Some very interesting data can be found here about firearm deaths per 100,000:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm
Spoiler alert, for 2017:
3 states with the lowest rate, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and New York
3 states with the highest rate, Montana, Alabama, and, topping the list, Alaska.
Data is also available for 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2005.
2
Can we blame it on illegal intergalactic aliens, who will of course be stopped cold by a big wall across the US-Mexico border ?
77
This GOP filled with NRA lovers, Putin lovers, super PAC lovers, racists, misogynists and white nationalists will not be missed when they are gone either because God called them, some are as old as dirt, or because they retired or lost their seats.
We need weapons of mass destruction off the market and declared illegal for use. We need better restrictions for purchase, or in effect we need gun reform and that will happen in the House thank God.
The GOP are evidently trying to go back to the "our thoughts are prayers are with you" uncaring routine that is their knee jerk reaction to every mass shooting.
81
Looks like America's stupidity problem is bigger than its gun problem.
187
Seriously? Can Gaetz really be as vacuous as he sounds?
82
Waiting for a movement from these solons to ban teaching Spanish in our schools, 'cuz if English was good enough for the Lord it's for sure good enough for our children.
61
Gaetz is a disgrace
114
Inserted on the web page with Ms. Collins' fine piece about our failure to sensibly control gun access was an ad for a video game about tank battles. Tanks! You know, those beasts that Nazi Rommel loved. Representative of the mindless love of lethal weapons in this world.
23
So...are you sure it was a surprise that this nonsensical thought process came from a Florida rep? As in...FLORIDA? Sorry, but it’s been known for crazies since we moved there in 1963. Having personal problems? Run to FL to escape them. Never mind that the problems are within yourself, not external, and will be joining you (and your new home state) as you transplant. The locals call it Flori-duh for a reason.
69
If the the study of rhetoric became a central focus in American schools, straw men like "it's the illegal immigrants, dummy!" would blow away in a gentle breeze. Americans would also be less inclined to make hasty generalizations: all mentally ill are dangerous; all NRA members are horrible people; because some ___ do ___, then ____ must be the same. Education can help to restore - and maintain - order better than almost anything else.
Second, it's not NRA money that's the problem - it's money that's the problem. No politician should receive any campaign money from any private source. Anti-NRA photographs do nothing to move us forward and serve only to divide us further. Demand campaign finance reform of the kind that will say "All elections will be publicly funded. All private donations are outlawed. We will use ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, and NPR - the major networks - and run weekly "get to know your candidates" specials on a rotating basis (but always on NPR)." If you have the right stuff to be a leader, you shouldn't also need tons of money to want to serve your nation in an elected office. Elected officials who aren't in it to get rich might also help end this sort of nonsense these politicians are spewing because they won't have any donors to keep happy.
40
Just wait for the Thomas Court rulings. He cannot think of a reason why AR style guns should be limited.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/clarence-thomas-guns/553910/
15
Though it may seem paradoxical given the high profile gun violence in Florida of late, it’s not at all surprising that Matt Gaetz is preaching anything other than common sense gun safety measures. See:
1) He’s a Republican
2) He represents Florida, the shoot first ask questions later state
3) Marion Hammer (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/the-nra-lobbyist-behind-floridas-pro-gun-policies/amp)
38
There were 3 million Jews in Poland in 1935. Now there are almost none (about 3,000). Hitler killed them all.
If even 1 million had guns, there would still be a Jewish population in Poland. Don't ever ever give up your means of self protection again. The idea that "the police and government will protect you. Trust us!" has been proven to be an epic failure.
103
If only Chaney was on the other side of the wall, he couldn't have shot his hunting buddy in the face...
33
Surprise! It’s not guns it’s the angry white men!
51
Gaetz is an idiot, the kind the NRA loves to give campaign money to. And Republicans long ago lost any shame in their craven desire to prostrate themselves before the Liar-in-Chief. Lack of a wall will be blamed for all the country's ills until Trump is indicted, impeached or voted out of office, ignoring the fact that most gun violence in this country is carried out by native-born Americans armed with, you guessed it, guns.
51
Background checking might appear as a good common-sense step to reduce gun violence, but a report by VOX , not a friend of gun rights, found that common sense believers should be cautious.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/9/18171909/universal-background-checks-hr-8-gun-violence-democrats
3
Gaetz was cheering for his Dear White Leader. There are many jobs open and he hates being in the minority wilderness. A loyal White solider looking for a promotion in the White house.
23
The National Russian Association (NRA) has these little creepy ding-a-ling Republican congressmen wrapped around their little trigger fingers.
2020!
40
Gail, by focusing on the proliferation of guns, the lack of effective background checks, the annual casualty figures from guns which approach the deaths of the Vietnam War, you miss the big picture.
Republicans focus on the big picture, not nonsense like 40,000 Americans dying each year from guns shot by Americans born here, or Joe or John's toddlers shooting themselves, or mass killings by white bigots, mentally ill and bullied teenagers or Rambo-like attention seekers, as in Parkland Florida, Orlando Florida, Fort Lauderdale Florida, Las Vegas Nevada, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Sutherland Springs Texas, Charleston South Carolina (sorry there isn't enough space to list a tenth of a tenth of all mass shootings). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
So Republicans focus on the big picture not what Americans want but on what the NRA wants: guns. The NRA is their constituency: money is free speech which is amplified when it goes directly from NRA coffers into Republican election campaign donations. That makes Republicans pay attention (after all, their attention has been purchased), whereas the family of a student shot at school doesn't have a bank account to write $10,000 checks to each of a couple dozen Republican candidates for Congress.
So let's get real. Our democracy represents the NRA purse, not the public welfare.
Now Republicans don't like to admit their votes have been bought by the NRA, so they talk about brown immigrants.
67
We will continue to have political hacks and morons such as Gaetz, King and Gohmert in Congress so long as corporate political contributions are unfettered. Guns don't kill people, low rent Congress members, bought and paid for by the NRA, do.
40
The GOP just lies. The good news is the NRA
laundered Russian money and the lickspittles
took the moolah
22
Are the people voting for stooges of the NRA Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky sleepwalkers?
19
Columns like these simply harden my opinion that anti-gunners have not and never will learn the other side of the debate.
70
@FreddyB
What is the other side of the debate?
Are you debating why you have a right to carry around a gun?
Are you debating the rate of gun-related deaths in the US in comparison to the rest of the developed nations of the world?
210
@FreddyB
What is the other side of the debate?
Self defense? Against what?
110
@KLK-AZ freddy b. Please enlighten us.
93
This anti gun article is mindless.
Myself and all my friends carry, everywhere, and nobody blames inanimate objects or "immigrants" for all the shootings.
49
@mrmeat
"Myself and all my friends carry, everywhere, and nobody blames inanimate objects or "immigrants" for all the shootings."
Well, what do you and your friends blame for all the shootings?
190
@mrmeat:. Actually the Congressman from Florida did just that on ‘Cuomo Prime Time’ yesterday, making an effort to correlate the need for a wall with illegals killing with guns. He completely ignored, of course, that young, American born men are almost always the perpetrators of gun violence, particularly mass shootings.
236
@mrmeat
Good to know. I guess I'll be visiting Florida... never!!
Just what are you all so afraid of that you feel the need to constantly have a loaded gun at your side? We have plenty of coyotes, the occasional bear, the occasional mountain lion, vicious Fisher cats, even "scary" brown people and cities with gangs! But I don't know of anyone who feels the need to carry a loaded gun at all times. How sad that you and your friends feel so unsafe in the environment you live in.
290
This whole insane reality is starting to remind me of a nutty cult classic movie: Groundhog Day. No matter how many innocent men, women, and children are murdered in mind numbing numbers; as sure as God made little green apples; out will jump a complete imbecile like Matt Gaetz. After watching him scream at Chris Cuomo on CNN; following his throwing the dad of one of the murdered boys from Parkland out of his so called town hall meeting one thing is crystal clear. These N.R.A. stooges are interested in one thing only; defend the indefensible and wait for the mega-N.R.A. cheque to arrive in the mail. There is no point in trying to sanely argue with these merchants of death. They are so pathetically brain washed it is the ultimate waste of time. The statistics of how bad things have become SCREAM for common sense legislation. Good luck with that. No; only when the likes of Gaetz are sent packing once and for all will there be a prayer of bringing the gun nuts to heal. When "Military" assault rifles are sold to people to hunt Bambi; America is truly lost. When I wake up tomorrow; thanks to such men;it will be Groundhog Day...AGAIN!
31
Blackmail Mitch McConnell?
4
Great column, Gail. What a yahoo, this guy Gaetz. Typical of the kind of intellect the Republican voters send to Congress. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezhe is not.
17
If we read books on propaganda written in the mid-1930s, one can see how this lethal business began in earnest and how it has nothing to do with the second amendment.
Note. The photo of representative Matt Gaetz is perfectly chosen for his disgraceful comments (Gail you are a genius).
14
Blaming immigrants for the massive gun violence is truly atvthe top of the list of utter absurdities coming from republicans.
The White guy in Las Vegas who mowed down concert goers from his hotel window
was as white and " American"as they come.
29
Seriously, how does an apparent idiot like Matt Gaetz get elected in the first place? You'd think people who bother to vote would generally be smarter than that. But apparently those smart enough not to vote for him stay home. Why? Doesn't make sense.
22
There are so many reasons (gun culture being just one) for tens or hundreds of millions of Americans to stay home from work, to shop only for necessities, and raise holy hell until this country, this culture shapes up.
Gun control, single payer, universal health care, the Green New Deal, campaign finance reform, and on and on. The whole mix is the problem and our leaders understand only two things: our work and our purchasing. Votes do damn little, letters do less, 1 hour street marches even less.
We must shut this place down if we want to get their attention.
The people need to quit just blaming others and take dramatic action.
9
Perhaps there wouldn't be such a divide on the question of who can have a firearm and what kind if equal attention were given to murders done by citizens by Fox news and Republican members of Congress as is given when committed by an undocumented. It seems all Hell is unleashed when an undocumented commits a murder but even when the Las Vegas shooter committed the largest mass killing in modern times Trump and Congressional Rs are too befuddled to speak. All they ever say is thoughts and prayers which is followed by it's too soon to discuss gun control. The reason they don't address what has occurred is because their only talking point, build a wall, is too idiotic even for them and must be deferred to a later time. So I have given up on ever receiving a reasoned response from the 2d amendment idolators
14
It is the USAmerican narrative that needs to change. Guns were the tools of the Pioneers and now they still stand for freedom, safety and claiming one's territory.
Unless we reform that narrative, real change will not happen.
What we need is education, better social safety such as affordable healthcare etc. Smells like "Socialism" ? You are damn right, that is what can safe us from the barbarism of the gun violence!
9
Surprising that the lead ranter was from Florida? I'd say more like predictable. Gaetz may believe what he says, but he sure as hell didn't come up with the ideas. He's simply another GOP hack who denies reality because acknowledging it would be apostasy. The GOP's ostrich act with regard to climate change is pretty much the same thing. Rising body counts and sea levels go hand in hand when you belong to the party of Donald Trump. And don't forget pay-to-play cronyism, the gutting of the State Department, the embrace of foreign dictators, pay-offs to inconvenient women, the rollback of environmental protections, the appointment of incompetent fools to important government jobs, trade wars and voter suppression. All courtesy of the Republicans. They abandoned reality years ago because it garbled their message to their base and annoyed their donors. Which brings me back to Mr. Gaetz's comments. I'm relatively certain that in sticking to the script, his main purpose was to reassure the base that he's on-message. He wasn't offering a cogent argument supporting a defensible policy position. He was whispering sweet nothings in the ears of his constituents while proving to his leadership that he's one of the boys. No surprise at all given the ideologically and morally bankrupt nature of the GOP.
13
"It's not the Guns, It's the ..."
And I mean no disrespect, It's the Idiots in the NRA and the GOP. Idiots and self-serving, each one of them.
18
There is one word for Gaetz. PUTZ
Nothing else need to be said.
19
It is really difficult to understand why anyone as stupid/dumb/ignorant and unfeeling as the congressman from Florida can win an election. He must have crawled out from under a rock one day before the election and the voters were playing pin the tail on the donkey (ass).
Really! With all the murders by gun in his state he had the absolute stupidity to say immigrants were to blame? I can only hope anyone standing near him when he said it howled, either with laughter or anger.
14
"it was sort of surprising that the lead ranter was from Florida."
really?
11
I keep saying this to my “friends”, but no one listens: We have hundreds of Americans killing thousands of Americans every year, but since they are born and bred here, all we get from our politicos are “thoughts and prayers”, then silence.
But, let ONE illegal immigrant commit a murder, then they scream and rant and rave about how a wall would have stopped that one killing.
PS: Shame on Rep. Waetz. He knows better. What a bootlicker.
24
Yes, it´s true, many people have a careless, stupid attitude toward firearms. Who could deny it? Still, if we had a beautiful concrete barrier walling America off from Mexico that careless, stupid attitude would vanish in an instant.
11
Surprise, the gun violence, due to the unrestricted sale, and use, of firearms, is really due to the lack of a 'wall', the stupid lie advanced by republican Gaetz. Poor guy, aside from his willful ignorance, and abusive stance, is paying the price of living in Mars!
5
Gaetz is an idiot and should be recalled. He is indicative of the Republican mantra on guns that needs to be rejected. Continuing to create a fear of others is what leads to wars. We are on a slippery slope here. An example was a friends comment to me about a pending trip to Mexico where he advised not going there over the perceived danger. Trouble is that Mexico is no more dangerous then much of America especially Florida. Folks, I have been to Mexico and I find that people are people everywhere.
4
Oddly, there are a large number of countries, civilised, developed, democratic, free, where guns may be owned, used for hunting, and are licensed with training, and kept locked up, in which countries gun deaths are a tiny handful every year. These are countries where, when there are problems, the legislature legislates, and is not controlled by an insane lobby of manufacturers and fanatics. All these countries prove, by contrast with the US, that it IS guns that kill people, not other people. If all you have is a knife, or a frozen leg of lamb, it is way way harder to kill another person, either deliberately or accidentally.
America, you are truly exceptional.
978
@Steve Imagine if US legislation was focussed on common good jnstead of selective power and wealth! Good luck. A caring Canadian.
95
@Steve
Sure, maybe guns do kill more people, but it's bad guys with guns! It's not the gun's fault that a bad guy is holding it! And bad guys don't follow gun laws, so the solution is to have no laws so more people with no training can have more guns to protect themselves from all the guns! It's so obvious! More walls and more guns!
48
@Steve Yes, exceptionally sick.
32
This is not the first time Congressmam Gaetz has been called out for saying something stupid or off-topic. Shouldn’t you Panhandlers consider dumping him? The scion of a politically prominent family often doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
19
Republicans/NRA are guilty of crimes against humanity.
21
Perhaps this article should have mentioned all the NRA approved gun bills that Paul Ryan steered through congress. Only the senate stood in the way of some gun-toting idiot from a red state being able to strap on a gun belt and walk through my neighborhood or stand in the back of the children's section of the local library with an AR-15 and a grin. But just wait until next October when Thomas gets his hands on the NYC restriction of transporting handguns. Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas are licking their chops and Roberts is only slightly questionable.
16
Gun violence is endemic in America just as all toxic viruses and bacterial diseases. The mindlessness of fools like Representative Gaetz is as idiotic as his checkered suit. Once again the gun plutocracy will never succumb to reason or decency because of the NRA money and its attendant power.
Time to get on to the next shooting.
13
OK so, I am pretty sure the times won't print this because I'm going to say what everyone is thinking. Republican blind support of the gun lobby is disgusting and disgraceful. The logic behind their argument is just plain stupid. Yeah I know, every time I call a large percentage of the American population stupid the times won't print the comment because it's somehow not "civil". Tell that to the parents of those kids from Parkland.
22
The Moron Don does have a point. Illegal immigrants do shoot a lot of people. Sandy Hook. Columbine. Law Vegas. Ferguson. Wounded Knee. DAPL. As long as these Illegals refuse to recognize the treaties they created, these Illegals will get away with murder.
Is that the point of this discussion?
#HonorTheTreaties
7
At this point, gun safety should be part of health class instead of the incredibly crappy sex education that is there, I’m sure it would be more effective than teaching them abstinence.
9
In Canada , if you have been committed to a mental instition for an episode that includes violent behavior and arrest, the government will show up at your house and confiscate any guns they find and you will not get them back. Period.
34
I am for the extinction of human beings who, as a group, have shown themselves to be ruthless and inept citizens of the planet. Therefore, I am hoping that in order to feel "safe" and "protected" people will soon demand, and get, the right and the technology to carry personal nuclear weapons. I mean, a gun, even an automatic, can only cause limited mayhem. Let's think big and go nuclear!
10
Immigrants are not the problem, however, there is little evidence that more background checks would help.
2/3rds of deaths by gun are suicides. Typically older people who have given up hope due to lack of medical or other resources that use guns they have had for decades.
Roughly another 1/3 is criminals/gangbangers. They obtain the vast majority illegally.
Of the headline grabbing mass killings that get people riled up, very few would have been stopped by background checks:
Not Columbine, Newtown, Parkland, Isla Vista, Las Vegas, Orlando...
Screaming about background checks implies that
1) they will do something about deaths by guns
2) ignores the much deeper problems that need to be solved (healthcare, education, institutional racism, poverty, disenfranchisement and possibly paramount, a constant stream of movies/games that make the gun the solution to your problems) that are the root causes of violence in America.
11
As a gun owner and 2A supporter, I fully agree with the need for comprehensive background checks, including private and gun show transactions. Just not sure how checks would have prevented the three examples at the end of your column. You can't legislate against carelessness or stupidity.
8
Be sensible. Regulate guns for safety, like cars.
11
You understate the case. Immigrants (even legal ones) from 'those countries' are causing global warming, and are chiefly responsible for a polluted environment and Flint's drinking water.
10
Speaking of the NRA, I once belonged but quickly tired of its money grubbing, annoying solicitations for cash and support for greedy political causes. Like the AARP it is likely to hound me to my grave.
7
The fallacy of the NRA's 'Good man with a gun' theory was proven when a good man was killed because the cops couldn't tell he was a 'good man with a gun'.
I rest my case.
15
Gaetz has learned from Trump that spouting nonsense has no consequences. Good thing my TV remote has a handy mute button.
12
I'm waiting and praying for the Russian-NRA-GOP cash pipeline to be fully exposed in all its glory, and then clueless clowns like Matt Gaetz and all his corruptly elected cronies will be headed for the trash heap of history.
It may not solve the problem of deranged, angry young men but it will be a dandy start.
14
I suspect Ms. Collins works and resides as an elite with the protection of an armed guard like so many others that abhor the private ownership of firearms. The basic human right to defend oneself from criminals, as well as tyrants, seems to be under constant attack. When these bullies get on their soapbox their shouting needs to be countered.
4
If Mr. Gaetz really feels that way then he should sponsor legislation to prohibit illegal immigrants from purchasing weapons. There; problem solved.
Surely Mr. Gaetz and the NRA would support a bill that would only allow American citizens to purchase weapons, right?
4
Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have observed that "In politics stupidity is not a handicap." I offer Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, as exhibit one.
17
I have to admit, simply due to my "enthusiasm" for guns and gun-smithing and for the art/craft of shooting (learning to shoot a handgun accurately is a truly humbling endeavor), I unfortunately have this default connection to some seriously warped and absurd individuals on "the right," who are half the reason I feel compelled to be so armed and fortified in the first place.
Love,
An English professor in the city of Detroit, with a CPL, who legally owns a number of "high-capacity" rifles and handguns, who is completely fine with lengthy and rigorous background checks on all gun-purchases, and who will never be a member of the NRA
9
Matt Gaetz is so right. Immigrants are not only the cause of the gun problem, they made me late for work this morning, broke my toaster, hacked my email, scared my dog, made it rain yesterday, made it snow last week, blew the pass interference call in New Orleans, raised the national debt, and fabricated the recent lunar eclipse.
Couldn't be prouder or happier as an American to be paying Matt Gaetz's salary.
20
About 40,000 gun deaths, two-thirds of which is suicides.
The rest is gang violence. Criminal gangs don't really care about your "gun safety" initiatives.
1
Don't blame the NRA. Blame our lax campaign finance laws that permit even lunatic organizations like the NRA to have undue influence over our pay-to-play government.
Until we get money out of politics -- another thing Mitch McConnell won't bring up in the senate -- we will be at the mercy of rich and powerful special interests who can write a bigger check than I can.
6
NRA:
Once everyone has a gun, I promise you, all the violence will magically cease.
4
“But it was sort of surprising that the lead ranter was from Florida.”
Why surprising? Florida has more than its share of right-wing nuts and berries. When you hear about some crazy occurrence more often than not it was in Florida.
8
Oh the wisdom flowing forth from the gentleman from Florida: go to the great trouble and expense of building a ridiculous wall, but don't bother with constructing sensible inexpensive regulatory barriers to acquiring a deadly weapon. Way to shoot from the hip, Brother Gaetz!
7
The gun manufacturers are ultimately to blame, IMHO. They subverted the NRA 40+ years ago into a lobbying organization, and used fear and paranoia to sell as many guns as possible. Because of shareholders and profits. A well made gun can last a couple of hundred years if cared for properly, so how do you keep selling more of them? Scare people, that's how, with threats of possible home invasion, personal and family protection, both of which are considered sacred rights. You make them cool by saturating the culture with casual gun violence by hunky heroes and sexy mean girls. The fact that there are as many guns as people in this country is just crazy, but that's the reality. If we just watch some craven idiot like the congressman from Florida without calling him on his blatantly specious claims, then we get what we deserve.
4
Does any one else wonder just what kind of IQ one has to have to qualify as a politician? Does one need to have any powers of reasoning I wonder? To be able to put 2 2 together to make 4 even? I could go on but I’m almost rendered speechless at the crass misperception and misleading and illogical belief that a wall will stop what has been repeatedly confirmed to be the relatively low number of crimes and shootings perpetrated by immigrants, legal or illegal. For the most part, their sole aim in coming to this country is to lie low, earn some money to send back to their struggling families and try to carve out a better life for themselves. The thought that they’re risking life and limb to come to a country whose president is openly hostile to their plight if they’re illegal and at best indifferent if they are legal, with the sole intention of laying their hands on a gun to commit a crime for which they’re no doubt going to end up incarcerated for years to come defies logic. They’d no doubt get away committing their crimes more successfully in their own country without the certainty of being hunted down, made an example of and locked up which inevitably would happen here.
