One number says it all, 100,000
That is the number of Americans who, year after year, every year, end up with bullet holes in their bodies. About thirty thousand die. The rest suffer injuries from the trivial to the life changing.
Assault rifles, while spectacular, are a negligible part of the problem. They are the phallus symbol for the adult child.
Hand guns are the problem.
What would I do?
I dont usually think much about guns. I suppose it is because I live in an area where gun deaths are not an everyday occurrence, although even here the city looms near and such reports are becoming more common.
First the disclaimer. Personally I could care less about guns. I grew up in a small rural town where guns were so common the high school kids would bring them to school in the morning and leave them in the coatroom to go hunting after school. I suppose it would be honest to say that in the five years I was there two high school kids got shot in hunting accidents. Neither fatal.
Right now I own a handgun. Havent used it in over a decade and and have no plans for ever using it. I am not a gun expert, neither am I a gun fanatic and I dont see any way in the world we can stop the kind of thing that has happened so often with our mass killings so long as our present culture exists. That means change, if any, will be long term and that change would have to be primarily cultural.
But in the meantime things have gotten a bit out of hand and serious people will try to mitigate our problem as best we can. Arguing about gun rights has as much effect as spitting in the ocean. If we are honest I think we must say that there will not be a gun ban in the foreseeable future. Maybe we should start talking about gun responsibility.
Cars are far more useful than guns but they are the only thing in the ballpark that can compete with the deaths racked up by guns. Maybe we could treat guns more like cars. If we already do some of this stuff then forgive me. I have not researched this it is simply off the top of my head.
We license cars and we should also license guns in a manner similar to car registrations. Like cars, these registrations should be renewed every year with an appropriate license fee. If a gun is sold, or stolen, or given away, or lost that should be recorded in the same way as car registrations and it should be done very quickly. Failure to do so would result in a very very severe penalty to the last registered owner.
We license drivers. We should license gun owners, all gun owners. We require that drivers are competent to drive. We should make sure gun owners are competent to use their weapon. We require tests every few years to make sure drivers retain their competence. We should do the same with gun owners. This should require not only a competence test but some kind of psychological evaluation. I have no idea what that would entail but then I am not a psychologist.
Car owners are required to have insurance. So should gun owners. Most of our gun accidents are just that, accidents. Since there are so many it only seems reasonable that owners guarantee some degree of financial responsibility should they screw up. As with automobiles if one screws up too often insurance would become prohibitive. Anyone causing an accident without insurance and any gun owner found not to have insurance would be very severely punished.
I would eliminate the so called gun shows thereby getting rid of all the loopholes, both legal and illegal that they produce.
I cant see a lot wrong with semi automatics other than they can be modified fairly easily and inexpensively to become automatic or to come very, very close to an automatic. These modifications are out there and some are still not banned by the Fed. They should be.
Clips are another matter. In any of our massacres it was important that the gun be reloaded very quickly. If the weapon had to be reloaded with anything other than a quick replace preloaded clip much less damage would be done. The capacity of the clip is also a factor. How thirty round clips are allowed anywhere but the military is beyond me.. I would ban large capacity clips.
One can say, with reason, that a pocketful of eight round clips is little different. True enough but it is somewhat different. It slows things down a bit but I feel that every little bit helps. Handguns with large capacity clips are really hard to justify. I cant begin to make an argument for them.
We should also keep a closer watch on our manufacturers and on the gun imports..
It has also been a long time since I have hunted but in my day the number of shells in the gun were limited. If I remember correctly it was three for ducks and five for bigger game. Were it strictly up to me I would get away from the clips altogether and load the shells manually like the lever action Winchester.
I dont think any of these things would cause any thing but mild discomfort to the gun owner, any gun owner.
Arguments for and against guns are very different in rural and urban areas and these attitudes are as real as they are hard to address.
Having said all this can I say with any certainty they will make one bit of difference in mass killings? No, I cant. These are usually by disturbed folks and often they appear normal. How about street killing and accidents? Here is more of a probable thing with the honest answer being it cant hurt. Until we can get a handle on all those guns now fooating free in the country it will be difficult to make a major difference., That doesnt mean we should not try.
As I mentioned at the start of this most of our problems are cultural. We grow up with a certain mindset and too often that mindset is dominated by macho gun ideology. Big man, big gun kind of crap. It may be silly but you can see it on this board. Many seem to have a military fetish with visions of grandeur of themselves saving the republic in daring
That is the number of Americans who, year after year, every year, end up with bullet holes in their bodies. About thirty thousand die. The rest suffer injuries from the trivial to the life changing.
