WP: "Guns don’t kill, they just make it much easier."

[villager]

<snip>

most recently, the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 prompted President Obama to press Congress for new gun laws, only to see the measures fail in Senate floor votes. (Ironically, the effort was initially backed by the National Rifle Association, but the group reversed course when it took flak from gun rights zealots who accused the organization of selling out.)

As the arc of this narrative suggests, gun policy change has become progressively more difficult. There are several explanations for why.

First, while more Americans favor than oppose tougher laws that could actually have some effect on gun violence (such as uniform background checks), the issue sits far down the list of issue concerns for average voters. Senseless gun violence mobilizes the public and focuses outrage, but that effect doesn’t last long. As the public turns back to other concerns, the gun policy debate is yielded to those who most care about the issue — gun rights proponents.

Second, the country has, to some degree, become inured to gun violence. With each new mass shooting, the sense of horror erodes, and so does pressure on lawmakers. That in turn heightens feelings that nothing effective can be done.

Third, the gun lobby has scored great success in changing the narrative of the gun issue. Guns aren’t the problem, it is bad people who do bad things, they say; gun laws don’t work; and Second Amendment gun rights must be preserved and protected. Their success in advancing their arguments lies with the relative weakness of pro-gun control forces (although that may be changing), combined with the election of the most gun-friendly president in history, George W. Bush, during whose administration top NRA priorities became policy. That, in turn, lent unprecedented legitimacy to gun rights arguments.

To be sure, none of those pro-gun propositions withstands scrutiny. While many products can cause injury and death, firearms are uniquely efficient and effective tools for killing. As criminologist Philip Cook has noted, guns don’t kill, they just make it much easier. Gun laws do work if we want them to — the 1934 gun law has been remarkably successful in keeping fully automatic weapons out of the hands of criminals, for example. And as the Supreme Court and our own history make clear, gun laws are perfectly compatible with gun rights. Indeed, for most of American history, guns were much more heavily regulated by the states than in recent years.

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/18/think-the-charleston-shooting-will-lead-to-new-gun-control-laws-it-wont/

[hack89]

1. "restrictions on great firepower"

now that is a deliciously ambiguous term if I ever heard one.

[villager]

2. I'm glad you find this latest atrocity so lip-smacking!

[hack89]

3. No. I get no pleasure out of it

I just find opinion pieces like the one you posted interesting. I agree with most of what he is saying but you know there has to be a catch. That was the comment that caught my eye - it is as open ended a statement as one can imagine. Wonder why he didn't want to explain what he really meant?

[villager]

4. What do you think he really meant?

And glad to find you mostly in agreement with the tenor of it.

Of course, that also means agreeing that we're all too inured/jaded to ever, actually, really do anything about changing any of this...

[hack89]

5. If he is saying that he wants to prevent killings like Charleston

and he thinks that enormous firepower is the problem, then he is talking about banning all semiautomatic pistols. That would be the logical conclusion.

[villager]

6. Yes, but we are too blood-soaked to really care anymore, as he notes. Plus the NRA has bamboozled

..a supine "leadership" into believing their own bent narrative about events...

[hack89]

7. As an society we accept all sorts of things that kill many people

part of the issue is that gun violence has been steadily falling for 20 years (we have cut our murder and manslaughter rates in half) so the reality is that for most people, gun violence is an abstract and distance threat. Gun deaths are very concentrated geographically - the vast majority of Americans live in places where violent crime is rare. Where I live, for example, there have been in exactly two gun murders in the 15 years I have lived here (on an island with aprox 100,000 people). Drug overdoses and alcohol, however, kill people every day. That is why where I live, guns are not a big issue - not because we don't care, but because they don't even come close to the things that pose the real dangers to our kids and families.

[villager]

8. The "island" aspect is interesting, also as a metaphor

I've personally know some people killed by guns.

They might otherwise be around, had the guns not been so ridiculously easy to get.

[hack89]

9. I have never known a person who has been killed by a gun

and I have lived all over America as well as being involved in shooting sports for decades. Perhaps I have just been lucky. On the other hand, I know all too well the effects of alcohol and mental illness.

[villager]

10. Well, as I say, there are three who I knew or met, I can immediately think of

Possibly even one other, though his end is shrouded in a little mystery....