So please let us be spared from politicians who now believe building a ridiculous wall on the southern border is going to stop gun crime. To go back to my original question, rephrased, how stupid do you have to be to be this politician from Florida?
4
My friend, who lives in a peaceful coastal town not far from here recently told me that they ought to round up all those illegal immigrants from Mexico and shoot 'em. He often rants about illegals with guns. It might have something to do with his alcoholism and dementia.
A few months ago his partner, who suffers from schizophrenia and is often non-compliant with her medication picked up the pistol that was laying on their table and waved it in my face. She thought it was hilarious.
4
Oh for Pete’s sake. It’s the guns. 300 million of them...
6
Way to go, Gail! Was it Gaetz who tried to shut up the Parkland fathers at the hearing yesterday? I couldn’t believe it.
9
Gail, You hit the nail on the head!
We must find a way yo get Republicans in DC to stand up to the NRA.
Get your money from someone else fellows!
1
First thing I wonder these days is what does the gun lobby have on folks like Rep Matt Gaetz who say really stupid things about cement walls and migrants in the face of data that proves him wrong?
4
It really is disgusting to see Republicans suggesting gun violence is related to not having a border wall rather than to their own incompetence in implementing reasonable gun laws. Even worse is that people in the general public are too dumb or racist to see the scapegoating and manipulation. It’s like people have lost the ability to think independently or logically
7
Some of the comments about our collective stupidity in allowing the unrestricted use of firearms sounds like a bad joke (on us) if it weren't so tragic, a bloodbath brought upon ourselves by a "cowboy Wild West" attitude of immaturity and bravado...and allegiance of our prostituted politicians (read, 'republicans') to the NRA. While we see brutus ignoramus Gaetz lying about the facts, and trying to make reality Trump's demagoguery (that the wall will be paid by Mejico), a 'holy waste' of resources...payable with the misuse of our taxes. No shame here, no morals?
2
Once again, Gaetz makes me wish the Panhandle of Florida could secede to its true political home, Lower Alabama.
10
R pols have no shame, just an incredibly dumb base of people who are exploited by about everyone they come in contact with save each other. Collins' sarcasm is wasted.
4
Matt Gaetz represents part of the Florida Panhandle. No one is irresponsible with their guns there, absolutely no deaths except by immigrants who swim in. Matt Gaetz is originally from Hollywood , Fl. a stone's throw from Parkland both of which are located in Broward County. That area is much more dangerous so he left for a whiter shade of pale.
3
Republican lacking fresh water and food regs will shorten more lives and put more in the ground than guns.
1
"Whenever you mention accountability, the gun fetishists – the very people who angrily rush to assure you just how responsible they are – begin screaming that you’re trying to take their guns away."
"And why is that?"
"Why is it that they always, every time, equate “responsibility” to “confiscation?” "
"Why is it that whenever you talk about personal accountability, they always – every time – attempt to deflect that responsibility onto somebody else?"
Stonekettle Station: "Bang Bang Crazy, Part 14: The Cowardice of Responsibility"
3
Excellent Gail. Toadies of the NRA need exposure to the light.
1
It's not the country you "come from."
It's the country you "come to."
Candy, popsicles, TV, cars, are just part of it.
We've got guns and bullets too! Assault rifles? No problemo!
Welcome! Assimilate and share our traditions.
3
We need to face the fact that this is the sickest country on the globe.
5
So, how many people seeking asylum on our southern boarder brought AK-15s with them?
4
Well. gun sales have gone down since Obama is out of office. What a crazy country we live in.
2
Gail, I like your characterization of these pathetic politicians as "worker bees for the National Rifle Association." Their willingness to sell their souls to keep their lousy little jobs is literally costing people their lives.
4
“Is there anything the wall wouldn’t solve?”
Well, Gail, when you have elected malevolent nuts like Matt Gaetz positing that “the wall” would be a solution to homegrown gun violence (like the cold-blooded execution of five women in a Florida bank two weeks ago) why stop there?
I’m only surprised that Trump or someone else in the GOP like Gaetz, has not yet suggested that the wall would cure -cancer, obesity, male pattern baldness and erectile dysfunction. Give them time.
10
These are the same people who claim to be pro-life, right?
And they’re also in favor of the death penalty, right?
Please explain to me how that works.
incongruous
adjective
in·con·gru·ous | \ (ˌ)in-ˈkäŋ-grə-wəs \
6
Always curious if the gun folks get up everyday thinking, "yup today might just be the day I have to kill someone".
6
The Republicans in Congress are owned by the NRA, and the NRA is owned by the Russian kleptocrats.
6
Maybe the wall will even cure cancer......
3
So it is time to destroy the NATIONAL RUSSIA ASSOCIATION known as the NRA. Hopefully Congress can bring together a comity to investigate it.
2
“The Wall” is the new “Obamacare” for Rs. During Obama’s presidency, every evil on the planet was caused by Obamacare. Now, every evil is caused by immigrants trying to escape murderous conditions. Sigh. But, regally, don’t blame the pols. The reason they get away with that rediculous nonsense is because the average American can’t be bothered to actually learn facts.
3
Gail: As usual: bullseye. Oops. My bad.
7
The NRA's conspiracy with Russia to funnel rubles to Trump's campaign will do severe damage to that despicable group.
2
Just law abiding white American citizens exercising their gun rights. Whats all the fuss about?
3
In about 2 years, there are 76 people gunned down in mass murders by fellow citizens - all in Congressman Gaetz’s state of Florida. Yet in response, he thinks what we need is a wall on the border with Mexico.
I perceive there is one wall already - the wall between his eyes that separates the two halves of his brain from the reality that's all around him.
5
Money has turned American leadership into idiots. The entire world watches these clowns. If they don't start turning the ship around, then The USA is doomed as a super power. I look at republicans and see the cast of Green Acres. It's that bad.
5
Miss Gail at her best.
2
It’s still a right, so banning guns is out, except for Assault weapons (ARs, etc.): they were made specifically to kill people, and are extremely effective in doing so. What I and most Americans want is having sensible national policies, including thorough background checks, teaching safety, and mandating a gun owner’s license to own guns. We need a license for everything except the most deadly one, guns. I get the NRA and greed-thing, but I can’t make sense of the passionate resistance to sensible gun-owner laws. If we save one person’s life, perhaps a toddler’s life, perhaps a movie patron or churchgoer, isn’t that worth filling out some freaking paperwork?
4
The NRA is a well-funded PAC for both Russia and the gun manufacturers that then funds nut-jobs for Congress.
3
Just because some morally bankrupt republican was able to get elected does not indicate brainpower in residence. Gaetz is thoughtless and foolish.
4
How much $$$ has ‘representative’ Gaetz received from the terrorist organization known as the NRA?
Great column Ms. Collins, one thing you forgot was road rage.
This past week in the ‘shootshine’ state an incident involving a school bus!
3
THE NRA Has long abandoned its founding princples. In 1871, the NRA was founded for civilians to teach soldiers marksmanship and gun safety. You know, like an organized militia. In 1934, Karl Fredrikson, President of the NRA, Olympic gold medal marksman testified in Congress that gun access should be very difficult and ownership strangulating. 75% of NRA members support gun safety. The 25% that remain are a terrorist group of NRAists. Far more people in the US, 40,000 in 2017, die each year than in all the wars since the founding of the country. Only the opioid epidimic causes more deaths per year. Over 70,000 died in a single years. More than 400,000 have died from the opioid crisis. There are strong efforts to treat the opioid epidemic. But the NRAist terrorists are holding the country hostage, accessories to a bloodbath of over 70,000 in 2017. The NRAists, due to their obstruction of gun safety, are accomplices in all of those murders. All 70,000+Q!
2
Mr. Gaetz, distinguished congressman, please do submit a comment. Oh that’s right, you don’t read The Times, or any newspaper.
3
What will it take to break this insanity: give Fox News the death penalty.
3
Well, the Wall would keep Mexicans safer from gun violence, anyhow ...
3
Yea the do nothing congress couldn't bring themselves to pass gun laws after 26 of my fellow citizens ;where I live ;were gunned down in school ,by a disturbed young man from a severely dysfunctional family.!!!!
Newtown / Sandy Hook !!!!!
Little six year olds !!!!!
These surviving families have been harassed by trumpians and conspiracy theorists ever since !
Victims and victims families deserve closure of our extreme gun culture.
And more importantly building facilities to house the mentally ill in hospitals under lock and key
We have Whiting Forensic Institute for the Criminally Insane in Ct.
We need a bunch of Whiting Institutes in every state
We need judges and school systems not afraid to challenge parents of these killers and violent kids.
We need bullies to be stopped and classmates to support each other
And we need trained interventionists in every police force to stop the gun killings before they start through identifying kids at risk and violent family structural situations of gun culture .
Yet we have a congressional reality show and a very dumb puppet president
This is just more grandstanding for votes !!
I am a cynic because if the gun laws didn't change after Sandy Hook they never will.
Connecticut residents are still grieving the loss of our sweet children and their teaching mentors that day in December 2012 as we continue to feel the loss of the Petit family women in 2007.
Violent criminals and mentally ill should not be able to diminish our communities !
2
Trump's poll numbers are ticking up again. Is it any wonder the US has idiotic gun laws.
3
"Guns don't kill people" - yes they do!
3
The NRA's Grant Stinchfield's spittle laced recent rant about the government coming for your weapons is astonishing as is scary!
1
The NRA has about 5000 members, but through dark money and its influence on US law makers, there are now roughly 365,000,000 guns in private ownership. That's a lot of 000s and a tremendous return on investment for the NRA.
This relatively small group of people have successfully many that they should be afraid and stay afraid. And these arguments are convincingly explained on to us, on our TVs. Today its immigrants, yesterday it was urban violence. Tomorrow it will be each other.
....Of course there has always been that pesky fear of deers and bears. Oh, I'm wrong...that's not fear, just hunger...
I'm always amazed when I go to a grocery store in an open carry state and see some guy packing a hand gun. It makes me wonder if I'm not vigilant enough?...thinking...darn did I miss the message? Should be afraid of the lettuce?
Work on the NRA, and on their beholden politicians. Perhaps then the mask will fall from peoples eyes.
13
Gail, take a trip to the Westside of Chicago where multiple murders occur each week. I can assure you that if the gunmen could read they would laugh at this article. Killing people is a crime and these individuals could care less about any laws.
4
It's hopeless to even weigh in on this issue. If there is a better example demonstrating the extent to which the US congress has been completely bought of by corporate interests, I can't think of it.
Absent changes in funding rules, and fixing the gerrymandering that has made congressional districts uncommunicative, this short of travesty will continue.
It's a pity really, the US showed such promise, until the government was auctioned off to the highest bidder.
18
@cjl
That about sums it up.
3
Since the Republicans want to include immigration in the gun violence discussion , perhaps the Democrats should respond by saying, OK, let's talk about the gun trafficking from the US to Central America, which contributes to the violence that drives so many terrified people to flee?
https://www.apnews.com/f06086d8ed88450082ef9b8a403d4637
http://vpc.org/indicted/
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-crime/reports/2018/02/02/445659/beyond-our-borders/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-link-between-americas-lax-gun-laws-and-the-violence-that-fuels-immigration
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2018/1001/How-American-guns-in-Latin-America-spur-the-immigration-crisis
10
The gun control advocates of which I am one, are finally making some gains in legislating gun safety. In my own state of Washington, voters recently approved sweeping gun control legislation which will make our state a safer place to live. The NRA is fighting it in court.
I speak as a gun owner, a responsible one. I have a fairly large number of guns, all for hunting or clay pigeon shooting, and they are all locked in a 1200 lb gun safe. Safe from a child, a thief, or any other unauthorized person.
I don't carry a weapon on the street now nor will I ever consider it. Living in fear of others is something foreign to my way of thinking.
9
When the second amendment was drafted, the "arms" available to citizens consisted of single-shot muskets or pistols.
I'm certain that a citizen could not buy a cannon, which was the next step up. There was a limit imposed by the state of the art in firepower.
Now that much more robust firearms are available, the law needs to redefine the limit. I certainly don't need or want a grenade launcher or a Humvee with a quad 50.
Good. We've established the principle that you can't just buy whatever weapon you want. Now let's define that limit and enforce it.
6
@mlbex
Right, "when the second amendment was drafted," the forces threatening "the people" were armed with mere "single-shot muskets"...and...now...they're armed with semi- and fully-automatic rifles and handguns, "high-capacity" magazines, and lots of sweet hand-me-down stuff from the military...
2
I remember the early 1960s when you could buy (Military Semi-Automatic Rifles) like M1 Carbine, M1 Garand, other rifles, pistols, revolvers and ammunition thru the US mail. There were far fewer regulation than there are today and yet there were far fewer mass shootings than there are today! The only mass shooting I recall occurred on Aug. 1, 1966, when Charles Whitman climbed a 27-story tower on the University of Texas campus and started picking people off.
4
Most gun deaths are suicides, not homicides. Mass shootings, while shocking, account for a tiny fraction of homicides. Domestic violence and disputes among relatives, friends and acquitances are much more likely to result in deaths when guns are available.
10
@Doug Lowenthal Will The Wall prevent those deaths?
5
The Government of the United States has become a shady pay-to-play operation. I kinda think that may be a new self-evident truth that we should add to the Constitution.
2
There are 340 million guns in the U.S. - 1 in 5 adults or 44.7 million Americans, according to NIH have mental health issues.
Some of those citizens have serious mental problems an have access to guns. Some of those citizens are very violent an are part of a criminal element terrorizing cities.
The author trivialized the subject matter -
"...We have terrible gun problems in this country not just because firearms are all over the place, but also because of the careless, stupid attitude so many people have toward them. Partly, I blame Congress....."
It's insulting to read that - careless an stupid are not adjectives I would have used.
The blame is mostly with our representatives in Congress! Their inept ability to take action to reduce guns and strengthen laws, has been a large reason why there is so much violence.
This newspaper didn't print my last comment which was critical of Ms. Collins' article - let's see if they censor this one.
4
@JMS There are huge numbers of accidental deaths by firearms in the U.S., which is what Collins was (clearly) referring to when she described the 'careless, stupid attitude' many (not ALL) people have towards them. People DO leave weapons and ammunition unsecured in their houses all the time, which is plainly careless and stupid. People die as a result. There is really nothing to be 'insulted by' in that, unless you do the same and want to defend it as clever. Your comment makes it sound like you dislike Ms. Collins and are looking for a reason to take offense. It is possible to blame congress for its inaction, the NRA for its reckless lawless profiteering, AND also blame gun owners who don't respect and use care with lethal weapons. On this topic, there's no shortage of blame to go around.
1
@JMS
The USA is ostensibly a democracy. It is apparent that the majority of us favor gun laws as they are, or perhaps less restrictive.
Whatcha gonna do... violate the expressed wishes of the majority?
1
Let’s disaggregate those numbers and put them under the eyes of the GOP who blame illegal immigrants for gun violence. How many of the 40,000 from 2017 were committed by illegal immigrants? Young children playing with unattended guns? Men vs women? Refugees?
And those 4000 in carry-on luggage? How many of those by illegal immigrants? Refugees?
That analysis would be useful.
13
@Diane Ahh, but that would mean using actual facts (you know, the kind backed up by research and analysis) instead of the alternative kind (which are spun cotton-candy-like in the opinion-based fantasies of GOP lawmakers). If GOP lawmakers started debating real facts and policies, it would become blindingly obvious how deceptive they’ve become.
It’s the Joseph Goebbels strategy ... if you’re going to tell a lie, make sure it is a big one, told repeatedly and with conviction.
3
Gun violence seems to be little more than a cynical vehicle for congressional virtue signaling, in which both sides respond with the standard empty rhetoric, and I would not be surprised at all to find that higher-profile shooting incidents are routinely followed by increases of political donations, as was the case with Parkland. Gun sales are only part of the business of gun violence.
1
A lot of people may not realize that two thirds of the deaths by guns are suicides. I am all for sensible gun control but lets not use statistics to skew the argument.
4
We have so many shootings because we have so few morals thanks to liberalism. Liberals have succeeded in marginalizing religion, destroying the nuclear family and creating a culture that permits anything and punishes everything. Guns do not self-discharge - people pull triggers.
2
In my opinion, it doesn’t matter what we believe the cause is of the epidemic of gun violence in our country. The fact is that background checks are a basic necessity and it’s absolutely insane that there are no substantial regulations in existence.
6
@Alan
Are you claiming that the reason the per capita death rate from guns is highest in red states is that they have more liberals than blue states?
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/death-rate-per-100000/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D
13
@Alan There are many countries, for example in Europe, which are vastly more liberal than the US, but where the murder rate is a small fraction of that in the US. Are they more morally upstanding than Americans in spite of their being liberal, or is it perhaps mostly because guns are much harder to come by. You are right that gus do not self-discharge, but if there is no gun, nobody can pull a trigger.
15
I find it ironic that these folks who are worried the government might come and confiscate their guns and take their freedom are often the same folks who stand by cheering as the republican party disassembles our political norms, seeks to destroy our system of checks and balances and marches us toward autocracy.
25
As a gun owner most of my life, I've bought and sold privately. Usually me and the buyer/seller knew each other but a few times I bought and sold with total strangers. The guns involved were always hunting arms and the mindset was social outdoor recreation, a leading activity in rural Wisconsin. In the 1990s, the gun mindset began to change with the influx of cheap military style firearms. A lot more talk about having a gun for self defense was happening and much less talk about the best deer rifle or grouse shotgun. Gun store shelves displayed more and more weapons of war and less sporting arms. One day, I was looking for a several thousand dollar over/under 12 gauge Italian shotgun, a show piece. I walked into a new gun store recently opened and all four walls were covered with nothing by Uzis, Tech 9s, AKs, ARs and all other manner of guns designed solely for the purpose of mass murder. My friend's dad, upon seeing his son's new AK several years previous, remarked in disgust, "What sort of nut are you that you need a murder machine like that?" On that day in that gun shop, I heard those words in my head and asked myself, "What sort of human being thinks like this?" Easy. One who has never witnessed nor is capable of grasping consequences as profound as killing another person. A universal background check is needed more than ever thanks to the changed mindset of our gun culture.
46
When election time comes, why do we hear pablum about hope and change and getting together. Why don’t we get these facts loud and clear.
3
There is no issue that makes me more crazy and which shows the utter, craven moral bankruptcy of Republican/NRA legislators than this. Even sizable portions of their own voters and gun owners want some kind of sensible restrictions on the virtually unfettered access angry men have to guns. The fact that bought-by-the-NRA Republican legislators remain unmoved by the relentless carnage is something that future generations will look back upon with incredulity. (The rest of the world already does.)
22
Yes, Gail, apparently gun crimes and murder committed by "illegal" immigrants is the only kind of gun violence that bothers Republicans.
10
Here's an idea. Gun control activities ought to target - perfect word here - one or two of the NRA mouth pieces in Congress. This Gaetz seems a perfect place to start. And then put all their time, resources and money into getting him voted out.
Hire investigators to sniff out the skeletons in his closet.
Have 'crews' perpetually on his case, following him everywhere he goes.
Make certain that whenever he opens his mouth to speak that he is booed, or screamed at.
Have extra money given to any candidate opposing him, that pledges to not take any from the NRA.
Make every effort to have that candidate voted in.
Eventually, if he his voted out, that'll send a message to the rest of the parasites in the house that NRA is no longer wanted. After all, the NRA has no more than 5 million members - or 3% of Americans.
Good luck to you all. I pray for your school aged children.
9
@Mike Bonnell Mike, the reason this delusional mouthpiece is in office is because his constituents want it. They are NRA members. They own guns. They hate everybody who is different. They watch Fox News and believe what they're told as the truth. The problem is 'merica.
3
@Mike Bonnell
another foreigner trying to interfere in our political matters. didn't you hear what happened to your Russian friends that were trying to do the same thing?
Sad, and even Gail could not make it other than black humor. Please, folks, never vote for a Republican again, I beg you.
12
You got that right, Gail.
It’s not the guns.
(Even a broken clock...)
3
We could read endless articles like this one about Gaetz and his pals in Congress. I think it is about time we start seeing articles about the nutcases who elected these numbskulls. Someone somewhere said "He's my man!" Why?
We often see people wearing clothing that we wouldn't be caught dead in and wonder what they left on the clothing store rack when they made their current choice. What did these voters "leave on the rack" when they chose a candidate like Gaetz?
8
Just a small observation:
There is, this one Donald Trump who is willing to close down the country so that these immigrants don't get in, and start giving you guys an evil look.
But letting you be killed daily, in numbers by the good old citizens is the least of a problem.
5
How does a guy like that even get nominated, much less elected.
Floridians. Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?
12
I just find it interesting that when the Black Panthers armed themselves in California even then Governor Reagan decided that we needed some gun regulation. And since some 90% of the country agrees with the legislation being put forward by the House, who does the Republicans in both the House and Senate claim to represent? Can only be the NRA - but wait, last I read some 75% of NRA members supported background checks. So must just be the NRA $$$ right?
6
Gail, reading Matt Gaetz's analysis caused me to flashback to the 1970's and my last acid trip. Did he go to Alice in Wonderland University? His brain must be made up of scramble egg whites. Suffer this madness my fellow Floridians.
4
I have always considered the NRA to be a home grown terrorist organization, spreading fear and loathing to gain support for their political agenda. And, now we find out they were working with the Russians too. Time for them to go.
13
Gail, we love you when you’re funny, even more so when you’re serious. This the perfect rebuttal to all the specious arguments from 2nd amendment zombies. Bullet points from the NRA.
4
to me, to say guns are the culprit is the same that to say cars are, or sugar, or, you know, videogames. start with people. end with them too. to me, what causes so many shootings here are socialist-minded, Govt-loving, liberally brainwashed folks. they believe more regulation will solve all the problem, so they don't spend time with their kids and they do not RAISE thosE kids to believe in a Higher POWER.the kids then grow up into adults who are unbalanced, narcissistic, and unprepared to hardships of life (whether perceived or real). they snap at any moment, and they disrespect human life. bingo! start with changing your mindset, liberals.
