NYTimes: Democrats should go pro-gun... sorta
Or: How to forward a pro-gun approach while remaining really and truly anti
Fisking and hot coffee on a sunny Monday. (insert contented sigh here) Life is good.
More than one person has noted that Kerry's attempts to portray himself as something other than an elitist gun-grabber (which one would think him to be if all one looked at was his voting record on the issue) fell somewhat flat. It might not be quite as easy to fool people as the good Senator might wish. Too, many people have pointed out that the gun control issue itself has been a pretty sure loser for the Democrats in general.
The NY Times has a solution: play make-believe. In their continuing effort to bring us all the news that's fit to slant, (heavily!)
Nick Kristoff acknowledges the political poison which has been gun control. He also unleashes a tidal wave of the top hits of the deliberate misdirection crowd. Buckle up, Nick, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
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.
With backhands like that, Mr. Kristoff should probably look for a slot at the US Open. (did anyone actually see Kerry shoot anything that wasn't made of clay?) There's precious little 'suspected' regarding the disarmament advocacies of much of the Democratic congressional 'leadership'. If anyone would like to argue that Daschle, Kennedy, Kerry, Schumer, Feinstein and Boxer (for starters) are
not supportive of near or total firearms bans in the US, I'd love to hear it. I enjoy fiction.
What's interesting about the Kristoff piece isn't just that he's almost advocating thinking of firearms owners as people, (not quite,,, but almost) but that he does it in the most wonderfully classic 'yes, firearms owners are drooling neanderthals, but they're
our drooling neanderthals, and we love them (besides, they vote so we must appease them... for now)' rhetoric that is the left at its hypocritical best.
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,
Okay, so Nick has little patience and just couldn't wait to let his prejudices overcome his sense. Ignoring the fact that the actual number of firearm-related deaths is significantly less than 30,000 (NCVS has the numbers if you want 'em) Nick does the 'lump them all together and call it an epidemic' routine. You see, while it's true that there were over 28,000 firearms-related deaths in the last year for which full stats are available, it's equally true that over half of them were suicide. Still tragic, yes, but hardly tool-specific. [side note: (there are likely to be a lot of these) Japan's suicide rate eclipses the US rate by a fair margin, despite
very low firearm ownership rates. It doesn't seem method-dependent] I'll leave the 'this political climate' part alone.
about children who are nine times as likely to die in a gun accident in America as elsewhere in the developed world,
This one is sort of cute. I'd like to see the background work that went into it, because I suspect a whole lot is riding on one's definition of 'developed world'. Too, with firearms accidents at their lowest point since statistics were compiled, and firearms ranking behind: automobiles, falls, poisoning, pedestrian, drowning, fires and suffocation as a cause of accidental death, I question the validity of the claim. Hyperbole? When discussing
firearms? Never!
about the $17,000 average cost (half directly borne by taxpayers) of treating each gun injury. But nationally, gun control is dead
ROFL! Okay, maybe a
little hyperbole. I'm guessing he got this one from the Johns Hopkins 'study' that purported to track the 'costs' of firearms-related injury, but was really nothing but a hatchet job which included highly dubious projected losses. He did get one part sort of right, though. In the wake of a CDC compilation of available studies on the effectiveness of gun control, the best that august body (traditionally
NOT any friend of private firearm ownership) could obtain was a null result: they couldn't say that any proof of effectiveness had been found; gun control as crime control may finally be gaining the oblivion it so thoroughly deserves.
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.
This is a two-fer, I get to poke at more than one tactic. Several icons of the left's political structure have publicly declared that no one 'needs' a handgun. Kristoff would apparently have them lie, but only so that a two-pronged approach to obtaining the end goal can be enabled. First is the 'public health' angle, which is what brought us the (snort) cost analysis the Hopkins study forwarded. This way, 'we' get to treat crime as something more akin to a flu outbreak. How does disarming the law-abiding vaccinate against thugs?
Secondly, and much more fun for the trial lawyers, is the 'safety' angle. Mandate enough questionable technology for 'acceptable' firearms, and you can ban them without ever having to get the issue past the voters. This second bit is a close cousin to the failed attempts at accomplishing the same goal (elimination of firearms production) through ruinous tort litigation against firearms manufacturers due to the intentional criminal misuse of firearms.
In an interesting side note here, it seems that something like 40% of the police officers killed in the line of duty are killed with their own sidearms. It would follow, then, that the first recipient of 'safety' innovation that purports to regulate who may operate a firearm should be those police, yet they tend to opt out of mandatory safety regulation. Why? Because a marvel of technology that renders a cop's sidearm inoperative at an inopportune moment is potentially a much greater hazard to that officer.
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.
(chuckle) The accidental death rate for firearms for the last year in which statistics are available is 912. For cars, it's somewhere over 40,000. You do the math. Too, the homicide rate has dropped some 37%-odd since '94. If someone wants to make a comparison, I got a doozy.
Similar steps are feasible in the world of guns.
