{"id":57,"date":"2015-12-17T23:08:30","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T04:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/?p=57"},"modified":"2016-01-08T10:59:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T15:59:26","slug":"the-insanity-of-americas-gun-fixation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/12\/17\/the-insanity-of-americas-gun-fixation\/","title":{"rendered":"The insanity of America&#8217;s gun fixation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\">\u00a0Saw this article in this morning&#8217;s Washington Post:<\/div>\n<p><script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&#038;version=v2.3\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-post\" data-href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/chrisingraham\/posts\/10208024577195031\" data-width=\"500\">\n<div class=\"fb-xfbml-parse-ignore\">\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/chrisingraham\/posts\/10208024577195031\"><p>Cars have become a lot safer. Guns haven&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Posted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/chrisingraham\">Christopher Ingraham<\/a> on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/chrisingraham\/posts\/10208024577195031\">Thursday, December 17, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>So let&#8217;s talk about guns for a moment. America, as a country, has gotten itself into a stupid place where we can&#8217;t talk about guns at all\u2014because apparently, even the mention of the very concept of the consideration of talking about limits on guns infringes on the inalienable right of individuals to arm themselves to the teeth and enter any place the desire so armed.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sorry, that is a complete and utter crock.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m not a gun hater. I took my daughter to the pistol range at age 13 to let her shoot. We enjoyed ourselves, we&#8217;ve gone back, and I look forward to continuing going to the range with her in the future. Guns have an appeal to them.<\/p>\n<p>By the same token, guns are dangerous. Period. They are objects whose function is to kill. There are many things that are dangerous and CAN kill\u2014but killing is an unintended (and unwanted) result of improper use, malfunction, etc. With a gun, killing is the intended result of proper use. That makes guns dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>With anything else that&#8217;s dangerous, we do certain things to reduce the risk of using them. We do safety research. We license use. We require training. We may restrict access to certain types of things until competency is demonstrated. And we work to improve the technology to make things safer.<\/p>\n<p>We do it with cars. People don&#8217;t feel as if their rights are threatened by having to take a test and get a license to drive\u2014or to need special training for driving semis or motorcycles &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>We do it with professions. We don&#8217;t let just anyone wire up a house, or connect up a gas line; we insist they get trained and certified before setting up shop.<\/p>\n<p>But guns? For all the talk about &#8220;responsible gun owners,&#8221; we seem loathe to consider ensuring that gun ownership is indeed responsible. And that is stupid.<\/p>\n<p>When you look at the Post article linked above, the points I want you to take from it are these:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Gun deaths have surpassed automobile deaths not because gun deaths have risen (they have, slightly), but instead because automobile deaths have declined consistently;<\/li>\n<li>Gun deaths COULD be on the decline if similar efforts to characterize the risks, ensure user competence, and improve the technology were undertaken;<\/li>\n<li>The gun lobby has systematically worked to prevent research, data collection, and technology implementations that would increase safety and reduce deaths.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We don&#8217;t need to have a conversation about guns because a radicalized Christian American shoots up a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado. We don&#8217;t need to have a conversation about guns because a radicalized Muslim American shoots up an office party in California. We need to have a conversation about guns because people are being killed, in ones and twos, daily, all across the country\u2014and we take that as routine.<\/p>\n<p>Not talking about it\u2014not finding a way to reduce the needless loss of life\u2014is the epitome of stupid. Let&#8217;s talk. Let&#8217;s #StampOutStupid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Saw this article in this morning&#8217;s Washington Post: Cars have become a lot safer. Guns haven&#8217;t. Posted by Christopher Ingraham on\u00a0Thursday, December 17, 2015 &nbsp; So let&#8217;s talk about guns for a moment. America, as a country, has gotten itself into a stupid place where we can&#8217;t talk about guns at all\u2014because apparently, even the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}