About time liberals got behind the 2nd Amendment. You know, the one that says guns should be "well regulated".
2
Scalia determined, in DC v Heller, that ‘well regulated’ has no legal import; according to the theory of ‘originalism’. FWIW.
1
So the GOP members of Congress are “busy bees” working for the NRA. The idea that they are following instructions is accurate.
But of course, for bees, these instructions are for the good of the hive. That is where the analogy fails. Instead, think of lemmings.
The GOP Congress members are working for the good of a few kooky billionaires who have brainwashed their “lemmings” with divisive beliefs that keep them moving and focused on that mesmerizing cliff, not on their welfare.
Just what is the big plan of these billionaires once they bank the proceeds but all the lemmings are dead? Well, there are a lot of lemmings so we needn’t think that far ahead.
Just keep the brainwashing going, alternative facts, invading criminal hordes, unbelievers, we need more guns, higher walls, stricter enforcement of “Christian” beliefs, ...
4
Ban them. It's simple.
3
How do people as dense, deluded and disgusting as this Gaetz get elected to Congress? Who are his supporting constituents and what would impel them to vote for such a manifestly ignorant, moral leper? Can’t the Democrats in his district find someone with a pulse to run against him?
8
The NRA - are they still siding with the USA? Or are they still spending ill-gotten funds to bring greater firearm freedoms to their sponsor, Russia? Just askin'...
4
Gaetz is an embarrassment to the Republican party.
3
@Pierre D. Robinson, B.F., W.S. I disagree. He's emblematic of the Republican party.
3
I know, I know, good guys with guns can handle the situation at a shooting. However, if you are African-American, like Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. at an Alabama mall shooting, the police will not recognize you as a good guy and will shoot you dead.
942
@gcinnamon
I think that's an excellent point. How many law enforcement officers are going to recognize their innate racial bias (that most of us have) in the heat of the moment, when they see a person of color with a gun? More guns are not the answer.
107
The article mentions a Florida congressman who opposes gun legislation in spite of the gun violence in his state. The problem is not the congressman, the problem is the people who continue to send legislators to Washington who ignore gun violence.
19
A right to firearms must be balanced by the right to public safety. Public safety is the reason we accept speed limits and make people take driver's tests. Shouldn't someone be able to pursue a life without concern that a gun in the hands of a criminal, a mentally disabled person or a child might do them harm?
Some people say that guns are necessary as weapons of self defense and that gun safety laws will undermine democracy by curtailing a constitutional right. A car is a far more powerful weapon than a cavalryman's horse. The registration of cars hasn't undermined democracy. Certain drugs have the potency to kill if nefariously applied. The registration of prescription drugs hasn't undermined democracy.
Likewise, background checks and the registration of guns will not undermine democracy. Rather, they will contribute to public safety, better securing our people's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
16
You seem to endorse senator Murphy thought- below. Yet do you concur that the wanton promotion of abortion devalues life and might be a cause of young people in cities like Chicago killing other young people?
Senator Murphy believes the endless rejection of any gun legislation looks like a kind of “moral green light” to potential killers: “I truly believe these young men who have something very dark happening in their minds watch our silence and interpret it as an endorsement.”
Poverty causes crime not immorality. Desperate people due desperate things. Gun violence is just an extension of that specific to a certain tool. We have seen the worst gun violence has it's root in mental health disease not accidents by legal gun owners.
It’s highly unlikely the background check bill will make it into law. “Color me unclear as to how we get Mitch McConnell to bring it up in the Senate,” said Chris Murphy of Connecticut, one of the Senate sponsors.
And why, Senator Murphy, are the Dems NOT making a lot of noise around McConnell's clear and long standing abandonment of his job duties? He is an employee, not only of his state voters, but of all of US citizens. And its his duty to bring to the floor, any and all legislation of clearly great concern and support of the American public. His employers!
I simply do not understand why the Dems do not go after MConnell's abandonment of his duties. Its time for the Dems and the DNC, and PACs,etc, to go after McConnell the way the Repubs, GOP, FOX, and their PACs go after Pelosi.
14
@Boregard
How do you propose they go after him? His own party is the one the Dems need to attack. They are the ones who pick him as their leader. Kentucky voters can end McConnell's reign, but the Dems can't.
1
@Boregard: When was the last time Mitch gave a damm about "noise" regarding his abdication of duty to the welfare of this nation's citizen??
2
Good column. And how quickly we forget, move on to other headlines. For this gun owner, the most effective, long-lasting argument for strong gun control laws (background checks being the least of them) was a few years back.
The NYTimes published a daily log of every gun death, injury, across the country. It was horrible in its ordinariness. Day after day, week after week, the sameness of the rash grab for a gun- for jealousy, for payback, for anger, sometimes carelessness....unending. It wasn’t the mass shootings, it was the one person here,there. All their education, hopes, dreams, gone. Families left to watch years of raising, caring, scolding,....gone in a single moment.
Bring that daily log back. In every major paper. A mirror of what we are, have become.
22
@Jo Williams, here's a couple of glimpses--pretty horrific, and often tragically banal (e.g., arguments at parties with family and friends):
Gun Violence Archive: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls
Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2018
1
I'm not sure which is more shocking. Floridians more scared of far off, frightened asylum seekers thinking a wall will save them. Or the number of guns found in carry on bags at the airport. Once I got in trouble for having a lighter in my purse. They made me feel like a criminal. What do they do to the gun carriers? Endlessly baffled.
17
@Patsy
At the airport in Kansas City a few years ago, they took my eyeglass screwdriver w screw from me. I have yet to hear of an assault with a one inch screwdriver.
4
You are right Gail. Let’s just blame all the problems of the United States on those endless immigrant caravans. That is the “Trump Way”.
6
The unarmed (the living) have no rights in America. If you legally own a gun, carry it in public, but not white, law enforcement is able to end your life without consequence. Law enforcement can kill anyone with a gun if they pull up at the wrong address looking for those famous "illegals".
Do you have any idea what your taxes would be if we required law enforcement to earn a Master's degree from a legitimate institution of higher learning?
Native American ancestors have a clear notion of America's gun "rights". Our ancestors also know the meaning of genocide.
7
A big part of this is a delusional fantasy in the minds of right wing cranks that they need the guns to defend themselves from a future totalitarian government. First they'll take your guns, and then force you to trade in your pick-up for a Prius. Next thing you know, your home will become a free Airbnb for military members (Funny how no one cares about the 3rd ammendment these days.) But it's not the 18th Century anymore. I was in Iraq in 2005-06 in the army. Prior to the war (and still, as far as I know), just about every household had an AK-47. They used to shoot them in the air at weddings. So the insurgents trying to boot us out had access to plenty of assault weapons (not to mention RPGs and artillery shells that were left lying around in Iraqi armories to use for making bombs). So yes, they could hurt us and create mayhem, but they still couldn't boot us out by force. And every time they tried to engage in anything longer than a quick ambush, they got slaughtered. So unless this imagined future totalitarian government loses the support of the military, the fantasy of a bunch of overweight Bubbas with AR-15s defending us from tyranny is just absurd.
18
I would recommend reading American Dialogue, Joseph J. Ellis, especially Chapter 3 Law...Then and Now; The Then... on Madison; The Now... Scalia and Originalism.
2
Shootings what shooting?
Dead and murdered where?
Evidence for shooting and murdered, what evidence?
2
Number One Killer of People with Firearms Around The World: angry young men with seeming unlimited access to firepower and ammo.
15
From my perspective here in Southwest Florida I see Gaetz as the typical morally corrupt, opportunist politician.
Just parrot the NRA line, in comes the cash and you may advance trough the ranks of the Florida Republican party.
With that NRA box checked go on to express your core belief (de jour), right now it is those evil brown people flooding in with guns. This is generally enough to get you elected here.
I keep hoping that Floridians are better than this, and so it will one day be reflected in our political representatives.
I have been hoping for that for a very long time now.
14
Collin's disregard for the Constitution is glaring.
Still, her points deserve a response.
Real reasons for shootings are painfully obvious, but fail to meet the test for use by statist socialists, as they lay responsibility on the individual.
This is imponderable, and impermissable for use by leftists in any conversation about guns.
For the left to succeed in their quest to discard the Constitution, they must assign all blame the societal level. And that is what Collins is doing here; her part in the big fraud.
Causes for all shootings fall into 3 categories three:
1) Bad upbringing of children
2) Negligence
3) Mental instability
1) Poor upbringing results in children who believe they are entitled to wealth, and if they choose to steal the wealth or assets of others rather than work and earn their own, it's justifiable because of the entitlement. This concept is the foundation of almost all crime. Greed is simply an expression of the sense of entitlement.
All violent criminals have this characteristic, and it can be blamed on their parents, and, their own personal choices. It's not - society's - fault.
2) Negligence results in guns lying out where kids can get to them, etc. There are already laws against such behavior, but as the sponsor of the Green Deal continues to prove, there is no cure for stupid.
3) Mental instability needs no explanation, other than, it is a broader and less easily predictable - or detectable - condition than mental illness.
The primary purpose of the border barrier is to reduce illegal immigration, not to reduce crime in U.S. cities. But by reducing illegal immigration, iit will also reduce crime. Over the last two years, ICE officers arrested 266,000 arrests criminal aliens, including those charged or convicted of nearly 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 murders. If we had stopped these criminals from crossing the border, we would have prevented 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 murders.
1
@William Case
There is an old saying that we should take what we are told with a grain of salt, since it my not be true.
I have done that these past 3 years of listening to Trump and Faux(Fox) News, and am now suffering from acute high blood pressure.
2
Time for a new bumper sticker: "I'M NOT THE NRA AND I VOTE."
3
Clearly Charlton Heston was right.....(sarcasm)
2
Hey, Gail. Light bulbs break when you drop them. You could suffer a major, life-threatening laceration to your trigger finger while picking up the scattered shards. Light bulbs are hazards to your health and anyone, just anyone, criminally insane, foaming at the lips berserk can march into the local Dollar General and buy --without even having to show an ID-- dozens of light bulbs, every one the store has in stock if they have enough cash on hand. And then start tossing them at random, glass hand grenades, littering the sidewalks, a veritable minefield of razor sharp glass.
But a gun? Gail, if you drop a gun, unlike the guaranteed-to-explode light bulb, it might or it might not go off. Definitely not, if it is unloaded, but even if it is carrying a round in every chamber of a revolver's cylinder or a full magazine with a round in chamber of semi-automatic, the odds are it probably won't go off. And if it does? Well, more often than not you end up with bullet hole in the floor or the TV (problems easily fixed with a little wood putty or a couple of hundred bucks at Walmart) but rarely in your 3-year-daughter. So rarely, it's laughable to even worry about. Just ask the NRA.
So, tell me, Gail, which would you rather come face to face with? A raging maniac with a case of 50-100-150 watt three-way Sylvanias, or a fumble-thumbed patriot and his Glock?
It's a no-brainer. You have to admit that.
3
@Glen Republican logic (sophistry) on full display.
1
I thought the answer was gonna be all the grizzly bears that are invading our schools. But, yeah, immigrants makes much more political sense.
4
And just this week in our beloved Republic, a toddler picked up a loaded handgun that was just laying around in his house, and shot his own pregnant mother.
American Exceptionalism, right there.
11
I suppose I could slow-clap Rep. Gaetz for consistency were he to propose that a 30' tall concrete wall be built along the 1350 miles of Florida's coastline to keep out any gut totin' non-US bad hombres. Sure, Floridians would find their enviable views of the ocean obscured somewhat, but I think it'd be a worthwhile price to pay.
Go, get em' Gaetz! Why should Texas have all the fun? A wall for Florida too!
5
The battle cry should be the NRA stands for the New Russian Alliance, the foreign funded organization that wants Americans dead and dying. If people can connect Putin’s NRA political strategy to its funding the politicians will be exposed for what they are , traitors.
2
Another entry in the Republican Hall of Shame; Matt Gaetz.
Everything is the fault of illegal aliens straight from the script of Donald Trump.
Republican mass produce these guys in an endless procession.
3
How about enforcing EXISTING guns laws?
How about not plea bargaining illegal gun possession?
How about not plea bargaining crime committed with a weapon?
How about updating the records for background checks?
How about reporting students with known mental problems to local police?
I highly doubt the NYT will allow my comments as they do not value diversity of OPINION!
2
A new way to stop a bad man with a gun:
A rational U.S. Congress.
10
Guns: America's real national emergency.
6
The political parties and voters need to do a better job screening candidates. Goetz is an embarrassing epitome of the shameless craven politician.
3
Gail, I'm sure the families of those raped, assaulted, or murdered by illiberal aliens would find a great deal of comfort in your view.
Perhaps you need to take a stroll in more racially diverse neighborhoods in Texas, New Mexico, or any border town to better appreciate the issue. Just as a reminder, the safety you enjoy in NYC was the product of a Republican led city govt that took a hard line on crime.
Your hatred of Trump is well noted, you should not let it cloud your judgement.
1
Great article, Thank you
5
Way to go, Gail, with your column, "Surprise! It's Not Guns..."! Beyond dispute, American mayhem IS caused by guns, addiction to the Second Amendment, the NRA and gun lobbyists, sellers, gunsels and kids who shouldn't have guns in their homes.
Today's silly bulletin, uttered by Gen X Florida Rep Matt Gaetz, is hair-raising. He says guns don't kill people, that caravans of undocumented immigrants trafficking in sex and drugs pouring through our porous southern border areas are killing us here at home!
Tots kill other tots and grown-ups. and grown-ups pull their triggers by mistake, too. Innocents are murdered daily. Guns in American homes, and unregulated gun sales and ownership are the cause of America's gun mayhem. Not Donald Trump's mewling for a wall -- fence, steel slats, cement bollards -- on our border with Mexico.
2
NYT should do a deep investigation into the NRA - its finding sources, its infiltration and intimidation techniques,the legislators ,both state and federal ,who do its bidding. We talk about drug companies spurring the opioid addiction epidemic. The NRA and the legislators it buys led to the present sitiutaion.
2
Please, PLEASE!!!!
I've been asking this in every gun piece you publish:
"WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH THE 350MILLION GUNS ALREADY IN PRIVATE HANDS?"
1
GOP: the party that wants to regulate women and nothing else.
6
Well, let's see: The Russians own the NRA and through the NRA own Republicans and Trump. So let's get rid of Putin and all Republicans wherein the NRA will then collapse. Sounds like a better plan than building a stupid wall.
Republicans are evil people in the service of more powerful evil people and until each and every one of them is voted out - no matter how many cycles it takes - we don't have a country. We have a satellite of Russia as our fake country with a fake prez, illegitimately elected by Putin.
We live in a bubble of insanity here in Russia 2. Until Trump and all Republicans are gone we will continue to live in a bubble of insanity.
2
The WSJ ran a great piece on Andrew Pollack and his new book “Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created the Parkland Shooter and Endangered America’s Students." Meadow was his daughter and she was killed by Nikolas Cruz.
Why did she die?
1. Runice Broward, the superintendent of schools, introduced a program called Promise under which students who commit crimes in public schools would not be reported to the police by administrators. With no reporting, there’s no crime. The Obama administration issued guidelines to the nation’s school boards, directing them to adopt Promise like policies or risk a federal investigation and loss of funding. Disastrous.
2. Sheriff Scott Israel aimed to reduce juvenile arrests, and the department allowed Cruz to keep a clean record even though deputies were called to his home 45 times in his middle- and high-school years. Disastrous.
3. Scott Peterson was the armed deputy on the school’s premises the day of the massacre but chose to remain outside the building. Disastrous.
Read the book. Political correctness and utter incompetence killed Meadow Pollack. It took a village to enable Nikolas Cruz.
1
Think of this. I was in east Berlin about three years ago eating at a restaurant. The waiter, a Palestinian immigrant, asked, “Is it true that everyone in America owns a gun?” At the time I laughed but now I realize that he was probably right.
1
@Anne Only 25% of Americans own guns and 3% own half of all guns.
1
Seems to me that gun ownership in USA is, to paraphrase from Nancy Pelosi, a "manhood thing" -- applicable across all genders. And the only cure for these folk when "erectile gun dysfunction" strikes is a long cold bath - very long, and very cold. Might cool the urge, and save some lives - like 40,000 or so every year. And the NRA doesn't get a say.
The real answer is D) Politicians, paid by NRA, now funded by Russia!
They rather protect second amendment rights of dead people than their basic right to life, forget liberty and pursuit of happiness!
They rather offer you their thoughts and prayers and pocket the profits from their gutless, spineless, heartless policies!
And these days it is so easy to lie about anything without even a hint of hesitation, forget shame.
Human values bought by corporate vouchers. Any wonder they also stand for voter suppression?
1
What has happened to the investigation of the NRA and Russian money being laundered through their organization to republican campaigns? The looney, tunes Gaetz comes across as someone who needs a background check himself ... just like the boy who cried wolf, we have Gaetz yelling illegal immigrants ! According to Gaetz, the Mexican wall will protect our school kids from school shootings . For me, this is a true sign that the Republican Party is lost...really lost and no longer protecting and representing the best interests of America and its children.
3
Talk about hitting the nail on the head. We to send many copies of this column to the congressional office of Matt Gaetz. There is just no end to the mendacity and outright stupidity of this congressman. To believe he was actually elected by a district is just stunning.
1
Gail, of course, it’s all because of those caravans of immigrants coming to the border. We just haven't heard much trom them because they've been "smuggled across our porous Southern Border","sometimes in vans" "with their hands tied, and duct tape over their mouths."
This is a much more serious column than Gail usually writes, but all too true. A tee shirt advertised on social media is worth noting:
If Guns Kill People, I guess
- Pencils misspell words
- Cars drive drunk
- Spoons make people fat
2
Sorry, but when it comes to gun control legislation, any Republican-controlled congress might as well be...
... an empty chamber!
...
I'll see myself out.
2
Yea, that old two-party system was a piece of junk! We replaced it with a multi-party pay me 1 million dollars and I'll tell you.
1
I know it's only February, but I think Ms. Collins would be on solid ground if she were to go ahead and declare Representative Gaetz this year's winner of the coveted and hotly-contested, "Most Moronic Public Utterance by a Member of The House or Senate" award.
1
It's obvious that the NRA has the power to quash any meaningful conversations about sensible gun control. The candidates they support cower.
3
How timely that this past Wed. Feb.6, I attended a lecture given by a Margory Stoneman Douglas teacher. He spoke about the students and the school one year later after the tragedy.
At the Q&A, he was asked how he feels about teachers being armed. His answer, he only wanted funds to be spent on textbooks and computers. He sighted an interesting fact.
Teachers in Israel no longer are armed in the classroom.
If Israeli teachers, who arguably would know how to handle a firearm, having been required to serve in the army, are no longer armed, the majority of US teachers would not have a clue as what to do in a situation where they might use a firearm.
Which speaks to my point, soldiers and law enforcement are the only people who need a firearm.
Hunters? private security? test and license and require insurance. All assault rifles and bump stocks should be banned.
Most of Trump’s “illegals” are not bringing their weapons with them, they are obtaining them here.
His “illegals” did not perpetrate the shooting at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Orlando,or in Pittsburgh.
Time to clean our own house.
793
They are all just politicians.
They'll scream for universal Medicare (a good idea), forgiveness of student loan debt (a bad idea), free college for everyone (also a bad idea), but when it comes to repealing the Second Amendment (a no-brainer of an idea), they won't say that.
Check, please. This is just another Golden Corral of a Congress with the same bad offerings disguised as all-you-can-eat.
Anything that makes sense will not pass the Senate. Finally we have the House under Democratic control. Who knows, maybe some of the Republicans in the Senate will grow a conscience.
6
There is a very clear link between gun violence and immigrants. It just not the one stated by Matt Gaetz. Many of the guns used by Central American drug gangs are purchased at gun shows in the U.S. The Republicans refuse to enact laws that would require the sellers at those shows to do background checks on potential buyers. Or to limit the numbers of guns purchased by an individual. Many of the guns purchased at those shows flow south across the U.S.-Mexico border and end up in the hands of the gangs. Thus armed, the gang members force young men to join their criminal organizations and young women to act is "girlfriends" of gang members. Those who resist face death or must flee. Matt Gaetz if he cared, should know this. Shame on him and all who spout the same propaganda of President Trump. Shame on them for demonizing those who are fleeing for their lives. And shame on them for their unwillingness to oppose all reasonable laws that would stop the unregulated purchase of guns at gun shows- guns that flow from the U.S. to Central America, and force citizens of those countries to migrate in fear to the southern border of the United States.
10
@William Wright
Evidence ?
The substance of your comment is correct that guns are flowing FROM the USA to Central America that in turn causes people to flee Central America for USA. Unfortunately the construction of your letter superficially appears to support Trump’s allegations. That was not your intention.
Inscription on the Southeast Portico of the Jefferson Memorial:
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
Today's legal "originalists" might consider the words of a man, who was a real originalist, as to the applicability today of an unchanged Second Amendment.
28
Since the 2nd amendment talks about this "militia" idea, at the very least we should expect gun owners to follow the very few laws that restrict guns in places like airplanes.
How about an increase in the penalties for bringing guns through checkpoints? First offense, $1,000 fine and one month in jail. Second offense, $10,000 fine and one year in jail. Third offense, $100,000 fine, ten years in jail, and a lifetime ban on gun ownership.
11
Guns make insecure and frightened people feel powerful. People talk about how they're safe from "home invasions," which makes it sound as if armed bands of mercenaries are randomly breaking into people's houses on a regular basis. Paranoia is part of the package deal that comes with fear and insecurity. Folks on the NY Times forum natter on about "protecting" themselves from other people with guns, without considering that if most of those other people did not have guns, they wouldn't need one, either. I'm nearly sixty and have never seen a gun being handled by anyone not in the police or military. Oddly enough, I have managed to live in major cities around the country, in some areas considered "dangerous," and have never touched a gun, never wanted a gun, never needed a gun, and never thought that having a gun would be the solution to any problem I've ever faced. Wanting a gun is a mindset. Thinking that a gun is a necessity tells me that there is something big in your life that you feel both powerless and angry about. It's not surprising, in this age of vast economic inequality, when many millions are struggling to get by, that people feel angry and powerless. So as the quality of life deteriorates for many, it's also not surprising that guns are fetishized as the solution to all anxiety-inducing problems.
