Tag: gun regulation

Prevent 1/3 of young gun deaths without taking away a single gun

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❝ In 2015, more than 1,100 young people died by suicide or by accident because of a gun. New research suggests that almost one-third of those deaths could be prevented by simply locking up guns in the home.

“The take-home message from the findings of the study is that even a relatively modest increase in the practice of safe storage by parents could result in substantial reductions in firearm suicides and unintentional fatalities among youth,” says Michael Monuteaux, a Harvard Medical School professor of pediatrics and epidemiologist who is the first author of the new study…

❝ To make that estimate, the researchers designed a model based on the only existing American case study to specifically look at the effect gun storage has on young people, which is from 2005. Using that study’s conclusions on how effective gun storage can be, they estimated how many fewer injuries and deaths by suicide or accident in youths would have occurred in 2015, had more parents followed safe gun storage procedures.

They ran the simulation more than a thousand times in order to get a sense of the range of protectiveness that would be offered by different levels of buy-in from parents…

They had to hunt carefully for data on gun violence that didn’t violate the 1996 Dickey Dickhead Amendment, which states that no government funding for injury prevention can be used to “advocate for gun control.”

Taking aim

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❝ Rebecca Cunningham of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor became acquainted with guns at a tender age: When she was 5 years old, her mother kicked out her violent husband, who had beaten her and threatened to kill her. And she bought a gun.

❝ Today, Cunningham, who once watched her mother tuck that pistol in her purse as she headed to the shooting range, is directing the largest gun research grant that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded in at least 30 years. With $4.9 million from NIH’s child health institute and a team of 27 researchers at 12 institutions, she is on a mission to jump-start gun injury research on a population as vulnerable as she once was: U.S. children and teenagers, for whom guns are the second-leading cause of death.

As a hunter [in younger years] and gun owner with ethical concerns, I have to endorse this sort of research. The cynic in me still says cowardly politicians have no interest in the popular will of Americans vis-a-vis guns and gun control – but, it’s always worth extending our knowledge and continuing the fight.

Congress needs to ‘get off its ass’ and take action on gun violence

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❝ Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called for Congress to “get off its ass and do something” about gun violence after the deadly Las Vegas mass shooting that left at least 58 people dead.

Murphy, who emerged as a leading figure in the push for gun control legislation after the deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in his state of Connecticut, said it was “positively infuriating” that Congress had failed to pass laws to stop gun violence.

❝ “Nowhere but America do horrific large-scale mass shootings happen with this degree of regularity. Last night’s massacre may go down as the deadliest in our nation’s history, but already this year there have been more mass shootings than days in the year…”

“This must stop. It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic. There are, and the thoughts and prayers of politicians are cruelly hollow if they are paired with continued legislative indifference.”
“It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something,” Murphy said.

❝ Murphy has been a major proponent for legislation on gun control in the Senate. He held an hours-long filibuster on the Senate floor in June 2016 to protest the body’s inaction on gun control legislation.

He also introduced a bill that same month that would expand background checks for most gun sales in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., but the legislation failed to pass.

As someone who has owned guns for about 60 years, I agree with Senator Murphy. Except I would have interjected their “dead ass” and “get to work”. Take it back to the day Barack Obama was elected and Mitch McConnell promised Congress would accomplish nothing – if he could stop it.

He got to where he could do that. No Republicans had the guts to oppose him or the more fascist-minded crew from the Tea Party. Now, of that institution is dedicated to opposing the will of the people. Whether supporting gerrymandered districts to guarantee elections for the few over the many or refusing electoral reform which would put candidates getting the most votes into office…Republicans and conservative Democrats are united in their phony 2-Party democracy in pushing back against progress.

Mass shootings are the fastest growing sport of cowards in America

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The cowards I refer to are not the shooters. The cowards are the politicians living in such fear of the NRA they are unwilling to respond to the majority cry for background checks, sensible regulation of access to guns in the United States.


Never forget!

Barack Obama put words to the desperation of millions of Americans – and the despair of the rest of the world – after another mass shooting at a school in Oregon on Thursday, the latest of nearly 1,000 since his reelection in 2012.

“Somehow,” the president said, “this has become routine.

“The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it,” Obama trailed off, at once frustrated and spirited at the White House. “We’ve become numb to this … We talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg; after Tucson, after Newtown; after Aurora, after Charleston.”

The words mark a long list of tragedy. Since Obama’s reelection to a second term in November 2012 – which itself was followed by the shooting of 26 people including 20 children at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, just a few weeks later – there had been 993 mass shooting events in the United States . Thursday’s attack, at Umpqua community college in the town of Roseburg, was No 994. Almost 300 of them have occurred in 2015.

That’s almost one every day…

The numbers go deeper than the statements, as the president said…

…The number of firearm homicides in 2013, the last year for which the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has statistics, was 11,208. The year before Sandy Hook, it was 107 fewer than that.

That’s just intentional homicides. Firearms are the cause of death for more than 33,000 people in America every year, according to the CDC; a number that includes both accidental discharge, murder and suicides, which are on the increase, especially in states with lax gun-control laws, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

That means guns kill more people in America every six hours than terrorist attacks did in the entire year of 2014.

On top of that, in 2010 more than 73,000 Americans were treated in hospitals for firearm-related injuries, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Eloquence means nothing. Republicans revel in the wash of bloodshed. Every murder, every child killed by accident, every drive-by shooting means the stupid vote stays solid for Republicans. They know Congress hasn’t the courage to act, to lead.

Eloquence means nothing to Blue Dog Democrats invested more in cowardice than courage. They fear the stupid vote will be rounded up against their potential corral of sensible voters. They fear that even more than losing their share of blood money doled out to every politician who says “how high?” whenever the NRA says, “JUMP”.

NRA refuses discussion on guns, gun safety, with the DOJ

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The White House said on Monday that the Justice Department is reaching out to “stakeholders on all sides of the issue. The goal would be to look at ways to find common ground” on “common-sense measures” on guns to improve public safety and security, while respecting the Second Amendment…

But NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre told Reuters in a telephone interview that if asked to attend such a meeting, the country’s leading gun-rights group would say no.

“I mean absolutely not,” adding that such a meeting would be with firm opponents of gun rights…

Obama waded into the politically treacherous gun control debate on Sunday, calling for reform of rules to prevent attacks like the one that wounded an Arizona congresswoman two months ago, while making conciliatory remarks toward gun owners.

In an opinion piece published in the Arizona Daily Star, he said some 2,000 people had perished from gun violence in the short time since a gunman in Tucson killed six people and shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head.

“Every single day, America is robbed of more futures. It has awful consequences for our society. And as a society, we have a responsibility to do everything we can to put a stop to it,” he wrote.

Obama said he hoped the Tucson shootings could spark a national discussion on preventing gun violence.

“Most gun-control advocates know that most gun owners are responsible citizens. Most gun owners know that the word ‘commonsense’ isn’t a code word for ‘confiscation,'” he wrote.

What LAPierre has clarified, once again, is that joining the NRA is like joining some fundamentalist religion that brooks no interference by common sense, open minds or rational thought and dialogue.