No country has reduced gun homicides to zero, but no country in the world has as many homicides by gun as the United States, and no country in the world has so many guns.
Nicholas Kristof here presents compelling evidence about the connection between gun availability and homicides.
He writes:
People all over the world become furious and try to harm others, but only in the United States do we suffer such mass shootings so regularly; only in the United States do we lose one person every 15 minutes to gun violence.
So let’s not just mourn the dead, let’s not just lower flags and make somber speeches. Let’s also learn lessons from these tragedies, so that there can be fewer of them. In particular, I suggest that we try a new approach to reducing gun violence — a public health strategy. These graphics and much of this text are from a visual essay I did in November after a church shooting in Texas; sadly, the material will continue to be relevant until we not only grieve but also act.
America Has More Guns
Than Any Other Country
The first step is to understand the scale of the challenge America faces: The U.S. has more than 300 million guns – roughly one for every citizen – and stands out as well for its gun death rates. At the other extreme, Japan has less than one gun per 100 people, and typically fewer than 10 gun deaths a year in the entire country…
We Have a Model for
Regulating Guns: Automobiles
Gun enthusiasts often protest: Cars kill about as many people as guns, and we don’t ban them! No, but automobiles are actually a model for the public health approach I’m suggesting.
We don’t ban cars, but we work hard to regulate them – and limit access to them – so as to reduce the death toll they cause. This has been spectacularly successful, reducing the death rate per 100 million miles driven by 95 percent since 1921.
The American Automobile Association does not lobby to prevent the registration and regulation of automobiles and drivers.
Kristof offers a menu of sensible ways to regulate firearms and access to them.
Please read it.
Then get involved.
Support the March 14 action of the Women’s March, which calls for a 17-minute walkout at 10 am..
Support the March 24 “March for Our Lives” of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students, in DC and across the nation.
Support the Day of Action on April 20 in every school and school district sponsored by the Network for Public Education, the NEA, the AFT, the AASA, LULAC, and Gabby Giffords, with more sponsors to come.
Support the National Student Walkout on April 20, which calls on students to walk out at 10 am and not return.
April 20 is the anniversary of the Columbine massacre.
Let’s take Nick Kristof’s good advice and insist that guns be regulated as automobiles are. Drivers must be licensed and can lose their license for cause. Cars must be regularly inspected and registered. States have laws regulating how and where you may drive, on which side of the road, not exceeding a certain speed.
It is criminal to violate automobile and driving laws. You can go to jail if you do.
That is a good model.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Tobacco use would be another public-health model to follow, where user taxes not only serve as a powerful deterrent, but also are applied to the external costs of smoking. Guns are ruinously expensive—lost lives, maimings, the medical apparatus needed to treat gunshot victims, the huge expansion and armoring of law enforcement, and so on. Gun owners and users need to pick up this tab, not the rest of us, and registration fees, taxes, and insurance rates should be adjusted accordingly.
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Unfortunately, I can’t read his article without subscribing to NYT.
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Sure you can. If you used up your free articles for the month on a computer . Use a cell phone with a different email . But I do have to get a digital subscription . Along with my renewal to the ACLU
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Think I used up the free ones on both! But thanks fir the heads up.
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CA, swing by your public library
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It seems to me that these events will speak more loudly if consolidated. Why not one walkout day and one march on DC/national day of action? Following the lead of the students, surely, in final determination of the days?
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The more events, the better. One event and the protests will be forgotten 24 hours later. Keep up the momentum. I support them all.
The Women’s March called a walkout on March 10
The students at MSD HS in Florida called a March for Our Lives on March 14
The National High School Walkout is April 20 at 10
The National Day of Action is April 20 in every school and community, which will decide how to demand an end to gun violence
May there be demonstrations everywhere until the NRA wears a badge of shame
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This is really a great post. It highlights the unplanned convergence of events and opportunities to keep the pressure on. Big help.