25
I live in a working class neighborhood of San Rafael, California (one of the few in this mostly wealthy area). It is full of Hispanic people, many of whom I believe are immigrants and some of whom are probably illegal. There is virtually no crime.
28
@Anne No crime other than the exploitation of the undocumented.
2
@Anne. Reality isn’t part of the equation for the NRA or Republicans.
1
To all those Second Amendment originalists, your defense for the inalienable rights of gun owners is clear. But to be true and pure to the genesis of these protected rights, you'll need to promote only muskets, rifles and flintlock pistols for all.
16
@SD The Supreme Court has already ruled that this idea is "bordering on the frivolous." Please try again.
@SD No, what the gun crowd needs to do be consistent is insist that even illegal aliens have gun rights as well if they are to be at all consistent with the notion that gun ownership is a human right. Then again, much of the gun crowd isn't exactly known to be sympathetic to the idea that all persons are worthy of human rights.
1
The Republicans would blame climate change and abortion rights on immigrants if they could.
If they could just build a nice thick wall and could expel all those illegals , this country would have no problems. Our infrastructure and our social inequality problems would vanish in thin air. What they really dream of is getting rid of coastal elites and people that don’t worship their official God and look just like them. They would love their guns even more if that could happen. Heck they would even use them to defend their version of the American ideal.
Of course there will be no meaningful Gun regulations. Nothing effects these people. No massacres. No children dying in schools. No shoppers in malls. Just need those guns and that incredible wall. Mitch is just so pathetic and so many of our fellow Americans sadly prefer his callous indifference to the public health crisis of gun use in America. We need to send him and his Republicans to the political wilderness and have them take
that incredible Wall with them for a very long time!
12
And let's say they build a 100 foot wall with razor wires separating us peaceful benign Americans from the savage loathsome hordes, what will they say when the violence continues and the catalogue of deaths piles up higher every month? What argument will they spin to explain why people are being slaughtered in banks and supermarkets and playgrounds and living rooms? Where will they run to explain those harsh facts--Fake News? Will they then say we need to install explosive mines because the barbarians are still sneaking over the border? Or will we be finally forced to look for the Real Causes? We are the demented patients spinning every excuse for our troubles except ourselves. Perhaps we need a wall to expunge our delusions and force us to finally ultimately look in the mirror to see the real villain.
14
Gail, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes - there are not enough yesses to convey my approval. Thanks for saying so publicly what so many of us feel, know, believe privately. Thank you.
9
Yawn. The same tired old arguments and platitudes. Let's use a few:
1) First, the obsession with "universal background checks" is either ignorant or dishonest. None of the infamous mass shootings that these checks purport to stop would have been stopped, as not a single one bought from a private seller. Each of them passed the background check, in a store.
2) There is no such thing as an assault weapon. It's merely a semi-automatic weapon that has certain cosmetic features that make it look scary. Without banning all semi-automatics, which is a de facto gun ban, banning the cosmetic features would do absolutely nothing.
3) Mandatory insurance is stupid as well as unconstitutional. You can't impose a tax on the exercise of a fundamental right. That aside, insurance policies never cover intentional torts. If you intentionally plow down a group of pedestrians, Geico will not pay out. The same applies here. At best, this insurance will cover accidents, which are already fairly rare. And of course, street criminals who buy their guns illegally will not buy insurance, and you all know it.
4) Even if you managed to ban all guns, most people will not comply. That means putting into place a police state, where people's house are searched with no probable cause. And even if you manage to do that without starting a civil war, the drug cartels that currently smuggle drugs will start smuggling guns as well.
Everyone wants to reduce gun violence. But you need to be sensible.
3
@Jon W. Beautiful what abouttism. Based on this logic why have any laws and why aspire to do anything to make humanity better right?
2
@Jon W.
Re 1): Universal background checks will stop just a small percentage of deaths. But gun deaths total somewhere between 30k and 40k a year, and a 5% of that is a big number. No single measure proposed by the NRA or by gun critics will by itself take care of the 30k-40k/year problem. But any pill that produced a corresponding reduction in mortality would be hailed.
Re 2) How is banning semi-automatics banning all guns?
Re 3) There are apparently 600 accidental gun deaths a year, and twice that many injuries. Competitively priced insurance can address that, without taxing gun owners.
Re 4) Banning all guns is a red herring. (I for one don’t want to.)
Re “Everyone wants to reduce gun violence. But you need to be sensible”) It would be good to demonstrate your concern for this staggering problem by writing comments about your proposed solutions. Again, 30,000 to 40,000 Americans die every year in gun violence.
2
@Jon W. "Mandatory insurance is stupid as well as unconstitutional. You can't impose a tax on the exercise of a fundamental right."
Ignoring the issue of "a fundamental right" -- which happens to be, somewhat like driving a car, a legal, not moral or divinely-inspired one -- the vast numbers of guns stolen from both individuals and gun stores is a large issue. if people will not lock up their deadly weapons, perhaps the requirement to have insurance against potential misuse will be of some help.
As I have noted in previous contributions to this America-only issue, registering guns -- the red herring "slippery slope" boogeyman of the NRA and I assume of you also -- like registering and insuring cars and drivers has not yet led to government consideration of the confiscation of automobiles
Your arguments imply that NOTHING can be done about the insanity of Guns-R-Us America; that unreasoning line would have prevented the saving of millions of lives due to seatbelt laws, smoking ordinances, appropriate waste disposal and so many other deadly stupidities.
Guns don't kill, people do, and these people are all the egos in Washington who won't compromise because are afraid to loose $ so they can get re elected.
5
Sad commentary on American gun laws and attitudes and on the state of Florida and its demented GOP officials, like Gaetz, who represent gun owners and tacitly condone the murder of citizens by citizens. Too bad Collins has to couch her disgust for current gun laws and Congressional weakness in the rhetoric of humor, since otherwise the gun lobby and their bought officials will likely send out their goon militias to attack her.
6
I would like to see our political heavy hitters start hitting back at the NRA. This is an insidious organization. They are another propaganda wing of the republicans. With deadly consequences. Yes make handgun registration mandatory. Want to own ten or twenty? No problem. Just make sure they are registered in your name. So we know who to come after when they are used in a crime. Want to own an assault weapon like the military uses? No problem, make sure you fill out the proper paperwork and background check and get your permit to own it. Ten dollar fee per year for each. The conceal and carry laws that most states impose seem to be sensible. These laws can be used as a starting point towards responsible gun ownership. We will never get rid of guns in this country it is part of our culture and has been since day one. I myself own a handgun that I have for the “just in case” someone should break through my door in the middle of the night. I have not fired it in over ten years. I hope to never have to fire it. But that’s my right. As a citizen. Anyone with their oars in the water can read the second amendment and know that it pertained to a different age and circumstances. Ask your self, how large was the police force in 1776? The army? How many grocery stores? Now ask yourself, what was the NRA doing in the 1960,s ? And what is it doing today?
4
@William I'm okay with the fee provided that it also applies to voting and women who want abortions.
But on a bright note, if Rep. Matt Gaetz is successful in getting a wall built around Florida, it’ll at least be useful for keeping out the rising seas resulting from climate change—which the entire Florida GOP contingency continues to deny the existence of, just like the origins of mass shootings.
Now, about those steel slats...
5
The wall would likely make Mexico safer from gun violence since their criminals get most of their guns here and immigrants from Mexico have a lower violent crime rate than our own citizens so when they come here they increase the percentage of criminals in the Mexican population.
5
Ms Collins most rational column ever, with flawless logic. There are forms of her proof used in mathematics; where it would be said to be elegant. In other fields it is called reductio ad absurdum.
Gail might have concluded: “QED”.
2
As a Floridian my only defense is to blame my father who moved us here in 1956. Florida was a lot less weird (and less dangerous) back then.
For Gaetz, it was just another day at the office.
But consider, 40,000 people died to gun violence in one year. We have another 40,000 dying from opioid addiction.
Where is the outrage about that? Gaetz dismisses and insults parents were killed by gun violence, then moves to talking points about the wall.
How cynical and disgusting.
3
Already the pro-gun commenters are reflexively going to "don't take away my guns." The column is about background checks, not revoking the Second Amendment! Are they saying they wouldn't pass a background check?
6
Logic is extremely underated these days. Guns DO NOT kill people, people kill people. Simple logic. If some day a new discovery was realized with the ability of a human brain to transmit a deadly impulse of energy towards other human bodies, would we then talk about outlawing "BRAIN ACTIVITY "? Use logic. Same applies to spreading disease etc or even messages of hate that ALSO kill millions! Using guns as a tool to spread illogical reasoning or lack of is foolishness at work. Simple.
@FB People use guns tp kill people. But if guns were limited, people would have to use knives or their hands to try to kill people, if that was their goal, and the deaths would be far fewer. Doesn't that logic make sense to you? Seems so simple to me, I never understand why others can't follow that logic.
3
"Sort of surprising that the lead ranter was from Florida." Um, not really. First, Rep. Gaetz is from the West Panhandle, aka Southern Alabama, or the Redneck Riviera. Second, this district has a long and proud history of know-it-all ranters. Exhibit A) Joe Scarborough. Third, this is Flor-i-duh. With the accent on the last syllable. Finally, we have a new State Senate President whose proposed solution to urban traffic jams is to build a network of new highways through wilderness and agricultural lands. So really, not surprising at all. Signed, a Florida Resident.
7
Gun nuts like Matt Gaetz are such hypocrites. When arguing against abortion, they remind us about the sanctity of every life, but when discussing deaths by gun violence or the death penalty, life ceases to be sacred. And about that "wall," which has morphed into a fence made with steel slats, it has been shown in a NY Times article that the steel fence can be penetrated with a blow torch and a saw, leaving a hole as big as Trump's claim that we need a "wall."
6
Thank you Gail. I hope you have ear plugs. I seem to think Ollie and Wayne and Donald are screaming and ranting all sorts of expletives about you now !
2
Americans will go on slaughtering one another until Armageddon; it's in the DNA, not just the 2nd amendment no-one seems to have read or grasped. Shootings bring various levels of orgasmic release to all who participate and delect over them.
"Background checks" are an empty quasi-justicial sounding joke of a response. Can a society that gives people who can't even buy a beer machine guns actually be able to "check" someone? Get real. Mental health? Sorry, but it's comfortable white males in easy circumstances who sit in front of computers and devise plans and develop arsenals; if they weren't out there killing, they'd be out there shooting ads to get into Congress, and they do.
In one way, I think a curious reason Americans love their self-slaughter so much is because, although a majority of killings that are done with guns around the world are done with American guns and their knockoffs, Americans just can't seem to get the rest of the world, wealthy or poor, to buy in and join them. If you had this hot 'cultural' leitmotif that you just couldn't get anyone else to buy into, you'd get mad, too, and start really shooting up the place. With a predictably flaccid and impotent whimper, no bang, investigators closed the books on the Vegas shooter and admitted they could find no motive.
No motive? The minute the final tallies were in, anyone outside America knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that gunmen in every state of the Union had just one goal, just one target: 59
Interesting how the same people protecting their skewed view/interpretation of the 2nd amendment (once you read the whole thing) are the same ones working so diligently to subvert other constitutional rights to vote, equality among all, etc. And the same ones driving around with 'right to life' bumper stickers.
Hypocritical. Immoral. Sickening.
6
If the slaughter of innocent, 5 year old children in their rural Connecticut schoolhouse doesn't get these incompetent politicians to take a strong stand against the easy availability of weapons of mass destruction, I'm sorry but nothing will...
2
Ignoring fact in order to sustain the flow of gun money is par for the course these days. It fits right in with the Alice in Wonderland politics of the modern day right. Any argument no matter how ridiculously absurd or devoid of fact is fine as long as it keeps that NRA money moving in the RIGHT direction. Pun intended.
I won't lie, I personally have grown tired of the effort to do anything about the issue. I like so many others have grown numb to the senseless mass killings. Numb to the fact that money has more influence than the death of thousands of innocents at the hands of money. Money supports mass killing, deadly dirty money owns the right, what more need be said.
4
It should be at least mentioned that by FAR the largest number of gun-related deaths in the U.S. are in the “inner cities “ from black-on-black crime.
Rural America, with more, and more lethal, firearms—not even close.
I would venture to say that a much higher proportion of undocumented immigrants have been the victims of violence and gun violence at the hands of “real Americans” than the other way around.
"Surprise:"
In the United States:
“At nearly 40,000 deaths, America recorded the highest absolute number of gun deaths in nearly 50 years. The increase in the firearm death rate, at least in 2017, was driven by suicides. Sixty percent of gun deaths last year were self-inflicted.”
In the United States:
“In 2017, there were 70,237 drug overdose deaths in the United States.”
In the United States:
“Thousand Oaks makes 307 mass shootings in 311 days.”
The primary – neurophysiological, cause for the dramatic increase in those numbers, over the course of the past 100 years, is the ever growing – exponentially effected, consumption of absolutely abstracted dopamine inducing stimulus, ie – television – movies – cell phones, which causes this:
"Damage to prefrontal cortex , area of the mind responsible for controlling irrational, animalistic, and aggressive behavior."
If you would like to severely diminish – if not completely eliminate, ALL of those deaths, simply eliminate ALL “abstracted dopamine inducing stimulus,” again, ie: television – movies – cell phones – media of any an/or all kinds, except – of course, for this:
“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is a good thing, but if salt has become insipid, how can you season it again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.” Mark 9: 48-50
So, if you want to “prove” you “care” about the human race, ELIMINATE those things, AS I DID, if not, you should just be quite.
So during the 35-day government shutdown, when TSA workers were not paid, overworked or simply not on duty, how many loaded guns got through security unobserved?
The shutdown, of course, was designed to force the construction of a wall that would keep out the dangerous bad hombres from the south who might creep in and shoot us.
Instead, there were an unknown number of gun-toting good hombres flying on domestic planes for five weeks.
2
Matt Gaetz must go. The days of gun-mongering with impunity are over. If you put yourself on the front line for the NRA, prepare to fall.
1
One of your better columns of late Gail. The statistics are appalling. What was it John Adams is often quoted as saying? Facts are stubborn things.
guns : gun deaths :: fentanyl : opioid deaths
Which is a crisis, and which needs addressing? Dead = wasted
And don't forget Sandy Hook. Committed b y a local fellow, native-born American.
1
Sigh. It’s disgraceful that these NRA “worker bees”, (love that by the way), cling to the same old arguments. Every country has mental health issues, every country has criminals, and all countries with stricter gun control laws have less gun violence.
Huh.
2
What we could do is rewrite the Second Amendment and be more specific about how the citizenry has to prove they are not a felon, ard not mentally unstable.
Also since the British were the source for the Second Amendment, why not seek their help in the rewrite. They seem to know how to keep their citizens from being murdered
1
The only thing Republicans in Congress have done for the mentally ill in the past quarter century is make it easier for them to purchase firearms. Paranoid schizophrenics surviving on SSI can legally purchase firearms, even if they actively listen to the voices in their heads. Won't that make America great again?
2
I live in NRA country and yet a poll taken by a local Republican politico showed that most people want background checks and oppose the general population owning semiautomatic weapons. I was sure surprised by the results and so was the politician. He backpedaled and said the results must have been wrong. Even our local politicos are indebted to the NRA I guess. Unless this changes, the gun laws in the country will never reflect the values of most of the population. Good column.
12
One often hears "Guns don't kill people, people kill people".
To that I say gun owners kill people.
I'd like gun ownership subject to screening.
Ask any pro-gun state citizen which is the most dangerous state and they'll tell you New York. But the actual figures on gun deaths per capita says the reverse.
6
Why does every discussion about sensible gun legislation, favored by a huge majority of the population, turn into the slippery slope, “they want to take away our guns” hysteria? I understand the NRA and right wingers need to whip up their supporters into a frenzy to combat the “sensible” part, but using slippery slope for every situation means improvements can never be made.
I don’t own a gun but would certainly want the ability to buy one if I felt I needed one. While I don’t know many gun owners, those I know are exceptionally responsible. How on earth could anyone object to extensive background checks, except those who wouldn’t pass or those who make money on the current system?
9
@AJ. If you have no trouble passing a background check, you can get a legal gun as easily as you can buy groceries. The right-wingers like to freak out over everything they perceive as touching their interest, never mind affecting it. And I do mean freak out. They act like the world is ending if they can't have an automatic rifle, banned abortion, and every immigrant who ever entered the US locked up. A dear friend who is one of those who freaks easily wrote me all upset because Antifa members were going to urinate on Confederate graves in the National Cemetery in Gettysburg. There are no Confederate graves in the National Cemetery in Gettysburg except for a handful that got there by mistake and are not identified, and nobody from Antifa was anywhere near Gettysburg anyway. Right wingers like to be scared. They like to be outraged. They like to feel like the victim.
1
It's an uphill battle. Even with the proper policies in place, changing the culture surrounding guns will take a generation at least. Probably much longer seeing as one Party has been politically weaponized the issue. You're not going to stop Fox News from scar mongering gun owners. Dinesh D'Souza will come out with another propaganda film. Brace yourself for frustration.
At the same time, I think Democratic policy makers often fail to recognize there are different types of gun culture. There's hunting culture, there's safety culture, there's military culture, there's gang culture, there's collector culture, there's mob culture, there's range culture, there's vigilante culture, and then you have the "Taxi Driver" weirdos.
By treating gun owners as a homogeneous group with a homogeneous risk, we enable their political manipulation. You're never going to peel the more reasonable groups off the gun control issue by treating the same way as mass murderers. A hunter in Montana has no idea what gun violence means in Chicago and vice versa. Don't speak to them as if they knew.
Personally, I'd settle for an end to interstate gun trafficking. This includes the casual gun markets Gail mentioned. Let the states decide what gun laws are appropriate for them. Just your laws and your mentality where they belong: in your state, not mine.
12
@Andy, I'm currently living in Michigan (a state with a huge "gun culture") and all of my colleagues here who own guns want them better regulated and want background checks in order to obtain them. I know of no one who wants to take everyone's guns away or considers gun owners a monolithic group of crazies.
1
I couldn't agree more. I live in Wisconsin and I'm a hunter. Everyone I hunt with treats guns with the respect they demand. We keep our guns locked up when not in use, which is about 95% of the time. When we do carry a rifle into the field we never point it at another person even when we know it's unloaded. We do that just to stay in the habit of being safe. It is absolute insanity to carry a loaded firearm on your person casually through a normal day.
52
@Dave Cieslewicz
Yes, in general hunters are careful people: careless hunters can have accidents. I applaud locking up guns. I would vote to buy a locking gun cabinet for every gun owner as long as they promised to keep the guns inside and the cabinet locked. It's insane to leave guns lying around.
It's insane to absolve gun owners of responsibility for how their guns are used. The unfortunate young men who shoot up groups of people almost anywhere seem to have found them casually kept in their family home. Owning a gun should require liability for it's mis-use.
3
@Dave Cieslewicz
I used to live in rural NH. Every fall weekend during the hunting season hunters up from MA for the weekend would be drinking beer and shooting guns in the woods. I had to wear an orange vest to take my garbage out of chop wood yards from my house.
Here in AZ, I have neighbors who have loaded guns sitting out in their garages and some who no longer remember where the loaded guns in their house are.
The idea that hunters, your neighbor or anyone else is a responsible gun owner is irrelevant. You have the right to own a gun in this country if you're completely irresponsible, an alcoholic, drug addict or psychotic.
Let's stop pretending the gun rights are about responsible gun ownership. That's why we need gun control.
3
The USA has the worst possible combination of factors:
1. Easy access to guns
2. Toxic masculinity
There are plenty of other countries in which a gun in the household is the norm. But, the men there (I'm thinking of some northern European countries) are mentally healthier and haven't been brought up in the childish culture of the USA (the USA being a very young country, let's not forget), a culture that teaches its boys that they need to be manly bros--John Waynes who never cry, never express feelings, never need anyone, never do girly things like read or think: big tough guys who need to come out "on top" and deal with adversity by shooting things.
As a result we have these hormonal young men, warped by several years of experiencing the normal, violent emotions and thoughts of adolescence and sadly a concurrent, totally abnormal inability to express those emotions and thoughts.
And one day they can't stand any more of it, so they grab their easy-access gun and shoot as many people as they can (teach them all a lesson), in their hatred and rage, before ending their own pain by shooting themselves. They quite literally don't know of any other way of dealing with things.
And this is what has given us Parkland, Newtown, Aurora, etc. God bless America.
16
Gail, we could have sensible gun legislation if it weren't for extremists like Diane Feinstein who said "if I could take every gun away from every American, I would." When people listen to things like that they say "you know what, don't give an inch. We know what the Democrats' real plan is. To take all of our guns away. This is just the first baby step."
Andrew Cuomo approved a bill to allow no more than 7 rounds in a magazine. You know why? There are no 7 round magazines available. It was s surreptitious way to ban all hand guns in NY.
So, while I agree with you that we need background checks and to keep irresponsible people from leaving guns unlocked or bringing them to airports, I can also understand why the GOP and many rural Democrat voters don't want to give an inch.
6
@Jerome Where is this democrat plan "to take all our guns away..?" Where did you hear this nonsense..? I'm very dissapointed in your post,,very disappointed.
No national gun-control laws have been passed since 1994, when Bill Clinton pushed for the assault weapons ban and the establishment of background checks. The NRA went nuts, there was a backlash, and Republicans picked up 54 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate in 1994, cheered on by the heated voices of Newt Gingrich and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA.
LaPierre intensified the ferocity of the NRA. He ranted against “jack-booted government thugs,” told stories about innocent gun owners whose houses were invaded by BATF agents who scattered their cancer medicines over the floor and stomped pet cats to death, and he generally helped ignite the anti-government militia movement.
Then Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols came along, destroyed the Oklahoma City Federal Building with a Ryder truck full of fertilizer, and killed 168 people in 1995 ... still our most deadly act of domestic terrorism. The pro-gun resistance movement lost some of its luster. Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996.
But since then, our gun-control laws have slowly melted away. The assault weapons ban outlawing magazines with a capacity of more than ten bullets expired. Background checks are still not required at gun shows. Wayne LaPierre and the NRA remain active, powerful, even as the number of households that contain guns in the US keeps decreasing.
Where do they get their money? Can’t all be from dues. Or Russians.
Just wondering ...
