Posted on 11/13/2004 2:34:57 PM PST by neverdem
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Nothing kills Democratic candidates' prospects more than guns. If it weren't for guns, President-elect Kerry might now be conferring with incoming Senate Majority Leader Daschle.
Since the Brady Bill took effect in 1994, gun-control efforts have been a catastrophe for Democrats. They have accomplished almost nothing nationally, other than giving a big boost to the Republicans. Mr. Kerry tried to get around the problem by blasting away at small animals, but nervous Red Staters still suspected Democrats of plotting to seize guns.
Moreover, it's clear that in this political climate, further efforts at gun control are a nonstarter. You can talk until you're blue in the face about the 30,000 gun deaths each year, about children who are nine times as likely to die in a gun accident in America as elsewhere in the developed world, about the $17,000 average cost (half directly borne by taxpayers) of treating each gun injury. But nationally, gun control is dead.
So it's time for a fundamentally new approach, emblematic of how Democrats must think in new ways about old issues. The new approach is to accept that handguns are part of the American landscape, but to use a public health approach to try to make them much safer.
The model is automobiles, for a high rate of traffic deaths was once thought to be inevitable. But then we figured out ways to mitigate the harm with seat belts, air bags and collapsible steering columns, and since the 1950's the death rate per mile driven has dropped 80 percent.
Similar steps are feasible in the world of guns.
"You can tell whether a camera is loaded by looking at it, and you should be able to tell whether a gun is loaded by looking at it," said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Professor Hemenway has written "Private Guns, Public Health," a brilliant and clear-eyed primer for the country.
We take safety steps that reduce the risks of everything from chain saws (so they don't kick back and cut off an arm) to refrigerators (so kids can't lock themselves inside). But firearms have been exempt. Companies make cellphones that survive if dropped, but some handguns can fire if they hit the ground.
Professor Hemenway notes that in the 1990's, two children a year, on average, died after locking themselves in car trunks. This was considered unacceptable, so a government agency studied the problem, and General Motors and Ford engineered safety mechanisms to prevent such deaths.
In contrast, 15 children under the age of 5 die annually in fatal gun accidents in the U.S., along with 18 children 5 to 9 years old. We routinely make aspirin bottles childproof, but not guns, even though childproof pistols were sold back in the 19th century - they wouldn't fire unless the shooter put pressure on the handle as well as the trigger.
Aside from making childproof guns, here are other steps we could take:
Require magazine safeties so a gun cannot be fired when the clip is removed (people can forget that a bullet may still be in the chamber and pull the trigger). Many guns already have magazine safeties, but not all.
Finance research to develop "smart guns," which can be fired only by authorized users. If a cellphone can be locked with a PIN, why not a gun? This innovation would protect children - and thwart criminals.
Start public safety campaigns urging families to keep guns locked up in a gun safe or with a trigger lock (now, 12 to 14 percent of gun owners with young children keep loaded and unlocked weapons in their homes).
Encourage doctors to counsel depressed patients not to keep guns, and to advise new parents on storing firearms safely.
Make gun serial numbers harder for criminals to remove.
Create a national database for gun deaths. In a traffic fatality, 120 bits of data are collected, like the positions of the passengers and the local speed limit, so we now understand what works well (air bags, no "right on red") and what doesn't (driver safety courses). Statistics on gun violence are much flimsier, so we don't know what policies would work best, and much of the data hurled by rival camps at each other is inaccurate.
Would these steps fly politically? Maybe. One poll showed that 88 percent of the public favors requiring that guns be childproof. And such measures demonstrate the kind of fresh thinking that can keep alive not only thousands of Americans, but the Democratic Party as well.
How about this, Dave? If you see a gun, it's LOADED!!
I seem to recall learning that a long time ago, maybe when I was about 6. Common sense continues to evade the left. Actually, this nonissue reveals that the writer has no personal experience at all with firearms, is just writing on autopilot.
New York is funny when it comes to pistol permits because they are issued by County not by the State.
Any permit is good anywhere in the State except for NYC. Forget a carry permit in NYC, as a practical matter you can't even get permit to own one and leave it your home.
In the Counties surrounding NYC like Westchester you get a Target and Hunting Carry permit that is supposedly good for going to and from the range, but this restriction exists only on the permit and is not written anywhere in the State's Carry Law. They also make you wait 6 months or more and require you to be fingerprinted.
Upstate NY mostly just gives full carry permits with a simple form and little or no wait or hassle. The only restriction is that you must carry concealed.
I know Rapist and his hag used "diversity programs" to create Clintonista political rings inside the Civil Service. Rapist committed all the agency heads (who were appointees) to "promote diversity", and the way they did this was by naming certain people Of Color/Womynhood/Whatever [identity-political angle] as "change agents" and giving them an intra-agency forum, a budget, and a megaphone to tout "diversity" and feed into HR decisions within these agencies. In fact, what they were doing was creating Clintonista political clubs in violation of the Hatch Act and empowering them to seek the jobs of white males, who were targeted for replacement -- so "diversity" became a patronage gimmick, to attract people in the Civil Service to become political moles. Like Richard Clarke, for example, and Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, who were Clinton moles who suddenly broke the surface to attack Pres. Bush last year.
But the idea of salting sources of authority with "singer" shills is a new one -- and trust someone like Slick to think of something like that.
Bush has got to go on the warpath and clean all those people out of public life. Hogtie them, brand them, ship them off to the stockyards. Get rid of them.
Browning thought so much of the grip safety that he never again included it on any design, for example, the Browning Hi-Power.
Note the asterisk and the underscore. ;-)
Thanks for the history.
Duh. People who forget this will someday find themselves nominated for a Darwin Award.
I don't consider my guns to be "safe" until they are a pile of unconnected pieces lying on the table, waiting to be cleaned. That is the only time I'd be willing to say "this is an unloaded weapon".
We take safety steps that reduce the risks of everything from chain saws (so they don't kick back and cut off an arm) to refrigerators (so kids can't lock themselves inside). But firearms have been exempt. Companies make cellphones that survive if dropped"
...but none of these items are protected by an Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
--Boris
That's my whole point.
Once again, I'm NOT agreeing with him or buying his argument.
I'm saying, again, his answers are all wrong, and I don't agree with his point of view.
BUT he is one of the few Dems who is actually thinking "We have to change or we're doomed." I don't think any of his changes are ones that would make me agree with him, but my point is that he is at least not blaming the Dems plight on "not getting the message out" but on the message itself.
I'm pretty sure that the need for group posts with special names such as *bang_list went away with the last major overhaul. The topics are now arranged according to keywords such as banglist.
Admin mod, correct me if I'm wrong.
That would be one Professor Michael Bellesiles.
Here's a sample debunking of his "research":
Disarming History, by Joyce Lee Malcolm
and
a press release from Emory University regarding his resignation.
As should bicycles, staircases, edible sized toys, and the other greater child killers.
LOL ! oh yeah ,I forgot that one .Good advice.
" how about one for hiv infections while they're at it.."
I think HIV/AIDS kills more people in this country than guns do. I would think that most AIDS deaths are probably preventable too.
Doctors:
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health Human Services.
Now Guns:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. Yes, that is 80 million.
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .000188.
Statistics courtesy of F.B.I.
Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Remember, "Guns don't kill people, doctors do."
(My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."-- Ayn Rand)
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