Assault rifles, while spectacular, are a negligible part of the problem. They are the phallus symbol for the adult child.
Hand guns are the problem.
What would I do?
I dont usually think much about guns. I suppose it is because I live in an area where gun deaths are not an everyday occurrence, although even here the city looms near and such reports are becoming more common.
First the disclaimer. Personally I could care less about guns. I grew up in a small rural town where guns were so common the high school kids would bring them to school in the morning and leave them in the coatroom to go hunting after school. I suppose it would be honest to say that in the five years I was there two high school kids got shot in hunting accidents. Neither fatal.
Right now I own a handgun. Havent used it in over a decade and and have no plans for ever using it. I am not a gun expert, neither am I a gun fanatic and I dont see any way in the world we can stop the kind of thing that has happened so often with our mass killings so long as our present culture exists. That means change, if any, will be long term and that change would have to be primarily cultural.
But in the meantime things have gotten a bit out of hand and serious people will try to mitigate our problem as best we can. Arguing about gun rights has as much effect as spitting in the ocean. If we are honest I think we must say that there will not be a gun ban in the foreseeable future. Maybe we should start talking about gun responsibility.
Cars are far more useful than guns but they are the only thing in the ballpark that can compete with the deaths racked up by guns. Maybe we could treat guns more like cars. If we already do some of this stuff then forgive me. I have not researched this it is simply off the top of my head.
We license cars and we should also license guns in a manner similar to car registrations. Like cars, these registrations should be renewed every year with an appropriate license fee. If a gun is sold, or stolen, or given away, or lost that should be recorded in the same way as car registrations and it should be done very quickly. Failure to do so would result in a very very severe penalty to the last registered owner.
We license drivers. We should license gun owners, all gun owners. We require that drivers are competent to drive. We should make sure gun owners are competent to use their weapon. We require tests every few years to make sure drivers retain their competence. We should do the same with gun owners. This should require not only a competence test but some kind of psychological evaluation. I have no idea what that would entail but then I am not a psychologist.
Car owners are required to have insurance. So should gun owners. Most of our gun accidents are just that, accidents. Since there are so many it only seems reasonable that owners guarantee some degree of financial responsibility should they screw up. As with automobiles if one screws up too often insurance would become prohibitive. Anyone causing an accident without insurance and any gun owner found not to have insurance would be very severely punished.
I would eliminate the so called gun shows thereby getting rid of all the loopholes, both legal and illegal that they produce.
I cant see a lot wrong with semi automatics other than they can be modified fairly easily and inexpensively to become automatic or to come very, very close to an automatic. These modifications are out there and some are still not banned by the Fed. They should be.
Clips are another matter. In any of our massacres it was important that the gun be reloaded very quickly. If the weapon had to be reloaded with anything other than a quick replace preloaded clip much less damage would be done. The capacity of the clip is also a factor. How thirty round clips are allowed anywhere but the military is beyond me.. I would ban large capacity clips.
One can say, with reason, that a pocketful of eight round clips is little different. True enough but it is somewhat different. It slows things down a bit but I feel that every little bit helps. Handguns with large capacity clips are really hard to justify. I cant begin to make an argument for them.
We should also keep a closer watch on our manufacturers and on the gun imports..
It has also been a long time since I have hunted but in my day the number of shells in the gun were limited. If I remember correctly it was three for ducks and five for bigger game. Were it strictly up to me I would get away from the clips altogether and load the shells manually like the lever action Winchester.
I dont think any of these things would cause any thing but mild discomfort to the gun owner, any gun owner.
Arguments for and against guns are very different in rural and urban areas and these attitudes are as real as they are hard to address.
Having said all this can I say with any certainty they will make one bit of difference in mass killings? No, I cant. These are usually by disturbed folks and often they appear normal. How about street killing and accidents? Here is more of a probable thing with the honest answer being it cant hurt. Until we can get a handle on all those guns now fooating free in the country it will be difficult to make a major difference., That doesnt mean we should not try.
As I mentioned at the start of this most of our problems are cultural. We grow up with a certain mindset and too often that mindset is dominated by macho gun ideology. Big man, big gun kind of crap. It may be silly but you can see it on this board. Many seem to have a military fetish with visions of grandeur of themselves saving the republic in daring