12
@Deborah
Where do they get their money?
--> Remington, Smith and Wesson, Springfield, etc etc.
All probably funnelled through the NRA.
Prior to 1492, there were exactly zero deaths by gunfire in the America. So maybe it is immigrants.
45
@dsws Yes, because death helped along by native slave labor and human sacrifice by Pre-Columbian peoples is so much more Politically Correct. I imagine there was an OBA, or, Obisidan Blade Association, to help foster the manufacture, selling, and possession of those simple tools. It would be so Western of me to call them Merchants of Death and refer to Military Industrial Complex .
As well, native peoples, before Western/White/Deplorable peoples reached them had no barbarity, no war, no violence. Heck, I bet the First Emporer of China headed an organization called BPA, or Burying People Alive, to promote recyling by "peaceful" methods.
@dsws
Bingo.
That so many millions of Americans (not just Florida politicians) choose to believe that the greatest threat from gun violence is from illegal aliens rather than from homegrown terrorists is the real problem in our great "debate" about immigration. Let's put the focus there, rather than simply on firearms. (I'm only slightly less alarmed by Gail Collins' highly unusual grammatical lapse when she writes that the Sebring bank shooter forced five women "to lay" on the floor.)
1
The truth of the matter is, were I a younger man, I would leave the country. It has become a violent, mindless, undereducated, place where common sense is scoffed at. We have leaders (GOP) who enrich themselves by pitting us against each other, and have
no regard for the greater good. We have elected a President who doesn’t possess the acumen to shine my shoes let alone lead a dangerously armed nation. They are criminals in out midst and we tolerate this by re-electing them.
Years ago a dear friend, lamenting the incredible crime rate and gun violence in Detroit, became an ex-pat and immigrated to Canada. He has never regretted that decision. The latest incarnation of “American exceptionalism” has only made that decision look brilliant.
18
@Peter, I obtained European citizenship (and fortunately a job) some years ago, so I relocated to Italy as a middle-age person. Interestingly, I was asked to return to the U.S. (Michigan) for a temporary work assignment. Being back in the States has convinced me that the strict gun regulations in Europe have resulted in far more safe and livable countries. Ironically, most of my colleagues here in MI who own guns have told me that they would like to see better regulations on firearms. Doubly ironic is the fact that many of my colleagues in Italy have guns for hunting and sport. So, there's a solution out there. I believe the NRA has way too much power and they tell politicians what to do. If the disappeared tomorrow, the U.S. would become a far safer place to live.
3
@Peter
I am in agreement with your general point. It might be interesting to know more about your age, since you state "if I were a younger man." The same point applies to your "dear friend." Did he keep a job in Detroit and commute from Windsor and add a half hour to his commute each way? Actually it seems to me that a retiree would have the easiest time moving to Canada.
That said, Canada also has some problems, some of which relate to their necessary subservience to economic pressures generated by the much larger US economy in general and the Trump crazies on the other.
1
@Tennis Fan. In response I am a 68 year old, semi-retired man, who would find it difficult to leave lifelong family and friends.
My friend left in his late 20’s took up residence in Nova Scotia, married and ultimately became a Barrister specializing in immigration law.
Ms. Collins, if you were to walk down Main Street with a bee-bee gun or a water pistol, in broad daylight or late at night, you might get a pass if you had the pallor of Baron de Rais who turned psychopath, a serial killer of children where angels fear to tread. It appears that we are back in the Medieval ages, an historical passage filled with misconceptions, and have taken the law into our hands.
There are no Ben-Hurs in these gun assassinations, only a mental photo of Charles Heston in the lingering days of his life, sitting with a rifle across his knees, an honored member of the NRA.
Perhaps you remember when a two-year old toted on her parent's hip, found a gun in her purse, and shot her mother. 'No', you might add, 'I do have an excellent memory but this does not make me a walking encyclopedia of such tragedies'.
'We hear stories like that every day', and these seem to be on the increase, while immigrant caravans filled with weapons of mass destruction at our sandy border have placed peaceful, law-abiding Americans in a state of national emergency.
We are going to need to call on our Boy and Girl Scout Club to put an end to these false alarms, and douse out the fires with floods of water, while our youngsters address the NRA to remind the representatives of the privilege it takes to be an American.
A secret admirer sends you pre-Valentine greetings this weekend, for your strength of character and large heart. Many thanks for helping us keep our wits about us.
1
I have always understood that the Second Amendment was created to ensure citizens that they would have the right to bare arms against a tyrannical government. Hmmmm....That said, I wonder how many folks who own many guns have actually seen someone MURDERED. Well, I have. Two young police officers were shot and killed by a crazy man in front of my NYC apartment. They lay on the sidewalk, their souls lifting to heaven as we screamed. Plain clothes came from everywhere and one of them carefully covered the wilted young men with coats. So much promise stolen in a moment. My heart broke every spring when their families came and hung pots of flowers in the trees in their memory. My cousin shot himself in the head when he was fifteen. Needless to say, we were devastated and will never know what he may have become. The pain that the survivors of mass shootings experience should, in itself, be enough for Congress to STOP STUFFING THEIR WALLETS WITH NRA CASH. I mean, just stop it.
20
This is the best column of yours I've ever read, Ms. Collins. You've tackled a very significant subject and used your sense of humor to point out the absurdity and bad faith of those who argue against gun control.
9
It's good to be reminded why Gail Collins has an op-ed column. A joy to read, even if on such a tragic subject. Glad there are still sane people.
9
Republicans have been coached just like mr Obama’s days, to oppose come what may. And to always divert attention to border security no matter what the topic is. If the issue is infrastructure and transport (where in the earth is Elaine Chao?), well just pivot to the wall, it’s infrastructure after all! Head slap.
3
It would be helpful if commenters would cite their sources for data they present. Some below do not reconcile with numbers presented in news articles in this paper. I recall in college that all un-footnoted claims had a note appended to them, "Source??" Why not here?
1
"All in all, they'd just
Dig under The Wall..."
"Thoughts & Prayers," people, that our nation survives the Post-Truth Era.
I wrote a long and thoughtful comment- and then I started to read the other comments and I got even more angry - so here's my idea:
In every mainstream media outlet that supports gun-control, when they run a story involving politicians, in parentheses after every single name say NRA, their report card grade and the amount that the NRA donated to that politician's campaign.
Marco Rubio (NRA A $9900)
14
@common sense advocate
Cory Gardner, CO ($$$$)
1
It is my view that gun owners should be allowed to keep as many of their guns as they can totally conceal from view on their immediate person when they are completely naked.
7
Ms. Collins thank you for speaking truth to power.
"Is there anything that the wall wouldn’t solve? Nearly 40,000 Americans died in gun violence in 2017, the last year for which we have records. But if only there’d been a huge concrete slab dividing us from Mexico, they’d be fine."
I have a fantasy about the future. If the Rabid Right would build their wall, it solves nothing, so after a time maybe the belligerent willfully ignorant would wake up to how much reasonless pain and sorrow they facilitate? No they would just pass laws forbidding reporting on gun violence; 'No see the problem, no problem.'
Will our future be, "Jes Fine!" ? But in reality it is,"We have met the enemy and he is us."
2
Sadly, I noticed that yet another school shooting in last night’s news was buried in the middle of the broadcast (both ABC and NBC). Maybe because one person was shot and survived? I think any time a gun is fired at a school, it should be the lead story. I am frustrated that this behavior is being normalized by the media once again. When is the next March to pressure Congress to pass common sense laws for gun safety! I’m in....!
5
As a democrat that hunts and supports gun control (and repeal of the second amendment, if necessary) I'd like to make the following clarifications regarding the traditional "sporting" use of firearms:
a) 'semi-automatic' capabilities are not necessary and of little genuine utility
b) same can be said for any 'magazine' with a capacity beyond three shells/bullets
c) handguns are fairly pointless (heavy, inaccurate and redundant).
The same cannot be said for those hellbent on committing crimes or killing people...or committing suicide, or winning red state votes or enriching the sporting goods industry.
I see no downside to gun control.
11
It’s darkly ironic that this country was willing to invade and occupy other sovereign nations due to an existential threat that killed three thousand citizens, but willfully ignores domestic gun carnage that represents a 9/11 event every few months, consistently.
Why bother? Why waste these trillions? Why refuse the roadmap every other western industrial nation provides?
Why not just invite jihadists over here? Challenge them. Can you do more harm to us than we do to ourselves? Surreally, we’ll actually sell them weapons to harm us with. Being on a terrorist watch list is no barrier to buying and owning guns. Neither is being legally blind, or having been served a restraining order.
More Americans are shot dead each year by kids than immigrants. More than 8 of every 10 first world kids shot dead each year are American kids. Owning a gun increases the danger to an individual sixfold, over not owning. The facts are clear, but so is the willful ignorance of them. It’s 9:30AM in the East Coast. By 9:50AM, another fellow citizen will have been shot dead avoidably. And by 9:30AM tomorrow, there will have been another mass shooting.
7
The reason we have a second amendment is so we don't have a federal standing army unless Congress declares war.
Imagine how many more people in the world would be alive today if we followed the 2nd amendment.
1
@HL
probably one of the most argued , misused , vague sentences in our history - leading to needless " American carnage "
Agree 100%. Let's get the responsible gun owners involved, too. The ones who hunt and eat what they shoot for dinner and would no more point a gun at a person than vote for--you know who.
The ones who would be fine with background checks and yearly testing (they'd easily pass) and keep their hunting rifles locked up because they believe guns must be treated with care and respect, not packed on the hip for a trip to Starbucks or left where their toddler can accidentally shoot his little brother. They are out there. Let's remember that.
2
Too many gun owners think that having a gun protects them from being killed by another gun owner. Strange!
2
Don't forget, if you have just about any exposure to the screen: film, television or the internet; you are inculcated with the cult of violence, particularly gun violence, to handle problems. Aside from the insane amount of gun deaths in the US we are known world wide by the violence that our media perpetrates on screen. Live by the screen, die by the screen.
2
Aside from elected congressional Republicans who simply have no regard for the deaths of thousands of American men, women, and children every year—beyond extending their "thoughts and prayers"—there is something in parts of American society which seems to equate guns with the notion of rugged independence; with don't-push-me-around power. Guns are deeply embedded in popular culture: in movies, books, television, the stage, music—even ballet, for heaven's sake! (Agnes de Mille's "Billy the Kid").
Guns now kill more people than die in automobile accidents. We must either face the reality that the purchase, ownership and use of firearms must be regulated or nothing will change. These senseless deaths will persist, unabated in any way.
The manufacturers of firearms and their spokespeople like the NRA will continue to place roadblocks into any kind of regulation.
Above all, we must change how we think about guns in our society. They do not bestow freedom on anyone. They do not promote "rugged independence." The West has long since been won. It's really time to grow up.
4
Open Letter to Representative Gaetz:
Here is a short list of mass shootings none of which were committed by an assailant that would have been stopped by a border wall: Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Sutherland Springs Church, Columbine and Aurora. There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017. How many Americans must die by reason of gun violence and easy access to firearms before craven and callous Congressional Representatives like you are moved to do anything big and meaningful to solve for this national emergency? Without being callous, how can anyone bear witness to the deaths of our nation’s children and not demand legislation that (i) fully funds and mandates best practices (without loopholes) in gun safety, background checks and registration and (ii) eliminates entirely from civilian availability military style firearms and ammunition? How do you calculate the value of the lives of our youth lost against: “A well regulated Militia, being A necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”? Without being craven, how does any Congressional Representative put his or her NRA/constituent support ahead of the lives of our nation’s citizens? 2nd Amendment rights are not absolute and “Life” is the first inalienable right set forth in our Declaration of Independence. Your conduct on this topic is dangerous and unAmerican.
6
Perhaps we should take Mr. Gaetz up on his idea for a wall. Just install it around Florida, and not on the border. That should keep a lot of the craziness down in the rest of the country.
1
Gail,
President Trump quaking in his shoes at the thought of travel to Afghanistan is perfectly understandable. The rigorous metal detecting, prescreening at his MAGA rallies another data point. The tired security checks at his border rallies. The concentric bands of security at Mar a Lago are not to screen out chocolate cake thieves..
Florida, Texas, Afghanistan, Iraq share a common thread.
Awash in weaponry where any swingingDick or Jane can use it with impunity.
And this is normal?
1
is there a bigger tool in Congress than Trump's waterboy Matt Gaetz? I think not. He's the poster child for what's wrong in America.
4
Gail, thank you for this.
And perhaps another column on the idiocy of arming teachers?
If only our Congress could enact rational laws that we see actually working in other countries with reasonable gun laws. As in Scotland, following the mass shooting of 16 children in the town of Dunblane, March, 1996: “In Scotland, Unlike America, Mass Shooting Led to Stricter Gun Laws” by Al Baker, New York Times, Dec. 5, 2015.
5
More exasperating, after a shooting, than “thoughts prayers”: the anguished parlor game of “Why did he do it?”.
How he did it is all that matters.
6
There is no end in sight. Not for a generation or two if then. It is part of a complex national psychosis that is enabled and perpetuated by material prosperity, ignorance, myth and propaganda. Even with new data and new regulations, they will not be enforceable on a large segment of the country with an essentially lawless mentality.
1
Almost 40,000 firearms deaths in the U.S. Sounds like we're living in the wild west, right? Gail, you neglected to tell your readers that about 23,000 of them are suicides.
Oh well, that's all right then!.
Even worse than the “illegal aliens” trope is the one the Second Amendment truthers promote about the “good guy with a gun.” The murder of a female police officer by her colleague, while they were allegedly playing a drunken game of Russian Roulette—WHILE THEY WERE ON DUTY—is a terrific example. Many of these mass shooters have no significant prior criminal records. It only takes a crisis, large or small, to turn a “good guy with a gun” into a “bad guy with a gun.” Combine a bad breakup, a few too many drinks, a financial reversal, or even just plain spite and hatred, with a loaded pistol and you’ve got the makings of a bloodbath.
1
Just finished reading Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee's dystopian novel "Waiting for the Barbarians." That's what Trump wants us to believe: We must arm ourselves to the teeth. The barbarians are massing just across the border!
1
Even scarier? The people bringing guns on to planes were doing it for self defense. The were going to be the Clint Eastwood who would personally bring down any hijackers.
If the times we now live in has shown us anything at all, it's that some people with an overwhelming sense of self interest might very well run for political office and win. And there they sit, in the halls of government, pigging out on all that is made available to them thereby. People of this type will control guns when they are themselves in the cross-hairs, but probably not until then.
When I was a teenager, I read a novel about a trumpet player who blew 1 false note, and knew it was the beginning of the end for him,he had lost his touch, and that is the way I feel about Ms. Collins's writing. Can't get beyond the second paragraph because 1 knows it will be an issue that the Democratic left has embraced, and this time it is gun control. Fair enough, but it is simply not humorous or enlightening. Who does not agree that there should be COMPLETE background checks on gun purchases, and gun fairs should be closed down until further notice. But we know all that already.Certainly there r more pressing issues on the agenda like the laughable proposal of AOC, wearing her socialist credentials on her sleeve yet dressed in a pants suit costing, my hunch, several thousand dollars, and "oui dires" that she is a regular at Churchill's, 1 of Manhattan's priciest eateries,but suspect that GC is so into proselytizing for the left that she would make Molly Ivins look like James Kirkpatrick!
I was not a cynic when I was young. I was a disappointed idealist, maybe.
But now, yeah, I have grown into a full out and out cynic. I have to say that Congressional shrugging after a disturbed young man who bonded with his mother ( frankly her state was a bit questionable too) over guns, shot to pieces 20 babies and the women who tried to protect them, cemented my disdain.
We are willing to kill tens of thousands annually - even little kids - so that we can sell guns anywhere, anyhow, anyway. Some societies tossed teens in volcanoes, some ceremonially killed them on altars, and ours just let them get shot by unstable people, angry people.
The Newtown children broke me, and I broke again after a teen in Poughkeepsie, who had just that day been named countywide MVP and was headed to college died from a bullet not meant for him. And I broke last week when a young man angry at his ex-girlfriend shot her, two strangers, one only 19, in a bar, then killed an 84 year father of one of my classmates in the man's own home, before killing himself. This happened across the street from my mother - he just didn't choose to run in her direction, I guess.
Keep yelling, keep protesting, keep trying. There is a place in Hell for the people who just shrug.
1104
It is mindless to think that stronger gun control laws would not prevent death. Shouldn't it at least be as difficult to obtain a gun as it is to obtain a driver's license to drive a car? A gun is a lethal weapon and should be controlled as such. The 2nd amendment was adopted in 1791. You can be sure that its language would have been different had there been the types of weapons that are readily available today.
6
Basically all of our rights are a matter of trust. We trust that the vast majority of people will act responsibly and then put in place laws and regulations to deal with the very few who do not. Free speech, assembly, freedom of religion, on and on. We trust citizens to be responsible.
Same with the second amendment. The vast majority of gun owners can in fact be trusted to handle guns appropriately. That’s just the facts. There are accidents and mistakes but in the grand scheme of things they are rare.
The question is how do we keep those few who are not responsible or who are criminal at bay. Background checks seem like one common sense approach. That will not solve everything, but they are another reasonable cost approach.
The thing that does not make sense is to deny the responsible gun owners the right to responsibly have guns. Many of these folks fear that any step to restrict guns eventually leads to a total ban. We would do well to assure them that this is not the case. Here radical views get in the way of common sense action.
Tone down the threats, act to protect and respect the rights of law abiding citizens, and take sensible action to improve safety. The extremists on both sides are just getting in the way
1
When I was growing up, I noticed that my parents hated the Republicans. When I asked why, they just said, "When you grow up, you'll understand." Boy, do I.
My God, I hate Republicans.
15
The gun problem is interesting because it is at its core a governance problem, as Gail Collins has highlighted here. Campaign finance laws are designed by their beneficiaries and take power from people, giving that power to corporations and organizations like the NRA. Laws prohibit lobbying by citizens, but allow expensive and powerful professionals to engage in lobbying. While billions are thrown at military killing technology, the federal agency in charge of keeping track of gun ownership records is prohibited from using computers. Dysfunctional lawmakers enjoy long careers by financing the world's most expensive public relations campaigns with money from the world's most egregiously immoral corporations and organizations. While all this goes on in plain sight for decades, voters and citizens voluntarily divide themselves into red and blue tribes, virulently hating and blaming the other tribe, while it is clear that both sides are engaged in real, seriously harmful dysfunction at local, state and national levels. Those who benefit wear suits in the daytime; those who suffer do not. Our culture is dominated by belief-system and tribal allegiance displays, from fashion to food to entertainment to automobiles. Political institutions reinforce this dynamic because their members benefit from tribal allegiance. Voters and citizens support the system as long as they and their tribe get their share of the loot. Government-controlled education assures next-generation compliance.
4
The media sure didn't give this much coverage. If Gail Collins had not written about this hearing, I would not have known about it. People need to know what's happening in order to support those in government who are actually trying to do something about the horrific toll of gun deaths in this country.
22
At least you didn't rant on about the NRA. I will however make the point that a great many of the gun deaths mentioned in the article could have been prevented by education and awareness of the hazards of guns, much like parents are reminded that aspirin is frequently a cause of death among young children. If the liberals had made the extraordinary effort, I'm referring to Obama and Biden, to work with the largest gun safety organization in the country instead of demonizing them at every opportunity, people in general would not hesitate to seek their advice or even become a member and associate with a number of people who know about guns that emphasize safety as an integral part of gun ownership. It may be noted that few, if any, mass shooters were members of the NRA, but more than one third of them had served in the military and many more said or indicated that the military, or a military mindset, was an inspiration for their mass killings.
It should be noted that it is already illegal for someone to make a business of selling guns without a license and all licensed dealers MUST do a background check. We didn't have background checks until 1998. Before that the county was not awash with murder and mayhem from gun violence.
Obama's effort to restrict gun ownership was unconstitutional, but that never stopped a liberal. They want to destroy even that to get what they want.
California has more mass murders than Florida, more than any state in the Union.
2
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus
The NRA had spectacular resources at its disposal during the Obama era. Enough to change the electoral spectrum for the Republican Party across the country during any number of races. No need to put the lack of interest on gun safety on Obama. I think the NRA would be happy to own that one. As far as your claims of unconstitutionality, I refer you to the second amendment and the clear line drawn between the right to keep and bear arms and a "well-regulated militia." Gun ownership shall not therefore not exist without regulation, a point the Republicans ignore repeatedly.
18
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus A fat-behind philosopher might wonder why Obama didn't make deals with the NRA but just about anyone else would ask exactly what deals the NRA would have supported. The answer is clear: none. Yes, the NRA said more mental health services would help but then failed to urge Congress to support the Affordable Care Act which provides mental health funding. And the NRA said armed security guards are needed at schools, but again didn't urge any financial support for helping out with this. And better background checks to prevent people who shouldn't get guns? Forget it. The NRA has opposed every reasonable attempt to help minimize gun trafficking, gun shootings, and even gun education (such as opposing doctors discussing with parents how to keep guns out of the hands of children). Oh, and as to California's high incidence of murders, did it ever occur to any pro-gun philosophers that maybe the reason is that California has the highest population of any state in the country?
7
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus, maybe at one time the NRA was a "gun safety" organization but that time is long past. With print and on-line videos touting the importance of being armed to defend yourself against intruders, constant lobbying of Congress against any sensible regulation of arm (which regulation is and always has been Constitutional), and just the callous marketing of arms sales immediately following a mass shooting anywhere in the U.S., the NRA has become the arms manufacturers main trade organization and not a gun safety organization.
4
Just as an aside. I'm going to turn 70 this summer and I've never, in my life, heard about a meeting of the militia in any of the states
I've visited or where I've lived. For all the guns out there, I've never even met a member of any militia.
20
@Robert McKee
Robert and all: I'm older than you. I have a far right leaning son who is 55 and a vet. He is in a militia. They don't advertise Bob. They are secretive. I, unlike my son, believe in creating a safer nation. I don't want to take guns away. However, if someone is "playing with fire" the grown-ups in the room need to take steps to prevent damage.
3
@Robert McKee
At 66, nor have I.
@Robert McKee
They call it The National Guard now.
