Though I have been remiss in posting to this blog, I have not been so remiss in writing for the blog. Here continues a series I shall call the "far·ra·go Ghost Posts," entries intended for publication during my posting drought that I never got around to posting because sleep. And Facebook. Yeah, okay, mostly Facebook. Some entries will be incomplete, as I obviously didn't finish them at the time of their original composition, and I have since lost the gist of the original direction in which I was headed. And so it goes....
Gun Control
Originally composed January 14, 2013
There is no other way around it: something needs to be done about gun violence in this country. I don't believe an all-out ban on guns is the answer, as a gun can be a useful tool — yes, weapon — in skilled, responsible hands. That doesn't mean everyone should be allowed to own one. There are people — and not just the mentally unstable — who should not own a gun.
In the "gun control" debate, I have heard several people clamor for parity with proposed gun control. "Cars kill more people every year than guns! I want car control!"
We have car control. One needs a license to legally drive a vehicle; licensing requires a specified number of hours of training; the license can be revoked for repeated infractions or for single egregious ones. The government regulates driving with imposed speed limits, turning restrictions, lane demarkations, one-way streets, and laws to enforce the proper use of them all. The automobile industry makes new strides every year to make cars safer and smarter, and doesn't resist at every turn new pushes by the government or the public to make them even safer. The gun industry provides for woefully few such safety measures to reduce death and injury to gun users and the people around them.
Still, people die in car wrecks or car/pedestrian collisions every day. Yes, some of those deaths are intentional; the human mind is resourceful and inventive, and can find ways to weaponize just about anything when focused on harming another human being. The major difference in the argument that "cars kill people, too," is that they're not designed as weapons, they're not designed to kill. Weigh the annual road death toll against the use of cars. I don't have statistics to quote, but I believe it's safe to say that there are upwards of 150 million cars driven on US roads every day, cars used for their intended purpose. Some of those cars will be involved in wrecks, and in some of those wrecks some of the cars' occupants will die. The ratio of road deaths per car in use is dramatically low.
Guns, on the other hand, are generally not used every day. Most are tucked away in cabinets or drawers, or behind retail counters, or in holsters for the relatively unlikely event of a holdup or robbery. Perhaps as many are safely locked away in dedicated gun storage cabinets, and used only for hunting during certain periods of the year.
It is all too prominent a statistic that there are many accidental shooting deaths each year, though I would wager that the ratio of accidental shooting deaths is much lower compared to deaths by intentional use. My point, though, is the ratio of deaths by gun to number of guns in use is much, much higher than the deaths per use ratio for cars.
A car in the hands of one bent on doing so can be used as a weapon to kill people, though its intended purpose is safe, peaceful transportation. A gun that is fired, resulting in the death of a human being — whether accidental or intentional — has fulfilled its intended purpose.
But how many of the most horrendous mass murders of the last thirty years were facilitated with a car? Only one, and the vehicle — a truck in this case — was used to deliver a payload of explosives — which did the actual destructive work — to the Alfred R. Murrah government building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
No. When bent on massive casualties, the would-be murderer defaults to firearms.
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1 comment:
First, no license or registration is necessary to own or buy a car, or even to operate a car on one's own property. A driver licensed in one state can drive her car in every state. A background check is not required to purchase, own or drive a car either.
Second, I suspect you are correct that on a per use basis, guns are implicated in injury or death less often than cars. I find it amusing though when people make the argument that "cars aren't designed to kill"...if that is so then imagine if they were designed to kill. They are implicated in as many deaths per year as guns and that is all by accident.
Finally, and most importantly, is that the laws proposed (and many on the books now) do little to prevent ill-intentioned use of firearms. In fact, prohibitions only make it safer for criminals to commit atrocities as it facilitates the "target-rich environment." Firearms are used for intended lawful purposes millions of times per year, whether that be for hunting, target practice, sport or, more importantly, self-defense. Guns save lives. Some studies even suggest that they are used defensively more often than offensively.
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