It's About The Guns

I don't know Nicholas Kristoff's stuff very well, so I'm not endorsing the whole package - I'm just saying he seems to be talkin' some sense here.

First, we need to comprehend the scale of the problem: It’s not just occasional mass shootings like the one at an Oregon college on Thursday, but a continuous deluge of gun deaths, an average of 92 every day in America. Since 1970, more Americans have died from guns than died in all U.S. wars going back to the American Revolution.

When I reported a similar figure in the past, gun lobbyists insisted that it couldn’t possibly be true. But the numbers are unarguable: fewer than 1.4 million war deaths since 1775, more than half in the Civil War, versus about 1.45 million gun deaths since 1970 (including suicides, murders and accidents).

If that doesn’t make you flinch, consider this: In America, more preschoolers are shot dead each year (82 in 2013) than police officers are in the line of duty (27 in 2013), according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI.

--and--

Daniel Webster, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University, notes that in 1999, the government listed the gun stores that had sold the most weapons later linked to crimes. The gun store at the top of the list was so embarrassed that it voluntarily took measures to reduce its use by criminals — and the rate at which new guns from the store were diverted to crime dropped 77 percent.

But then he comes up with this clinker:

But in 2003, Congress barred the government from publishing such information.

Why is Congress enabling pipelines of guns to criminals?

Why? Really?

The NRA spent $15,000,000 against Democratic candidates, $92,000 against Republican ones. "Non-partisan." http://t.co/EDy64n4l8w

— Peter W. Singer (@peterwsinger) October 4, 2015

 

Like the man said: Follow the money.

Coin-Operated Politicians do what they're told to do by the people who put them in power, and keep them in power.  And those "people" ain't me (even tho' I always go out and vote), and it sure as fuck ain't you when you decide you're above it all and refuse to vote.  

And just to be clear here - it ain't me (even tho' I do vote) because you don't vote.  You're sitting on your ass letting the rest of us do all the work; and then you continue to sit on your ass, bitchin' about how fucked up everything is, even tho' you refuse to pitch in and help.

So in the case of guns and public health policy, what exactly is the Number of Dead Children that we have to reach before you give up your stoopid sorry-ass excuses for neglecting your baseline responsibility as a US citizen?