No, they're not.
"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.
At this point I wonder if Kristoff himself, much less Hemenway, live on a planet with an oxygen/nitrogen-based atmosphere. (I have my doubts) There is, somewhere in my storage space, an ancient 126 camera, where you really could tell if it were loaded from outside. I have several others where it's much more of a memory exercise. Too, you can tell on a digital cam whether or not there's memory space left,,, until the batteries run out.
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.
LOL! Okay, Kristoff hasn't handled a chainsaw, either. (the 'anti-kickback' device is a cover over the front of the chain, which greatly reduces the utility of the machine, but can,,, occasionally, prevent the colossaly stupid from hurting themselves... (they are
NOT found on commercial models, and not on all homeowner machines) why 'we' should try to do so is another matter entirely) I'm not sure I get what he means regarding refrigerators, since they've been openable from the inside as of the advent of magnetic seals. (hint: that was a long time ago and it wasn't for safety) Very old revolvers of some manufacturers would indeed allow the hammer to rest on the primer of a round, should the owner load it so, but some manufacturers have put in a 'rebounding' hammer (the spur on a S&W revolver will break off before the hammer can be forced forward) and others use a 'transfer bar' to address that issue. (all of which ignores the fact that safe handling practices render these methods useful redundancy) Still, why let reality get in the way of a good story?
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.
There is no mandate for such mechanisms as far as I'm aware, and I wonder how many deaths they have provably circumvented. Too, a whole lot of safety innovations have been implemented by the industry, without mandate.
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.
If I weren't pretty sure Kristoff doesn't want to know, I'd ask him how many children in that same age range drown each year. (hint: it's higher by several orders of magnitude) The 'childproof' pistol is just as much a myth as the 'childproof' aspirin bottle. Among other things, the grip safety on the venerable 1911 is there to facilitate 'condition three' carry; loaded and cocked, with the safety engaged, for those conditions where time is of the essence.
Aside from making childproof guns, here are other steps we could take:
You could start by not opposing education programs for young people.
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.
How about: 'always point the muzzle in a safe direction', or more appropriately 'treat every firearm as if it were loaded, all the time, no exceptions'? Making it 'safe' to point an 'unloaded' gun at someone and pull the trigger is
not an intelligent solution. (I don't usually stoop to personal insult, but remember when I wondered about the atmosphere on Kristoff's homeworld? I think it's the planet 'Dumba**')
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.
How about: 'because very few people have used cell phones to save themselves from attack' for starters? When you're trying to save someone's life, remembering a PIN can be a deadly exercise. Too, if the PIN is such a complete fix, why are cellphones routinely stolen? There's not an electronic solution out there that isn't bypassed
very shortly after its debut. Too, is Kristoff really stupid enough to believe that 'criminals' depend on newly manufactured firearms for their supply? (don't answer that)
Another interesting side note is that with
very severe restrictions on longarm ownership, and a de-facto ban on civilian handgun possession, more criminals in Britain are carrying firearms than at any time previous, and crime, including violent crime, is rising. In the US, 'home invasions' (burglary of a dwelling when the resident is home) are about 13% of burglaries, in the UK, it's well over 50%. It seems criminals 'over there' aren't worried about finding someone home.
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).
Go right ahead. While you're at it, push hard to get programs like the NRA's 'Eddie Eagle' safety awareness training brought to the nation's schools. Teach 'em while they're young.
Encourage doctors to counsel depressed patients not to keep guns, and to advise new parents on storing firearms safely.
I'll listen to what my doctor tells me about firearm safety right after he consults me on knee surgery. He has his area of expertise, I have mine.
Make gun serial numbers harder for criminals to remove.
... where to begin? Okay, add metalurgy to the list of things about which Kristoff knows precious little. It doesn't keep him from declaring a solution to a nonexistent problem, but hey, this is
journalism!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.
I wonder if Kristoff is aware that some jurisdictions reportedly mark down traffic injuries where a firearm is in the vehicle as 'firearm related'? (I have only anecdotal evidence of this, it wouldn't surprise me, but it could be incorrect) Cars aren't quite as portable as firearms, and in a prosecutorial 'atmosphere' that is at best neutral to firearms ownership data can be more difficult to collect. Too, since a huge portion of the 'problem' is criminal misuse, very ordinary efforts directed toward capturing, convicting and incarcerating the misusers will be far, far more effective than widespread efforts to disarm the people who are not the root cause.
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.
A much better question than 'can we do it?', is 'should we try?'. Kristoff advocates that the Democrats play a much more sophisticated version of Kerry's 'I'm a hunter' game, and try to incrementally disarm the population through ruinous regulations aimed at much fewer than 1000 deaths annually. Are they tragic? Absolutely, but unlike driving, education can and does have an impact on the accident rate. The Democrats would do far better if they quit opposing the NRA's training programs on principle, and supported them as a solution to the 'problem' which has the added advantage of having a chance at effectiveness.
... that is the goal, isn't it Nick?
