilliant contribution. I won’t try.
jonolan,
it is interesting that you already have it all figured out that there are no other possible actions that could be taken to reduce gun violence other than remove them from criminals. I guess it doesn’t matter how many people who use guns to harm someone or themselves who have no criminal record. Most of the school shootings involved shooters with no prior criminal record. Of course, many had mental health issues that may have been utilized to prevent them from acquiring weapons, but according to you we don’t need to even discuss that.
Remove the criminal elements and you remove the majority of the violence. Nothing else will work and everything else is just a dog-whistle for the worst sort of anti-Americanism.
Hell! If you want to attack an Amendment for sake of making a safer society, attack the 13th as opposed to the 2nd. That would actually have a positive impact on all pertinent, measurable statistics in America.
Is there proof that chemo and radiation therapy only have a 3% cure rate in cancer patients? I would like to see some literature or information on that topic. I dare not use the word “data”.