Repeal the 2nd amendment! It would take an overwhelming majority of the people to do it. Congress would have to back off or out of the process. Courts could never intervene in the will of the people regarding guns without the present constitutional underpinning . It would free up many cities and states to enact their own anti gun laws without congressional approval. Thousands of lives would be saved. The framers were not saints. Infallibility was never recognized for our 18th century politicians. They got it wrong on the "right" to bear arms. It needs fixed.
18
@mikeyh
Amendments are difficult to pass only when Americans are split on the issues the amendments address. Six constitutional amendments have been ratified in my lifetime.
Gun control advocates are against introducing a constitutional amendment that would repeal or modify the 2nd Amendment because they think the states would not ratify the amendment. This would permit gun rights advocates to proclaim the gun rights issued settled.
1
You don’t have to repeal the Second Amendment to have gun control, any more than you need the current twisted interpretation of the Second Amendment to allow gun ownership. For well over 200 years the Second Amendment sat there and was never interpreted to create a right for an individual to bear arms. What we really need is a society that values education enough so that the general populace understands how the Supreme Court and the Constitution actually work. This would keep people who don’t understand what they’re vetoing for from doing stupid things like just giving someone a chance to be president just because we need change, even though that person is clearly unqualified and ideologically out of step.
I remember FaceBook posts by some of my conservative contacts during the election season calling liberals idiots for being concerned with Roe vs. Wade. One comment was great — “I don’t know why the libertards are worried about this, Roe Vs. Wade is the law.” Yep, from someone who actually had an abortion as a young person and believed in a woman’s right to choose. So if we’re going to try for big changes, let’s not focus on revoking the Second Amendment (which is impossibly hard). Let’s focus on making the connection between who you vote for and what can really happen. Make no mistake — creating a right for an individual to bear arms was a violation of precedent and the ruling of a conservative activist court. This is what happens when you eliminate civics in schools!
Don't ever give up your right to own guns. With the world becoming more dangerous every day, even in our own back yards, we citizens need to protect each other and the best way is with guns. I am proud that I am protected by millions of my fellow Americans every day by guns.
35
@Volnick I think the question is about where those dangers come from, at present and potentially. If you think your well-armed compatriots cannot possibly be part of the present dangers, then you have some statistics on gun deaths to explain (away). Anticipating the source of future dangers is always hard, but I don't think I want to leave it to vigilantes.
239
@Volnick Protected against what? I'm curious.
151
@Volnick You would be better protected if those gun owners were part of a "well regulated militia."
196
As the writer makes clear, many thousands of people are murdered every year in the United States despite the best efforts of the police and legal system. It is not paranoia to want to own a firearm to protect yourself from violence. And, if you don’t have the right to defend yourself from bodily harm, what rights do you have?
25
@RY
A curious rationale. The more guns we have, then the more guns we need?
123
@RY
Who is taking away your right to own a firearm? I sat next to a gun owner at a banquet and he declared because he is an American he can own any type of firearm he wants. (He showed pictures of himself proudly brandishing an AR-15. ) This attitude I guess would make owning a bazooka or a fully automatic machine gun. I know, an AR-15 is not fully automatic.
69
@RY
What about the "well regulated militia" opening to the 2nd Amendment? What part of "well regulated" don't you understand?
142
While I don't disagree with Ms. Collins' theme, I don't think she appreciates the fear of many gun supporters that the government will overreach and try to take away guns from legitimate gun owners. Or the comfort that many gun owners have when thinking about the fear of home invasions in virtually any neighborhood in the country. I think that if politicians like the not so esteemed senator from Connecticut would simply cite facts to support his case rather than bashing the NRA or gun owners, perhaps the country will be more supportive of his push for enhanced background checks. Another area of gun owner concern is creeping government take over of privacy rights and the big government "progressive" economic antics of AOC, Sanders and the Green Lobby. So the issue is not simple and is wrapped up in the kind of government that America needs or wants. But facts will carry the day not "progressive" solutions and the government taking more power over our lives. Bully for Ms. Collins pointing out the fallacy of immigrant gun violence in Florida. I suspect these facts would be relevant throughout the country.
2
@Ed....I have lived in this country for a rather long time and the notion that the government is going to come and take your gun away so you can't protect yourself ranks right up there with a fear of little green men from Mars.
46
@Ed
Yes, Americans have been trained to the dog whistle of "fear" from those "others". The NRA uses that fear to sell more and more weapons. The NRA has a powerful lobby and they reward our Representatives for their votes to keep
America awash in weapons.
Sadly, the reality is still that there are too many people with access to assault weapons and too many innocent Americans are dying. The correlation is not difficult to understand, Americans are losing their right to live because of the inane interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. No other Nation is the world has the death rate from guns that America has, why?
11
@W.A. Spitzer
The government confiscated legally owned guns Louisiana after hurricane Katrina. It was illegal but they still did it. Confiscation has already happened in this country.
Until the day we have birth-to-death, mandatory, substantive and well-funded mental health help and preventative measures for all world citizens, we will have human-on-human violence around us (and even war, if you can abstract it out smartly enough). There is no other way.
Yeah, I know the cynicism that statement brings in most minds. I get it. And there lies the truer heart of the problem; the cynicism that can't even imagine mitigating the obstacles to our greatest ideals.
3
@M. B.
This perpetuates the myth that "human-on-human violence" is solely due to mental health issues. In fact, it is not - try poverty, fear, ignorance, substance abuse...
@Jim It's not a "myth" if you define all human on human violence as stemming from a breakdown of higher, healthful reasoning (holistically minded and micro-to-macroscopically aware of repercussions) in the individual. What leads to that breakdown? A myriad of factors, including your list. What starts to aleviate that breakdown is an encroaching, holistic, conscious approach on all fronts under the understanding of the interconnectedness of the roots of all human suffering (and thus, our inability to thrive on every level). At the heart of our inability to think and react holistically to mitigating this suffering is the belief (like yours perhaps) that war is not a psychotic state... that ignorance is not a building compartment of poor, ailing mental health... that poverty's existence is not tied to apathy and a lack of compassion (a breakdown of society-wide "mental health")... that the road to substance abuse is not perfectly tied to the mental health of the parents, teachers, friends and the individual in the first place... that yes, fear (and anger) that overrides the frontal lobe and seat of logic and makes us kill, attack, slaughter and willfully end lives is not a breakdown of a higher, healthful way of cognition that allows for a wider understanding of what lead to those impulsive and blinding emotions.
Ignorance and a lack of education brings out the cynicism that unsubstantiates what is and isn't a myth in the first place, and ironically becomes a myth in itself.
When I was a child, there was a deadly killer that was legal and easy to get. It was regulated by the states and Feds, but it readily available to children. I'm referring to cigarettes. I smoked for forty years and it took years and all my strength to quit
Back then you could smoke almost everywhere. Theaters, restaurants, airplanes. Eventually society came to it's senses, people saw tobacco as the unmitigated scourge it truly is. It is not quite illegal but it's use is tightly restricted.
Let's do the same with guns. Guns are evil things whose only function is to kill. We have let Charlton Heston's biblical patriarch complex overwhelm our sense of common humanity. It is clear now there is no point in moderate incremental steps.
Ban all private guns. Nobody needs a gun to live. The cops don't need them, if no one else has one. Guns equal death, not freedom.
Let us melt our guns into solar panels, and embrace life.
41
@fred I'm with you most of the way, but I live in Texas, not the Bronx, and I need my .22 rifle [a relative pea-shooter] because varmints eat cats and no one wants the raccoons one can trap. "Ban all private guns" plays into the paranoia of the right wing.
3
The congressman says, "I hope we do not forget the pain and anguish and sense of loss felt by those all over the country who have been the victims of violence at the hands of illegal aliens."
I agree, we should not forget their pain. However, since two-thirds of all gun deaths in this country are the result, not of homicide committed by illegal aliens, but of suicide committed by native born Americans, wouldn't we get more bang for the buck (as it were) if we focused on ways to reduce that number.
25
While I can understand how a firearm might be useful to a hunter or someone living in a rural area, I cannot understand how handguns or assault weapons can find their way into civilian hands.
Why someone would actually want to own an instrument designed to take a human life is beyond me.
45
@Edouard
I think, in the NRA fueled dementia that abounds within this country, one would want to own a gun not because they need one, but simply because they can.
This dementia leads to mass murder, murder, and suicide and must, must be stopped. I have been a teacher for 30 years, this year is my last not because of age or lack of desire, but because I'm so sick and tired of our quarterly lockdown drills and the worry that some kid will walk in the door to any of the buildings on campus - with his student ID properly hanging around his neck - pull out an Uzi or an AK, or a Glock, or whatever is the new "in gun", and start firing.
1
@Edouard
Because there are people in the world who would not hesitate to kill you if they could easily do it. A gun makes it more difficult.
1
Make insurance for guns mandatory like we have insurance for automobiles. Why should guns be any different given their lethal consequences? Their use can cause injury and death so make the owners need insurance that will cover any expenses should the gun be discharged and someone injured or killed. Why should guns be less regulated than anything else particularly given their tragic history in American life?
102
@Adam
I like that idea! Just as the insurance companies make it expensive or impossible for dangerous drivers to get coverage, they would do the weeding out of the dangerous gun owners that our government doesn't have the courage to do.
30
@Adam
A very reasonable idea, and while we're at it, require a gun owning test and issue a license, similar to a driver's license. Reasonable as these ideas are, the argument is that the Constitution guarantees a right to bear arms, but not a right to own and drive a car.
Besides, if we gave out licenses to own and operate a firearm, many would believe that it's just a license to kill.
10
Yes! Insurance companies are not bound by the Second Amendment.
2
Gail writes that the House is likely to pass a bill that will guarantee background checks for all gun buyers, but it's unlikely Mitch McConnell will bring it up for a vote in the Senate. If that happens, Democrats need to do a high-profile job of branding McConnell for his obstruction -- on this and other important legislation that will pass the House and go nowhere in the McConnell-controlled Senate.
30
"A well-regulated militia..." that is the part of the second amendment that everyone, including those who are anti the NRA, tend to ignore. Yet, it is the most powerful tool to get control of a seemingly uncontrollable situation.
An arsenal is a collection of weapons, a militia is a collection of people and the founders, from George Mason on, understood that the people are the thing to be regulated.
We-the-People should be demanding that the states do their duty and regulate the citizen militia. That means registering, screening, evaluating, training, inspecting, qualifying and drilling those Americans who "keep and bear arms."
Unfortunately, we've forgotten about the citizen militia ever since the war of 1812. In the meantime all states now have professional police and militia forces. And those people are well-regulated whereas arms keeping and bearing citizens are completely unregulated, un-trained, un-screened, un-evaluated, and un-qualified.
Let's see the NRA put up its objections to the first clause of the second amendment. Frankly, if the first clause is no longer applicable, neither is the rest of the amendment.
It is interesting that the founders understood that it isn't about the hardware, it is about the people and the people who keep and bear deadly force must be well-regulated.
Of course the states won't like this idea because it will make them liable for the misuse of deadly force. That would be good.
68
@George N. Wells Yes. It's perplexing beyond reason that the Supreme Court simply ignores the opening clause of the 2d Amendment. One thinks the "conservatives" have an agenda that doesn't coincide with the U.S. Constitution.
23
@George N. Wells
The adjective "well-regulated" in the 2nd Amendment is ignored by literate people because it modifies "militia," not "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."
There is an argument over whether "well-regulated" means militias should be regulated by the federal government or that militias should be well equipped and well provisioned, which is the correct meaning, but it makes no difference. It applies to militias, not the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
@Jessica
The Supreme Court justices and and other literate people ignore the adjective "well-regulated" in the 2nd Amendment is because it modifies "militia," not "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." The issue is not whether militias should be well regulated, but whether the right of the people to keep and bear arms can be infringed.
For many Americans (rural and otherwise), guns are a part of their culture and identity, like wearing socks with shoes. I believe these folks are quite comfortable with toddlers shooting their mothers, because, let's be honest, that is an issue of personal responsibility, not legal firearms control.
Our mass shootings are a national tragedy, and one that all Americans lament, but I don't believe that they can be addressed with legislation restricting gun purchases (there are already more guns than people in this country). Gun control is an wedge issue that keeps Republicans in power, because it cuts to the core identity of many Republican voters.
No impulse is more reactionary or ineffective than the one to restrict access to something (look at our failed war on drugs). I suggest that those of us on the 'left' start thinking progressively about the issue of gun-violence and focus on ideas and policies that can reduce mass-shootings without restricting access to firearms.
3
@Andrew
Please explain what "rural and otherwise" "culture and identity" includes automatic and assault-style weapons. I grew up in the rural midwest, where hunting was popular, so I understand the reference to a cultural affiliation with hunting rifles. But, that culture also included gun and hunting regulations, safety training and expectations of responsible gun ownership, and it didn't include assault weapons.
36
@Andrew
As a wise man once said, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people. But the gun sure makes it easier."
Then there's the old bumper sticker: "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will accidently shoot their children."
Some thing to think about.
2
@Andrew same idea as telling women not to act in a way that invites sexual assault.
2
If I remember correctly in his State of the Union speech President Trump chided opponents of his border wall for living in gated communities where immigrants cannot roam. One might note Congressman Gaetz and fellow Congressional supporters of unrestricted gun access work in gun-free zones protected by phalanxes of Capitol police ready to pounce on even non-violent protestors. Perhaps Congressman Gaetz needs more opportunities to share his world with those nursing unfathomable grievances, deep phobias, and fantasies of fame.
39
A few years ago, I flew out of Dulles airport in Washington. In conversation with my seatmate, he was astonished when I told him that, in my life, I had never seen a handgun wielded by anyone but a police officer. And, at that, I don't think I've ever seen a drawn handgun. The impression I got from him is that handguns in the US are so ubiquitous that they are practically part of most people's homes, like a fridge or TV set. I know the figures: there are more than 300 million guns in the US, more than 40% of privately held guns in the world are owned by Americans. Still, the utter insanity of the normalization of lethal weapons is something, I fear, that most Americans simply don't appreciate. These instruments of death have become so much a part of the background that they are no longer noticed or considered out of place. That is what is most disturbing. Another anecdote: I was in Montana for one day in the summer and stopped at a local bar near my campsite to have dinner. The bar was raffling a $400 prize to buy items as a gun store. Absolutely sick.
23
This really happened during a short trip from airport to harbor in Florida!
Two armed confrontations at traffic lights and one car run off the road in only 20 minutes.
It’s amazing I didn’t have time to stay.
Only in America.
17
The day can't come soon enough that we get corporate money out of politics, until then I'll settle for purging the congress and the white house of republicans.
45
@Bob Gorman
Be careful what you wish for Mr. Gorman. AOC, Sanders and the Green Extremists are equally as dangerous as the loonies on the far right.
The strongest indicator of who will commit gun violence?
American men with guns.
Seems like everyone fitting that paired demographic should be under extra surveillance
Of course not all men will go out and randomly shoot 5 women at the closest bank, but the responsibility of proof should be on them, not on society
Prove to us you are safe to be around. Otherwise, if you are an American man with a gun, we will assume you are not.
37
@organic farmer
Yes. For many women the man doesn't actually need to pull the trigger to terrorize her. In domestic violence situations, he just needs to make clear that he has a gun (open carry laws, keeps it on him all the time at home...whatever).
Las Vegas Massacre shooter facts:
killed 58, injured over 500 in about 10 minutes
with numerous legally acquired automatic firearms. White male, retired, with no discernable motives.
Better records and monitoring of purchases could restrict purchases and trigger a watchlist of certain behaviors by law enforcement. A border wall would do nothing.
46
I am more and more convinced that the only way we are going to save our country from it's terrible downhill turn is for Democrats to take the Senate. It's bad enough to have a no nothing President, but to have a Senate that won't let it's own members vote is insane. Donald Trump has no idea what he's doing, but Mitch McConnell does, and that kind of leadership is not good for America.
53
Bear with me for a second.
When the Beatles were playing gigs in Hamburg, Germany prior to becoming world famous, they would perform for hours on end.
George Harrison recounted that the grizzled, drunk patrons would shout in German, "Macht show!" and the band would bounce around and amuse in ways beyond just standing and playing the music.
"Macht show!"
Loose translation: "Make a show!"
Do something that catches our attention.
The Democrats in the House will pass gun background check legislation soon.
Supported by 90% of Americans.
Right and Left.
They will play the popular music we want.
But, to catch our attention, they need to "make a show."
They need to plan a well coordinated, Mass Viral Event that both celebrates the popular bill they pass AND slams and shames those who vote against it or scuttle it - Mitch and his men.
Mass Viral Event.
Make a show.
Imagine on that day…a happening.
Every popular TV show, millions of tweets and posts, a slick YouTube release.
Featuring celebrities and opinion shapers across the American spectrum.
From LeBron to Oprah to Ellen.
From Colin Powell to Caroline Kennedy.
Especially victims of gun violence and their families.
A show.
Three days of "Celebration and Shame."
Flood the zone.
Recall the names and circumstances of our fallen loved ones. Celebrate their lives.
And shame, by name, Mitch and those who obstruct our national will.
A law AND a show to catch our attention.
Or else it all just fades.
33
If the religious right continues to hold sway with the argument that a few cells that have colonized a woman's body are actually a human person, the next line of argument for controlling women is that any ovum is potential life so that birth control is right next to abortion in sinfulness. Of course, it is primarily men (the Catholic hierarchy) and very wealthy and powerful Republicans (whose wives, daughters, and mistresses can always access abortion) who push this line of "reasoning."
Fear of women is usually the real motivation. Just look how terrified Congressional Republicans are of Speaker Pelosi and the dozens of new female members in the House. If love and protection for children were behind all the "pro-life" activity, we would, you know, see evidence of loving care of children.
It's also easy to understand why Congressional Republicans must protect the sanctity of the Second Amendment at all costs. Love of guns, like abortion, is a mighty cudgel for getting a certain set of people to the polls. Those two cudgels have worked well for decades. (A third one, terror of gays, has morphed into terror of transgendered people and immigrants.).
Republican leaders are never going to give up their pro-life, pro-gun, be-very-afraid Trojan horse.
33
Here's the second amendment. The right for anyone to shoot anyone else whenever you want. It's really making the gun manufacturers a lot of dough all the time. As long as we let the gun manufacturers buy our politicians, nothing will change. Buy a flak jacket and wear it around? Yeah, the gun manufacturers make those too, and soon to come in kiddie and toddler sizes, if they don't already.
20
@Joseph
And I think flak jackets emblazoned with religious iconography would be especially big sellers.
1
The same sort of recklessness and indifference to how people handle and care for their guns are after all the same people who treat their vote the same way. Meaning, the same attitude that gives us Parkland, is also the same attitude that elects a Matt Gaetz, a carelesss, reckless use of one's vote.
Therefore, we are missing the biggest problem with the gun issue and that is that the gun issue is a symptom of a much bigger problem, and that problem goes way beyond an unlimited right for absolutely anyone under any condition to own arm type and as many firearms. That problem is that the gun people not only want the government off their backs and out of their lives (except of course women's reproductive health), but they do not want to ever be held accountable for any damage caused by their own wanton disregard of the safety of others when it comes to their own behavior. Seriously, if a child hits his brother over the head with a toy, a parent will typically take the toy away as both a punishment and a safeguard at least until the offending child can understand not to continue such behavior. The GOP and their voters find this to be an unacceptable infringement of a child's God given right guaranteed by the Constitution to have and wield a toy, whenever and wherever...insane.
17
@Sparky This. Yes. I saw a Youtube video of an American using a rifle to shoot his drone out of a tree. He said "Don't do this yourself", but he thinks it's OK for him to put anonymous strangers (and neighbours) at risk when he shoots a rifle into the sky without a clue where the bullet may wind up. The comments were full of gun nuts supporting him when someone pointed out how reckless this was.
Canadians have guns too but our police never have to remind citizens not to shoot firearms in the air during national celebrations. I've never read of a Canadian toddler shooting someone.
Over and over I read of another American child shooting him/herself or shooting someone by accident and the firearm owner isn't charged with negligent homicide.
"It was just an accident".
No. It's negligence causing death. No other country has toddlers regularly shooting themselves and others. Because other countries require firearm owners to be responsible AND hold them accountable when they are not.
Too many firearm owners in the USA want all the rights with no responsibilities. Stonekettle Station did an essay on this, worth reading: "Bang Bang Crazy, Part 14: The Cowardice of Responsibility".
1
Aside from all the mass shootings, we're in a state surrounded by water; the Coast Guard went without pay during the shutdown and Gaetz is obsessing over a wall that won't protect Florida and our taxpayers don't need or care to fund.
21
Guns are not the problem. Men are the problem. Men buy guns to theoretically protect them selves from all comers. Whereas women buy guns to protect themselves from men. I say again, the problem is men. Ban gun sales to men. Arm all women. Gun violence will plummet, as I suspect, will the incidence of rape.
19
Gaetz represents a Florida panhandle area that he won by almost 40 points. The voters sent this man to Congress, and to date I haven't heard any cries of outrage from the folks that elected him. Guess they are OK with his train of thought.
I hope 'the wall' will also be a cure for climate change for his district when it finds itself underwater.
21
@retired gardner: there is a special place in hell for the likes of Congressman Gaetz. His attempt to correlate building a wall on our border and gun violence and trying to remove the father of a S Douglas victim will go down as one of the most callous actions by a soulless politician in history. His smugness and blatant NRA line of blaming illegals for gun massacres is beyond evil.
In a small way it reminds me of the comment made by a furloughed prison guard from the panhandle during the shutdown. She said, “Trump’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” Sounds like Gaetz reflects their values.
2
The real surprise is that gunshot deaths in America is primarily a mental health issue aka suicide.
Of the 40,000 Americans who died from gunshots only a tiny portion were mass shooting victims. For decades 2/3rds of the annual gun shot deaths in America have been suicides. Overwhelmingly white men who tend to use handguns. Disproportionately military veterans. Their guns were legally obtained.
Of the gunshot homicides family and friends and neighbors and thugs tend to do the most killing. No background checks will resolve nor prevent these incidents.
2
@Blackmamba is it not a bit strange that only America has this problem? All other first world nations have rational gun laws and very tiny deaths by gun violence. Perhaps we are the only nation with mental health issues, but does that seem likely?
