Monday, December 17, 2012

Since 1999

The Columbine shooting took place in April 1999.

Since the Columbine tragedy, there have been a total of 14 mass shootings in schools world wide, compared to 31 mass shootings in schools in the US this year, with more that were averted, including two threatened school shootings on the same day as the Connecticut shootings in Newtown. There were 16 mass shootings in the U.S. just this year.

In each case, the common denominator was someone who was angry or paranoid, AND had access to guns. In no case, in ZERO cases, did someone else with a gun stop or end a mass shooting.  The answer is not more guns.  If more guns WERE the answer, as the nation with the most guns per capita in the world, we would not have these school massacres, these other mass shootings, or any of the other unacceptably high rates of deaths and injuries and violent intimidation we have by firearms.

What is true of the rest of the world combined, is that they have a tiny fraction of the guns that we have in the U.S.  Guns are simply not very available.

It makes a positive difference to have fewer guns available.

Having access to the means to shoot people is an essential part of these events; without the means, these are just angry kids or severely disgruntled adults, who are impotent to act.

Many who are pro-gun insist that if denied easy access to guns, these killers would find some other way.

There has not however been any evidence that is true.  I cannot remember a bomb, gas, or some other kind of poison, or any of the other ways that are argued would replace guns to kill people being used anywhere, ever, in countries where there is not ready access to firearms.  I cannot find a single case where that has been true in the U.S. where someone who wanted to commit violence in a school has failed to get guns and ammunition. Guns are an integral part essential for the violence to occur.

A common denominator in all U.S. mass shootings has been assault style weapons and high capacity magazines that allow a shooter to fire more rounds without reloading.

While it is no doubt true that there are many gun owners of assault style weapons and expanded magazines who do no harm with them, that is not a reason for us not to ban them.

When we require recalls of products, or require products be discontinued or removed from being sold because of a problem with their use that harms people, we do not require that every single person who has those products be harmed to remove them. We do not require that the harm only occurs when the product is used as directed, only that the harm occurs frequently enough to be a problem.

We have irrefutable evidence that these two items, assault style weapons and expanded capacity magazines are harming people, and that their removal from use and from being sold would be beneficial.

The 'tool' argument is bogus. A tool is designed for a purpose. The purpose of assault style weapons and expanded capacity is to kill with more lethality and more efficiency and speed.  No one has taken a baseball bat into a school, and killed 27 people. No one has taken a baseball bat into a shopping mall or movie theater and killed or injured large numbers of people. No one has done that with a spoon, or a screw driver, or a pencil, or a variable speed drill or a lawn mower.  It is unique to guns and to high capacity magazines, which are a common denominator, not in every mass shooting, not in every mass shooting in schools, but in too many of them.

It is completely reasonable to go forward with restoring the assault style weapons ban, and with a ban on expanded capacity magazines.  We need to institute a buy back program to remove these from general circulation, and to criminalize those who do not participate in turning in those guns and magazines.

It is completely sane and responsible and reasonable to require all states to comply with submitting all applicable names to the National Instant Background Check data base.

It is completely reasonable to maintain the names of illegal drug users in that NICS data base for more than one year - a change from the original data base initiated by the NRA over the protests of those who work with crime, including Criminal Defense Attorneys groups and bar associations and to expand the cooperative sharing of information about the mentally ill in that data base.

It is completely reasonable to require background checks on ALL sales, including individual or gun show transactions, it is completely reasonable to require a waiting period on all sales, it is completely reasonable to enact limitations on gun purchases per month.

It is reasonable to enact stricter gun control measures; we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can learn from the success and failures of what has been tried elsewhere.

While it may be true that we cannot prevent every mass school shooting, or every other mass shooting, we can do more, we can do better, and we must.  We should begin by repealing and invalidating every law that allows or mandates guns in schools, from preschools to colleges and universities. We do NOT need to tolerate 30,000 people a year dying from guns, and many more being injured, or intimidated by them. We are not happier or safer or more free by having an armed population everywhere we go in public.  If we were, we would not have the gun violence we currently experience.

Enough is enough already; the time to act, the tipping point for action is now. Guns do not make us safer, guns do not make us free.  None of the kids or adults killed in Newtown, Connecticut are more free because of guns; they are simply dead by brutal means.  None of the 30,000 other deaths per year, including the increasing number of law enforcement officers killed by firearms, are more safe, or more free because of guns.  Dead is not free. Injured or intimidated is not free. 

We have a legitimate basis, a justified foundation, for new gun control legislation that fixes our problems with gun violence.  That fix may not be perfect, but it will be an improvement.




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