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There was more sane gun control in the Wild West than there is today.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/7/23/1112703/-De-mythologizing-the-Wild-West-gun-laws-were-actually-stricter-then-than-now
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The gun nutters will counter that there is no constitutional right to own a car but there is a constitutional right to own guns. Well, I would counter that the gun nutters have a distorted view of the 2nd Amendment; for most of its history, the amendment was about a well regulated militia NOT about individual ownership of guns. But Scalia and the Heller decision made it about individual ownership which is ironic since Scalia was supposedly an originalist. Even the Heller decision stated that the 2nd Amendment did not mean that you could own any kind of gun and carry it anywhere or everywhere at any time you want. Restrictions and regulations could be made regarding guns even with the Heller decision.
I can remember when the car companies had to be forced kicking and screaming to install safety and antipollution devices on the cars. It took Ralph Nader to get the ball rolling. They used to say that bad drivers were the problem not the cars and that all the safety devices we take for granted would not help because bad drivers kill, not the cars (which was BS). The car companies didn’t want to be bothered to reengineer cars to make them safer. So laws and regulations had to be passed before anything could be done. Sound familiar?
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Again here is another gun nutter. Tell me if he is stable enough to own a gun . This was in response to me telling him an oppressive state would crush him like a bug . It would not wait 51 days at Waco ,would not tolerate Bundy for a minute. A hellfire missile would take them out in seconds and the French resistance ,resisted in Hollywood not in France .The rare occasions there was resistance whole Villages were liquidated.
” I think you’re an idiot that would bend over and take whatever they give you. I would rather die a freeman than live as a slave. I’m happy because I don’t have fear in my heart, I have no control over the hour of my death so I don’t fear it. I do have control over how I choose to live and I chose to live free and don’t have any hesitation to use whatever means are at my disposal to attack anyone that tries to break in to my home, car jack me, rob me or take my freedom. That’s what people like you will never understand. If you don’t have people and principles in your life worth dying and or killing for then you have nothing. ”
He probably has a no chance of being able to prevent the majority of his fears with his weapon . And even less against the State .I worked in the worst neighborhoods of NY for the better part of 30 years and almost never experienced a truly threatening incident . So we have an irrational fear of crime and an irrational fear of the State .
Mean while I bet he is now or soon to be robbed by another oppressive state. Not the one he fears . His profile shows he is a HS grad . So what are the odds he is in the top 10% . (not that college guarantees that either ) .
What are the odds he will not struggle to help children meet tuition bills
even at State Universities . What are the odds he will not see his earned bennifits Social Security , Medicare and even Medicaid wnen he is in a nursing home diminished . What are the odds he is not in economic stagnation . He is worried about being a slave when there is every possibility he is already a wage slave.
He is “Only a Pawn in Their Game “
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Does anyone have recommendations for good reads (well researched books preferable) about the history of the interpretation of the 2nd amendment as well as possible models for gun control?
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A short read with some links .
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery
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posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/How-to-Reduce-Gun-Homicide-in-General_News-Concealed-Carry-Guns_Diane-Ravitch_Guns_Guns-In-Schools-180220-887.html#comment690777
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Already back in 2008, the conservative majority of Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court issued an outright appeal to state and municipal governments to pass laws controlling gun sales and ownership. That appeal is clear on pages 54 and 55 of the Court’s 2008 Heller decision. Think about it: That appeal comes from the Court’s conservative Justices who are still on the Court. The moderate and liberal Justices certainly agree with them, thereby forming an overwhelming majority that favor gun control.
On pages 54-55 of their opinion — their appeal for action on gun control — the conservative majority flatly state that “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited…” [it is] “…not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
The conservative majority of Justices pointed out: “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
The conservative majority also declared that “We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller [an earlier case decided by the Supreme Court] said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time’ [when the 2nd Amendment was written]. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’.” Weapons “in common use at the time” of our Founding Fathers were single-shot rifles, single-shot pistols, and single-shot shotguns; no multiple-shot revolvers, rifles, or semi-automatic weapons.
With this clear appeal in hand from the Supreme Court’s conservative Justices for gun control, all that’s actually needed is for moral and courageous state and municipal lawmakers to enact the laws, and for a few moral and courageous billionaires to back them up and provide the money that these state and local governments will need to battle the expensive court fights that will be launched by the well-financed gun lobby because making gun control laws too expensive for governments to defend is a key strategy of the gun lobby.
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