18
@Blackmamba In a good background check (i.e., one done in other countries), the would-be gun owner's significant others (wife/girlfriend/ex-girlfriends) are interviewed about whether they are comfortable with that person owning a gun. Their responses are taken into account in the ultimate determination of whether the he passes the check. So, you're wrong.
14
@RMS
Nonsense.
Many of these white men committing suicides don't have wives/girlfriends/ex-girlfriends nor current or ex boyfriend or boy spouses or boy partners.
Often family members have no idea about mental illness nor depression. Or they are in denial. Or can't afford nor have access to mental health care.
Moreover the NRA is opposed to any background checks.
2
I am surprised that Trump hasn't claimed that a caravan of guns is on its way through Mexico. Build that wall and all the gun deaths will stop.
4
@Barking Doggerel A caravan of guns is almost certainly going through Mexico, coming from the USA.
That's where most guns in Mexico come from. Republicans and the NRA have done everything they can to make it difficult for authorities to stop the selling of crates of weapons out of US gun stores, many of which disappear with the gun stores shredding and burning the paperwork.
The primary purpose of the border barrier is to reduce illegal immigration, not to reduce crime in U.S. cities. But by reducing illegal immigration, it will also reduce crime. Over the last two years, ICE officers arrested 266,000 arrests criminal aliens, including those charged or convicted of nearly 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 murders. If we had stopped these criminals from crossing the border, we would have prevented 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 murders.
Legal immigrants have a lower crime rates than illegal immigrants because legal immigrants, unlike illegal immigrants, go through background checks when they are admitted to the United States.
Native-born Americans have a higher crime rate than Illegal immigrants because we deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes. As a result, there are fewer repeat offenders among illegal immigrants.
Unfortunately, we cannot deport native-born American criminals to a distant continent, as the British Isles once deported its criminal to Australia. But we can prevent foreign criminals from entering the country, and we can deport those we catch committing crimes in in the United States.
1
@William Case According to all of the data I've seen, your facts aren't accurate.
1
@William Case desperately poor illegal immigrants come here for jobs. If we really cared about ending illegal immigration, we would target the employers. If it became more expensive to hire illegal immigrants than not to, the entire incentive to come here would be gone.
It isn’t open border liberals who block this, it is greedy corporations.
1
@Thomas Nelson
We should make E-Verify mandatory nationwide and aggressively prosecute employers who hire undocumented workers.
We should empower states and local jurisdictions to enforce immigration laws and make it unlawful for illegal immigrants to reside within their jurisdictions
We should reinterpret or amend the Citizenship Clause to grant birthright citizenship only to barbers born to U.S. citizens.
Until we do these things, we need to stop illegal border crossers.
Gail, you have used your very fine wit in this column to brilliantly skewer those politicians who would have guns everywhere (oops, except in the halls of gov’t where they work, of course). Thank you, this was thoroughly enjoyable and made me angry too, at our lack of progress. I do agree Congress should keep trying to put bills forward. That’s what Democrats forgot to do, or didn’t think was worthwhile doing. At some point, enough people will think those bills are a good idea and will vote out those who keep them from becoming law. At least people will know Democrats are trying, and who is stopping humane progress.
20
Gail can be amusing, but not particularly convincing in her arguments. A few facts she ignores:
Suicides account for about two-thirds of all gun deaths but the US suicide rate is about average for developed countries - in the middle of European countries but well below several East Asian countries. If guns cause suicide, why does Japan, with virtually no guns, have a higher suicide rate than the US? Seems like cultural factors are more important than guns.
A large proportion of gun deaths are black-on-black gang violence and most of the guns were illegally procured. If we really want to reduce gun homicides, we would work harder to get illegal guns off the streets and aggressively prosecute illegal gun owners. But rarely is anyone prosecuted for illegally owning a gun, and activities to get illegal guns off the street - stop and frisk - are considered racist.
And many more kids die from accidental drownings than are killed by guns, but we don't talk about banning swimming pools. Of course the folks who don't safely store guns are the same ones who don't use seatbelts and engage in other illegal or risky behaviors. If they don't follow current laws, new ones won't change that.
4
@J. Waddell
An important point, "illegal possession" MUST become a very serious offense with NO wiggle room!!! Illegal transport, meaning NO loaded weapons in vehicles being another with additional requirement of gun and ammunition stored separately in transport requirement. The penalties for gun laws MUST be stiff with little or no wiggle room to be effective.
3
@J. Waddell Suicides account for 2/3 of all gun deaths and 79% of all suicides are white men. Isn't that the audience targeted by gun manufacturers? If so then the gun lobby is targeting white men who want to commit suicide. This has got to stop or we'll run out of white men!
4
@ J Waddell
"And many more kids die from accidental drownings than are killed by guns, but we don't talk about banning swimming pools".
That is the very same hogwash as saying more people die in car accidents than are killed by guns, but we don't talk about banning cars.
3
The root cause for most of the gun violence is criminals, they do far more killing than anybody else.
1
@vulcanalex Not really 2/3 of all gun deaths are suicides. 79% of all suicides are white men. So the greatest offenders are white men whose only victims are themselves.
2
Perhaps the only way to get Congress to create sane regulation, and counter the idiocies of a Matt Gaetz, would be this:
Allow visitors to the Capital and White House to carry guns. Concealed weapons, as allowed in the rabidly pro NRA states,, would be welcomed.
There would be no limits on the type ( Bring along those beloved AR-15's, old Mossberg shotguns and Rugers...) And, in view of their beliefs, Congressmen and women would
have the option of arming themselves, as security guards will be reassigned to the Smithsonian, to protect national treasures.
Those who support rational gun control will be provided a special section with bulletproof panels, from which to observe the mayhem.
81
That’s right. If schools and campuses and theaters and nightclubs are “soft targets” and “gun-free zones”, if the mayhem is due to too few teachers able to defend themselves, why is the Capitol one? Surely we want our legislators to be safe!
4
With the DSM-5 listing nearly 300 mental health diagnoses, we continue to stigmatize those who will never cause harm. Also, most domestic abusers don’t have a diagnosis; if you can charm the community (but control and intimidate your intimate partner) you’re not diagnosable.
What America has is a crisis that starts in the home. As the only UN member nation that has not signed the children’s bill of rights because the right to assault our kids with corporal punishment shall not be infringed upon, we will continue to lead in gun deaths.
It’s not a conversation we’re ready to have, but perhaps one day we will ban violence in the home, as countries committed to children’s rights have done. We have generations of adults with chips on their shoulders, prone to hurt others as they have been hurt.
We can do better but not by restigmatizing nonviolent people.
10
This issue is the marker of our times. We are killers on a rampage, and one party supports the deaths of their fellow citizens, no questions asked, and another does not. The non-vote by the Republican Party after Sandy Hook was the most illuminating of all. There is one political party that simply does not care, and looked the other way when seeing the blood soaked bodies and unrecognizable, fleshy, mush of five and six year old deaths. These men and women saw their political lives needing more saving than young children. It still leaves me aghast and de-moralized. In their vision of a great nation, children do not count. Witness the separation of children from their parents at the border. Children's deaths and children's devastating heartaches are commodities to be traded. The Republican Party prefers people with guns and ammunition to kill indiscriminately at anytime, happily, gleefully, and intentionally, every hour of the day. It's the festival of violence that keeps them in power.
52
Isn’t it enough that our leaders offer their “thoughts and prayers” every time we have a mass shooting. When I hear about shootings my immediate response is “ oh well, another responsible gun owner gone bad.” I have to trivialize it to keep my sanity.
Things will not change until the passion rises on the gun control side. Demanding that citizens should not be able to open carry is a start. Why should the person next to me be able to carry a gun? Why do I have to put my trust in that he/she are a
“Responsible gun owner.” This is one piece of the puzzle.
Anyone caught with illegal guns should have the book thrown at them, years of hard labor and penalties.
I joke with some of my Conservative friends that “I am your worst nightmare, a liberal with a gun permit.”
I would gladly give up that permit to have a safer society.
20
The majority of people in this country want stricter gun control laws similar to other first world countries. The majority of people in this country want prescription drug prices similar to other first world countries. Can you guess why we don't have either?
64
@mjs
Because we no longer live in a first world country. That's right; the United States is no longer a first world country. because a first world country protects its' citizens.
5
I was at a veterinary teaching hospital last night facing the heart wrenching task of putting down our beloved Border Collie, Haven. While waiting to see the emergency vet a kind of unkempt young man with scruffy clothes came into the waiting area with a duffle bag, a back pack but no pet. He was looking around like he was kind of lost. My first thought was "Is his pet nestled in the back pack?" My second thought was "Does he have a gun?" My second thought should have been "Is he a new student?" but in this gun happy world we occupy at our forethought is "Is this person carrying a loaded gun?" How safe and free are we when we always worry that some crazy might start shooting at us? That a simple traffic incident might now turn into a blood bath? That the child we put on the school bus might never come home? Or the loved one who goes to a movie, a concert, a mall.
I heard the disgusting speech this elected representative gave. I heard the response from the anguished father who has suffered unimaginable loss; the loss of a child through gun violence. I saw the heartless threat of removal if he continued to speak. What kind of country does this to its people? Threatens our constitutionally guaranteed right of redress? I don't even recognize this country anymore. And I will never begin to understand those who still support trump and the republican party. What is wrong with their souls? Their moral compass? Their compassion and empathy? How did our country fall so far?
213
@sharon
One of the reasons that our country has fallen so far is that the Republican Party deliberately used racism and fear of nonwhites as a tactic to get elected. It has worked, so they keep doing it. Another reason is the conservative and right-wing media that stokes fear of personal attacks, thus the need for guns, and creates stories to generate resentment that liberals are giving away their tax dollars to help undeserving people who don’t pay taxes because they’re too lazy to work. Hate radio hosts are very guilty of hepling to create the anger and hatred we see today, along with a partisan divide that is now approaching a chasm too deep to cross.
41
@sharon
Sharon, if you can stand it, watch those people's main source of news about the country, Fox, and it won't take long for you to understand the answer to your questions. Bottom line, they are not being told what is really happening, so they live in either blissful ignorance or in misguided outrage, depending on their favorite commentators on Fox.
10
@Bill P.
Sorry, Bill, I just don't have the stomach for it.
4
Personally I tune out when people use statistics to paint a fuzzy picture. You lost me a third of the way in when you presented "died in gun violence" statistics and included suicides to create a sense of fear in your audience. There were approximately 15,500 gun murders in 2017. Just because you can't see the difference between a suicide and murder, it doesn't mean you should use statistics in a manipulative way, knowing many, many people make a clear distinction between these types of "violence". Maybe I'll try your next column.
5
@Edward 40,000 gun deaths be they suicide , murder or accidental are still 40,000 deaths from firearms. You wish to nit pick , which is a common ploy used by those who believe that no gun control should ever be passed or even considered. Suicide by gun is a common issue, so easy to just pull the trigger, no time to really think out what a person is about to do, and is a major concern as well as the other 15,500 gun deaths you mention.
14
@Edward
Oh..gosh I'm so relieved that is was ONLY 15,500 gun deaths. I was worried there for a sec....
12
@Edward As I am not a citizen of the USA I am not aware of the logic for your position. Are you saying that suicides don't count? That suicides aren't violent? That suicides would not decrease with the implementation of background checks?
10
Insanity. I enjoy shooting sports and have no trouble with a universal background check. Our state has been famous for gun shows, and I did buy a handgun that way.
The dealer did a state and Federal check. Cost him TWO DOLLARS (I paid the fee) and I was cleared in 5 minutes. Took me longer to fill out the paperwork.
The GOP’s NRA-bought legislators are liars. Guns are too cheap and too easy to exchange. Private sellers all need to do checks or face the full penalties of the law if a buyer uses the weapon for a crime.
In 2021, look out, GOP and NRA. We will get this done.
83
When gun issues come up, it seems many legislators just push the off button. They seem to be immune to the pain of others that has been endured.
Whether it be March for Our Lives, letters from constituents, pleas in the media, national news coverage, they just go “click”and move on.
If Steve Scalise has not been moved, there is very little hope. It’s as if his crutch says “Don’t bother me.”
9
@MIMA Their (politicians) reaction must reflect what their voters are saying - no? Isn't that how it works? What you are saying is that whole counties of USA citizens do not care about gun control. Perhaps the NRA has influenced those voters but it is down to them nonetheless.
2
We are all overwhelmed. People are depressed and stymied by health problems, raising costs of basic necessities, in your face catastrophes and of course the ways in which our government do not serve the country. The wall has become a flashing light, a logo of a lex luther smirking at the chaos.
11
Last July, Mr. Lee Chatfield, member of the Michigan House of Representatives, and now Speaker of the House, was discovered by TSA personnel to have a loaded handgun in his carry-on bag at the Pellston, Michigan airport.
Truly, he leads by example.
In fairness, at least he took full responsibility and promised it would never happen again.
4
Israel has tough gun laws for a country that's on the brink of war 24/7. If you want a gun to protect yourself you need to apply at your local police department. In Switzerland which has a hight gun per person ratio, you can have gun as long as you pass lengthy tests and there is no gun violence like we have here. The list goes on and on about people can have guns as long as they pass tests and have insurance. In the US forget about it we wouldn't want to hurt the sensitive souls of gun owners. Maybe we need to treat guns like cigarettes and shame people into stop using them.
13
@Realist You live in NY, with maximum gun control AND maximum gun violence. Yet, its the rest of the country that has a problem. Right?
Mitch McConnell will not do anything that might loosen his grip on power. His ability to block any legislation from his opponents is the fig-leaf that covers his deep insecurity - because, over the course of his political career, he has accomplished absolutely nothing.
20
The Republicans all got up and walked out of the hearing on gun violence after about 15 minutes.
I guess they all left in search of something more entertaining.
Or more profitable.
And have you noticed how many of the people committing the shootings in America could pretty much be described as a Trump supporter? Up until they pull the trigger that is.
Then they all turn into Democrats. Or immigrants.
Whichever one Fox News finds scarier is the one they go with.
I say we go with B) Bullets.
The bullets are the real problem.
With no bullets for the guns, they'd be a lot safer around kids.
Suicides would be less successful.
Multiple murders would drop. Using the gun to beat someone to death is much slower and much harder work.
Our Emergency rooms will be less crowded. It'll be easier to get seen for the Flu.
With no bullets that forgotten gun in the carry on bag is okay.
If we see someone waving a gun around in public, we'll know they're just ranting and we don't have to duck and cover.
People could proudly display their guns and carry them everywhere. No leaving them in the car or under the pillow.
Background checks? No need for them anymore. Maybe a credit check if it's one of those really big expensive guns.
Yup. It's the bullets.
Guns don't kill people, bullets do.
16
@D. DeMarco totally agree. Start by outlawing AR style amo.
@D. DeMarco Then you also have to ban the manufacture of casings, chemicals to create gunpowder, lead/brass to clad the bullet, machines to load the cartridge etc. Just Google "how to make bullets".
As long as voters nod their heads and say, "He's right" when politicians like Matt Gaetz make absurd remarks about the cause of gun violence being immigrants, there's little hope of either reducing the carnage or coming up with rational immigration policies.
13
The Wall is a four letter word employed to keep Trump’s attention from wavering. His rhetoric makes no sense and is based on his fantasies. The immigrants are wimen and children not gun toting gangsters who have the money and means to arrive by air. The drug crisis is fueled by prescription opioids - something business upporting Congressmen fail to address. It’s supply and demand. The demand is on this side of the border. Covering the exhisting wall in border cities with razor wire is ridiculous and dangerous to US residents. Illegal crossings occur in the remote Southwest not in border cities. The mentality of our elected officials is questionable-but at least immigration issues are allowing much needed gun laws to be passed.
3
The author also fails to bring any light to the situation. 24,000 of the 40,000 gun deaths were suicides. Homicides didn’t increase in 2017, suicides by gun did. Homicides are still near the lowest levels in our nations history. Much of what America needs is better mental healthcare.
3
@John this is becoming pretty common form the pro gun side. I think most of America understands that gun suicide is a large part of the gun deaths, and that this also would diminish if decent gun control were implemented.
10
@John and fewer mass shootings, which are done with guns
1
@John
Do you think it's a good idea to allow people who are depressed enough to kill themselves in a bad moment to have easy access to guns?
I think it's crazy.
1
Talk of gun control should extend to the military and police force. Two of the most violent and criminal enterprises of this country.
7
Maybe it's time that Americans hear the name of every single person killed by a gun in the U.S. by a born in the U.S. citizen. On the national mall in D.C. Spoken by the loved ones of the deceased. This would involve thousands of people and take far longer to say and to listen to than the list of those who died at the hands of an illegal immigrants. Would a super majority of Americans be moved by this demonstration of ratio?
9
What is not spoken of in this article is the illegal sale of firearms. Handguns bought in Virgina, Indiana
1
Overturn the second amendment
11
While everyone wants to talk about their "rights" to own and carry guns, there is virtually no discussion about responsibility. The failure of such a large number of gun owners to be responsible citizens is evidence that the 2nd amendment to the Constitution is a failed social experiment and needs to be repealed. So many, if not all, of the problems we face are of our own making, simply because we as a society are oblivious to the possibility of unintended consequences. Thus we have uncontrolled gun violence, nuclear waste products that cannot be disposed of, a planet choked by chemical, carbon, and plastic waste, and an atmosphere with 170 million pieces of floating space debris. All of this in the name of freedom and progress. We should be ashamed of ourselves!
25
@Michael
We don't need to repeal the 2nd amend
Agree with your piece but you only print half the story.
The right blames our cultural gun sickness on immigrants and the inner city. If we could only get rid of immigrants and the inner city our gun death problem will be solved. They are literally dead wrong.
The left says if we could only regulate guns to the point of near banning or even bans the problem will be solved. They are dead wrong too. They say nothing about the NRA's entertainment wing, Hollywood that feeds app. half our gun deaths in the inner city.
Only when a program of legality, regulation, responsibility, and non promotion that we so successfully did with drunk driving and cig. smoking is employed the cure will be illusive.
6
The GOP and NRA would like no restrictions on gun sales. While I am not completely informed, I believe that the proper "papers" needed to buy a gun are minimal. Proof of age? Maybe residency in a particular state?
Why don't we apply these same documentation requirements for buying guns to voting? Wouldn't the GOP like to see their preferences for identification expanded? Imagine all the people who would be eligible to vote!
No, I didn't think that would sway the GOP. Democracy apparently is for gun owners but not so much for voters.
Our entire country needs to push back hard on the NRA. Most citizens want sane, consistent and safe gun laws.
The immigrants are the latest "excuse" for gun ownership. With no Democrat in the Oval Office to use as the "excuse", the NRA and GOP need another threat to boost gun sales.
17
Major responsibility also belongs at the trigger finger of millions of NRA members, especially those who actively solicit Congress to vote down positive changes...who fail to strongly convey to NRA leaders their disagreement with NRA political bias...who know the NRA is about more than the 2nd Amendment and hunting. While "freedom" might be the ringing bell of many gun-owning Americans, it's the death knell for thousands of other citizens at the other end of the barrel.
15
Not to sound like a Sherlock but the Second Amendment is obviously a major contributor to the gun problem. That amendment has always been misinterpreted in my humble opinion. The amendment probably made perfect sense when it was written several hundred years ago and the form of national defense consisted of citizen soldiers who brought their own weapons into service. That form of national defense went by the boards many years ago with the advent of standing armies and the Second Amendment should have gone with it. A plain reading of that amendment confirms its original, outdated intent.
44
@Clark Landrum "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Try this interpretation........Since, as a group of individuals requiring enforcement of certain laws to keep our society civil and safe, we authorize a militia(ie...police, guards, military,etc) to carry weapons, we understand that the militia may turn its powerful weapons on the People themselves(in present day, observe what is happening in Venezuela, Central America, China, etc.)......therefore, we will allow the PEOPLE to ALSO carry weapons to protect themselves from that Militia.
1
@Wherever Hugo your preferred interpretation is novel but wrong. It is clearly wrong to anyone who has read the writings of the Constitution’s framers and is aware of the English Bill of Rights of 1689 on which so much of the supposedly original US Bill of Rights is based. The well regulated militia was the body of citizenry, self armed if necessary, intended to prevent a FEDERAL (national) army from turning its guns on the populace. The idea was patently NOT to keep the state militias in check, it was to keep a Federal force in check, the analogue being the King’s army which had sadly failed to put down the 1775 rebellion. Nice try, but willful misinterpretation of the sort Clark Landrum mentions IS the reason the Second Ammendment is a vicious problem.
3
@Wherever Hugo I prefer to vote to defend myself against the MILITIA, seems to have worked pretty good for now.
1
@RY
"many thousands of people are murdered every year in the United States despite the best efforts of the police and legal system"
This statement fails to recognize that the legal sytem is in fact the laws on the books about guns, which are the only laws police, FBI, ATF, etc can enforce. That is preceisely why any person with a conscience, why people not enamored with some 1o year old's idea of manhood, people without some polluted notion of what it means to be a real American, people with enough intellectual horsepower to make the audacious leap that 2+2=4, are in favor of gun control. I'm in favor of this: Make automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and any acccessories that convert guns to semiutomatic, illegal to purchase under any circumstances. Use and any all records available to track down any already legally purchased guns of the same ilk and register them, and require a semi-annual check in with law enforcment to demonstrate you are still the owner of the registered killing machine, or machines as it seems more than one genuine red-bloooded gun lover requires and aresenal to really feel like a big deal. All handguns and hunting rifles registered as well. And obviously any purchases of what remain as legal-to-own guns regulated and background-checked.
How does that prevent you, as a presumably legal gun owner, from keeping your protection?
12
Let me begin by saying that I am a gun owner, and have been for a long time. The reasons are complex, and no ones business. That said, I am entirely in favor of background checks and other measures to regulate firearms. I do not think that it is a panacea; to a large extent with more firearms than people in this country, the genie is out of the bottle. Regulating ammunition sales, in the long run, will be more effective; guns last forever, ammunition doesn't. Working to correct many other defects of American society, not least addressing income inequality, will help more. But - and I live in a state with a lot of regulations - the minor inconvenience is entirely worth it if it saves even one life, and it will save more. The rabid, vocal unfettered-2A supporters need to decide whether they wish to live in a civil society, or on a frontier by themselves. If the latter, they need to go do just that.
53
The quickest and most effective way to get real gun law reform and sensible , effective results to bring down the gun mortality rate and the even larger gun wound rate is simple: just show the truth.
By that I mean show those actually shot dead and those actually wounded on the news , in the newspapers and across all media.
Show Americans the truth and the reality of Gun Violence...show them the victims both living and dead and let them see the horrible wounds and damage many of these guns can do to a person and the consequences of letting the NRA hold sway over politicians who block clear, obvious , sensible legislation that can only bring the death toll down and the numbers of wounded (usually in a terrible, pain ridden way for life) to a number far lower than is had now.
Show everybody the real , grisly consequences of what doing so little is causing so much of and what it looks like and what it leaves in it's wake.
It's a hard Truth that all must see to make the changes that must be made...happen.
29
@Loomy: Unfortunately (and I write this as someone who has given up providing “the truth” on our local - in Maine - newspaper’s comment boards in response to articles that propose more gun safety regulations) the talking points of the NRA are hard-coded into the consciousness of many people, who simply play them back by rote. The total annual gun deaths? Vastly overstated, since they include suicides and gang violence (huh? A gun death is a gun death; are gang members any less human? The presence of a firearm exponentially increases the chances the chances that a suicide attempt will “succeed”). “What about Chicago, with its strict gun laws and huge number of gun deaths? Laws don’t work!” (Illinois is surrounded by states with lax gun laws - the Chicago city limits border Gary, Indiana ... ) “The Constitution says ... “ (the individual right to own firearms is a relatively new interpretation). “It’s a mental health problem, not a gun problem!” (We need better mental-health care, and we need to keep guns out of the hands of people with mental-health issues. It’s not either/or.) But the discussion goes nowhere; it’s exhausting and pointless. The worship of firearms in this country by some gun owners has a tone of near-religious zealotry that “the truth” won’t cure. It’s sickening.
4
@Loomy
In a utopian world that might work. The people who commit mass killings might be inspired by those gruesome pictures since they seem to have a black hole where empathy should reside.
While Gail writes this with a breezy style, I found myself crying with frustration after I read it. Thank you for your words, Gail.
55
The real problem with firearms is that so many fetishize their weapons and think that everyone carrying will solve all our crime problems. That carrying these firearms has the power to stop evil. Nope. More guns = more gun deaths. .
Ensuring responsible ownership, where people are heavily vetted is our most important first step in solving this crisis.
31
It’s rather disingenuous that of the shootings you mentioned, none would have been prevented by background checks. But we all remember this week’s shooting by an illegal in AOC’s district. I wonder if she bothered to visit the victim’s family.
4
@Jackson, I'm convinced that in MN the Parkland shooter would not have gotten a semi-automatic rifle. Here it requires a Permit to Purchase (for handguns as well) which is signed off on by the local police chief or sheriff. His known behavior problems would be enough to deny.
28
@Jackson
Yet it is ok for Matt Gaetz to turn away from the gun violence committed by “legal” in his state?
11
@Jackson
As a matter of fact, the details surrounding the purchase of the gun involved in the bank shooting in Florida have not been released, so it's disingenuous of you to suggest a background check would not have prevented that shooting. As an aside, have you asked Matt Gaetz if he visited all of the victim's families in Florida?
2
60% of gun deaths are suicides. That’s 24,000 of the 40,000. Approximately 2,000 were from accidental shootings. Between 2016 and 2017 homicides by guns did not increase. Gun homicides increased.
4
@John And? Do you genuinely think that every one of those suicides would have taken place if they hadn't had such easy access to firearms?
There have been times in my life where I thought about suicide. I'm lucky enough to have a loving and supportive family, but even with that I believe that the main thing that stopped me was fear of the consequences of a failed attempt. I've had to think about it a lot, whereas if I'd had a firearm in my bedside table, I could have just pulled it out and shot myself without any serious thought at all.
Sure, there are some people who, even without a gun, would still take their own lives. But I also believe that there are many, like me, who WOULDN'T make that decision if it wasn't so easy to do. Don't we owe it to those people to do everything we can to help them?
16
Other commentators to this column also downplay or dismiss suicide by gun as somehow not valid in the count of deaths associated with guns. To the loved ones of those victims of impulsive or accidental death by gun, the deaths matter greatly. The reason data about guns and suicide is missing from rational deliberations about gun policy is because it is inconveniently clear. Studies show that states with high rates of gun ownership have higher rates of suicide than in states with lower rates of gun ownership (see link below). Access to guns is a risk for their unintentional, accidental or impulsive use resulting in death or devastating injury.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/
7
@John
Oh, John. That a high percentage are suicide or accidental ( is a toddler shooting a playmate accidental?) kind of eases your conscience, huh? The fact of the matter is: you don't want to have any responsibility for what happens with guns owned by Americans. You want to blame gun deaths on those who commit the lowest percentage of them. How about this, John: a bill is passed that if YOUR gun is used in the commission of a murder(s), a suicide, or an accident because you did not store it properly and left it loaded, YOU be held accountable as if you had pulled the trigger? You are willing to leave the liquor cabinet open, the keys to your car on the counter and when your kid gets drunk and kills people driving your car, you want to walk away saying it was all a terrible mistake. The problem with many gun owners is they are irresponsible. They should not have guns. And you don't want to hold them accountable. You are afraid they will come after your guns. We don't try to take away everyone's cars because of drunk driving. Just the keys from those who should not have them. You want to be able to leave those keys on the counter and the liquor cabinet wide open.
5
Sorry, Gail, but Gaetz and his ilk are too easy a target for your satire. The saying about shooting fish in a barrel comes to mind (sorry about the reference to shooting, in this context, and why anyone would want to shoot fish, in a barrel or otherwise, is beyond me).
Please apply your great gift to more worthy targets, of which there is nowadays certainly no shortage.
I also think that in this never-ending news and twitter cycle of new horrors almost daily, it's too easy to forget about previous ones. The story over the last few days that I find particularly abhorrent is the fact that the Trump administration has apparently "mislaid" thousands of children, whom it admits it has failed to track and is unable to find to reunite them with their families. This is a true atrocity, which normally would be have been discussed for days. But since then we've moved on to the SOTU speech, Whitaker, Gaetz et al.
What Trump does best of all -- what he's truly successful at -- is keeping the spotlight on himself, and maintaining media "ratings". That's all that matters to him, and we all play along.
22
I don't blame the NRA. I blame ordinary citizens who don't know the difference between right and wrong as well as paranoia and clear thinking. I retired to Florida from PA 7 years ago. PA is conservative about gun control. Florida is not.
PA's population is mostly rural save for Philly and Pittsburgh. There is a great divide between the views of the cities and the country side. Hunting is a large industry in PA. However invading schools, homes and doing drive by shootings was not. At least not until it was glorified in the movies, on TV and the nightly news. Vietnam lent itself to the portrayal of the crazed, sick and lonely Vietnam veteran who became a vengeful criminal, drug selling addict that Hollywood glorified. Then our inner cities changed as joblessness, hopelessness and despair arrived. Guns were shown as the cure for the wrongs. We created two gun cultures. One of fear and crime and another of strength and resolve. We allowed, first in fantasy and then in real life, widespread use of guns to solve problems.
We created a culture divide too. Cities were crime centers and rural areas mostly were crime fee until the drug epidemic entered suburbia. Liberals blamed guns but those elites and professionals were drug and alcohol abusers too. Conservatives blamed liberals for not defending the rights of the people to defend themselves but failed to see their own radical views and paranoia.
Now I live in Florida. What drives gun violence here is fear. It's not the guns.
15
@Jay, you make several statements that careful data collection and analysis has long ago proven wrong. From what I have read, rural crime might be low in terms of incidents per square mile, but it is actually quite high in terms of crime per capita. It has also been shown through rigorous historical research that crime is by no means a new phenomenon. In fact, the FBI reports that violent crime is way down from a few decades ago.
Also, the incidence of drug addiction and other problems of drug dependency is quite high in rural areas and in small towns.
7
@Jay
What was the Parkland shooter afraid of?
10
@Jay Don't forget the cinematic and TV tradition of the Western, in which the solution to the little town's ills is for the good guy to kill the bad guy. End of problem. Never any consequences.
2
McConnell ought to be removed for dereliction of duty. Bills should come for a vote. He has a majority, which can vote down any bill the NRA doesn't approve. What is he afraid of? That too many of his GOP folks will be on the record voting against a bill many Americans favor? That they will look bad when the next mass shooting happens (and we all know it will happen)? Remember Merrick Garland? Has Mitch McConnell not been obstructing our government long enough?
309
@Anne-Marie Hislop Follow the money. One may come to believe that all of these politicians, including the gentleman from Kentucky, are for sale.
23
In December of 2012, Adam Lanza, a deranged American born citizen, entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and brutally murdered over 20 students and faculty. There were warning signs that could have prevented this. Lanza was not an illegal immigrant. Lanza had a history of violent behavior. We used to put people like Lanza in hospitals where they were safe from themselves and others. Ironically, Newtown used to have such a facility located within a few short miles from where Lanza lived and the killing took place. Laws protecting the mentally ill are overkill.
28
The day gun that legislation failed after this shooting, to me, was a day I felt absolute shame for our country, government and people.
Sadly, many of my fellow citizens were not ashamed.
If toddlers being killed was not enough for these people to see through the NRA, what is?
8
@bnc Most people who commit violent acts are not mentally ill according to research. We like to think you have to be crazy to murder or maim so we don’t have to face that all humans are capable of evil, not just THEM,
Trump says the rich have walls to protect them from criminals, and now the rest of us deserve the protection of a wall, too.
If he and the Republicans think that’s good logic, I wish they would follow that line of thinking when they look at guns.
If Congress and the Court and the White House can restrict the carrying of guns at their doors, then we can certainly restrict the carrying of guns in the neighborhoods where the rest of us live. Right?
85
@WestHartfordguy I live in a city that prohibits carrying either a loaded gun or unconcealed gun anywhere within city limits except for one's private home. A county issued permit is required and a permit is only issued if the applicant meets certain criteria. Firing any loaded gun within city limits is against the law.
Does that mean anyone entering my city drops his or her gun at city limits? No though I wish it were so.
Statewide prohibitions would be more effective and federal prohibitions would be even more effective.
We can fix this but it means hiring the right people to represent our interests in the state and federal capitals.
4
The power of the NRA comes from precision membership management and timely payments to lawmakers. The problem for those who oppose the gun lobby is an unwillingness to be as vigilant and dogged. All the picket lines in the world won't stop them. There has to be a real, coherent, and conscientious push or it's all rhetoric.
33
Using research gathered from 1987 to 1992, the CDC's analysis indicated that guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.
In 1996, after pressure from the NRA, Congress passed the Dickey Amendment which states “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
Therefore: all this discussion is moot until Congress revokes the Dickey amendment, revisits the research already done by the CDC, and reinstates funding for ongoing gun violence research.
96
@Sunny:
There are many other government and private entities that may engage in any amount of gun studies they want. Why is there this belief that if CDC is prohibited from doing gun research, that research cannot be done?
And the CDC is not prohibited from doing gun research. What is prohibited, as your quote said, is that the research may not be used to promote or advocate gun control.
Would you want your tax dollars used to promote gun rights through research?
1
The CDC exists to help prevent its citizenry’s untimely demise. Evidently easy access to guns is a problem. The gun lobby wants that info stifled. No one seriously thinks tax dollars could scientifically show that gun rights could be somehow ‘promoted ‘ i.e. with good evidence.
8
@Steve Brown So what you're saying is the can do the research, they just can't tell anyone the results if those results don't indicate what Conservatives want. You people are hilarious.
If the CDC did a study, using my tax dollars, and the study legitimately proved that having a gun in your home makes you safer, I would be fine with that, because I am in favor of using the scientific method to research things. It is only conservatives who try to suppress scientific information that doesn't conform to their pre-determined world-view.
8
I recently set up a Health Savings Account which required multiple levels of security including a waiting period because some documents had to be processed through the mail. It took nearly two weeks and several hours to set this account up.
I hunt with my dogs and I can get a gun in less than an hour.
The priorities of my country are completely bizarre.
300
It’s true. It takes longer for a bank to clear your deposits sometimes (overnight) especially if it’s over $5000 than for someone to have an assault rifle in their hands.
Mind boggling - the GOP cares more about check fraud than kids being shot in school.
16
@M Are you proposing that BANKS controll guns??? Good grief.
@M "... the GOP cares more about check fraud than kids being shot in school."
Yes, they do.
8
It is truly amazing that people like Matt Gartz are ever considered to be elected representatives let alone actually being elected to serve. His sole purpose is to control the narrative or he'd never be directing the conversation to a border wall that the majority of Americans don't support in a public forum on gun control. That the Florida shootings were all done by native born Americans escapes him demonstrates his agenda is one of deception making him a willing participant in allowing future violence as well as his unfitness to serve as a representative for anyone other than his masters at the NRA and within the Republican party. Deny, distract and delay is his purpose much like the Trump Administration. He only represents a small portion of what is now a cult of personality and doesn't have the greater good in mind. This seems to be the problem with the Republican party across the entire nation. Crazy statements and positions are now the hallmark of a once respected political party that has evolved into a group of crazy town lawmakers completely disconnected from reality. And people keep electing them. Mind boggling.
184
@Robert Westwind
yeah bc they bring him duffle bags full of cash, they're all crooked scam artists
I tend to agree with states that regulate strong gun regulations as reported in the Reuters article that the United States Appeals Court upheld, writing about citizens rights to "open carry a gun" in public spaces. I think Ross Douthat's brief coverage of gun regulations in France is reflective from not only a historical perspective but from a contemporary perspective with the spike of the far right wing in Europe, similar with that in the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/opinion/guns.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
5
True Americana is about guns, guts and glory so let this wave of US exceptionalism continue to sweep the country let alone the world!
10
@Frank Skinner.
"Americana" is a term used for describing antiques and artwork. If you mean "true America", well, I think you'd need to take a broader look at the culture(s) of all 50 states and the territories to get a sense of what Americans are like, in context. And even then one only obtains a momentary sense, a slice of time. America is moving too fast, and forward, to be caught up in three words of jingoism.
1
@Frank Skinners what price?
@Frank Skinner What the....?
I wish the firearm lobby had the decency to admit that they consider the number of gun deaths as acceptable loss for the privilege of gun ownership. There is always an unstated calculus of lives-- and deaths-- in how societies are run and instead of indulging in sophistry they might as well admit they simply value the entertainment they derive from having needless semi automatic firearms more than they value lives of the next set of innocent people who are going to be massacred, with a depressing certainty, by some deranged individual with access to such firearms.
At least then one can have an honest conversation instead of the blather about immigrants and similar nonsense.
And Americans wonder why the rest of the world sometimes thinks U.S has gone mad? One 9/11 and the U.S throws away a trillion dollars and destroys half of the middle east for a generation affecting millions of lives with cascading effects that the world will feel for another thirty years and yet they accept 9/11 level losses of human lives every year from pointless gun deaths that they can stop with just some political will and at no real financial cost.
128
It's 9/11 level deaths every MONTH from gun violence, including suicide and accidents.
8
@A. Roy Actually the annual number of gun deaths in the USA is 10 times tat of the 9/11 attacks and that is in a good year. The greatest terrorist threat to the average American is from the cult known as the NRA.
5
Maybe they should just give Trump the money to build his wall, the answer to all of our problems that will make America great again.
When his base sees that their kids are still dying from drug overdoses and that crime still exists and that their lives haven’t miraculously improved even with their dreamed of wall they’ll finally see the absurdity of this foolish idea.
Besides, think of the all of the fun we will have tearing it down when this nightmare is over.
18
@Me If he wants 5.7 billion for his wall, he should collect it from his supporters. I don't want my tax dollars spent on that boondoggle, especially not to just "prove a point" that will go right over conservatives heads anyway. Even if we deported every immigrant in the US and built a 3-mile high wall along our entire northern and southern borders, and every coastline, these people would just come up with someone else to blame for all their problems.
It's not about immigration for them, it's about racism. If all the illegal immigrants were actually deported, they would simply move their crosshairs to legal immigrants who are darker than a certain shade.
4
Corruption in Congress; follow the money. The NRA owns Congress. Bernie Sanders doesn't support gun control.
Gun control must happen to save lives. Americans with guns are most definitely not a "well regulated militia" but simply potential murderers.
58
@getGar: The NRA owns Congress? Yeppers....and according to recent reveals the NRA is in cahoots, if not outright owned, by Russia what with financial contributions and the like. WHAT a world, ain't it?
If the gun haters could put aside their hatred of all things 'gun', give up the 'ban all guns' fantasy, and actually work *with* gun owners to effect safer gun ownership, *without* compromising actual rights, then maybe we could accomplish something.
But as soon as one gun-hater says 'Just ban them all', ears slam shut, wagons circle, and we're back to square one.
Radicalism incites radicalism.
3
@Dana Charbonneau I am impressed by how solidly you lay the blame at the feet of people asking for more sensible gun control.
In reality as well as in the realm of morals that burden actually rests upon the shoulders of those who want guns, whose fantasies result in a flood of weapons in our society, but who refuse any limits (nature of weaponry, difficulty in obtaining weaponry) on their so-called rights, neglecting to acknowledge that their rights now cleraly overstep on the rights of others to live in peace and free of fear.
109
@Dana Charbonneau I have lived all over the country and not once have I heard anyone say 'just ban them all." People often hear what they want to hear.
52
So what sort of gun-safety measures would you approve, as part of a bipartisan approach? Closing the gun-show loophole? Declaring semi-automatic rifles to be NFA weapons (again)? Forcing parent-to-child gifts to go through licensing? Forcing all weapons transfers, including gifts and sales on the Web, to go through licensed dealers? Rigorous training for new gun owners? The world wants to know!
32
People need to start suing the NRA for their role in the deaths and injuries in this country due to unfettered access to guns. People need to start suing the gun manufacturers for their role in supporting the NRA to hawk their wares for them. People need to start suing the video game manufacturers who glorify killing. Most of all people need to start suing the Republicans who stand in the way of effective and sensible gun legislation like other decent countries have.
The Republicans are aiding and abetting murderers with their callous kowtowing to the NRA. They are merchants of death, just as the NRA, the gun manufacturers, and the video game makers whose violent videos celebrate killings are.
How many of us thought that the mass shootings at Sandy Hook, Aurora, Las Vegas, Orlando, Virginia Tech, Parkland, the list goes on and on and on, would bring about sensible gun legislation, only to be disappointed time and time again? How many of us are becoming numb to all the slaughter? The Republicans are more concerned with their ratings by the NRA than they are about any citizen in this country. Is there nothing that can be done to keep Mitch McConnell from blocking bills that call for even the smallest token to making this country somewhat safer from the thousands and thousands of guns out there?
Republicans are repeating ad nauseam that the panacea to stopping gun deaths is by building Trump's ignominious monument to himself to keep out immigrants. I am disgusted!
57
@Diana Conveniently, the US Congress has passed laws making it impossible to sue a gun manufacturer for damage done by their product, or to even mention such things in the Halls of Congress.
7
@Diana
Hmm, the people you refer to are probably already dues paying members of the nra.
1
CNN recently reported on a study that found increasing rates of children dying due to firearms, in part because of the shift from owning long guns to owning handguns that are stored loaded, in easily accessible places. Add to that increasing numbers of gun thefts - from homes, vehicles, and poorly-secured stores, and you've got the recipe for an ever increasing rate of death.
We are shockingly comfortable with dead children, mass shootings, and dead police officers. We'd rather watch people die than store guns safely, so they can't be stolen, fired accidentally, or quickly grabbed by someone in mental distress.
We have decided to mix lots of guns with lots of stupid. The mixture kills 40,000 a year and injures another 100,000. And millions of Americans are doubling down on the stupid.
56
Which of those murders would have been prevented by the proposed universal background checks? Oh, none of them? Okay.
3
Just build The Wall and all those gun deaths would magically go away!
In fact, background checks, as weak as they are, have stopped millions from buying guns. Most of the gun-related deaths wouldn't have occurred had there been tough, common sense gun control laws, strong safety training, a ban on magazines and semi-automatic type weapons, extensive background checks (including on any transfers or sales even among family members), closing of the gun show loopholes, mandatory licensing, tougher sentencing, better mental health care, better preventative and conflict resolution learning, etc.
Pretending that nearly 40,000 gun deaths are unavoidable and that nothing works is condoning unnecessary deaths. Read some scholarly analyses of the issues and stop relying on NRA talking points or rightwing shibboleths.
19
@poppop: you have no way of knowing that. Maybe we would know if Congress hadn't passed a law forbidding the CDC from studying gun violence.
So we shouldn't have any gun laws because bad people will just disobey them. Let's also get rid of all speed limits, because so many people speed anyway. Let's get rid of laws outlawing murder, because murder clearly happens with all of those legal, unregulated guns that are our right to have. We could go on and on.
3
@poppop That's something we will never know. But we do know such laws are effective in Canada and other countries!
"We have terrible gun problems in this country not just because firearms are all over the place, but also because of the careless, stupid attitude so many people have toward them."
I thought one of the main goals of the NRA is to teach people gun safety and responsible handling of guns? It seems that has now taken a backseat to shilling for the gun manufacturers and providing bogeymen Republicans to run against.
23
Once again, let us learn that the Second Amendment was written when we had no military or police force and guns were since shot and muzzle loaded.
The Founding Fathers could to have foreseen the military force we have available today. The controlling hysteria politicians use to whip up fear to control the population assures the saner minds will never update the Second Amendment. I grew up with guns.
13
@Janice It would be interesting to see the "originalist" legal philosophy applied to the 2nd Amendment. The use of the word "arms" in that place refers to single-shot, muzzle-loading muskets inaccurate beyond 50 yards, capable of firing, at most, 3 rounds a minute. And of course there is the "militia" business,, but let us not tax the comprehension of those who need to bolster their masculine self-images with military weapons.
4
@Janice Ok further proofing, sorry.
It is "single" shot and muzzle loaded. and the Founding Fathers could "not' have foreseen...
@jprfrog Actually, the rationale for the Second Amendment is very clearly expressed in the Federalist Papers #s 29 and 46. I would suggest that many misinterpret 2A because they have not read, nor understood, the foregoing, clearly worded explanations of it by Hamilton and Madison.The primary rationale for 2A was to prevent the States being subjected to Federal governmental tyranny / standing armies, such as were then in vogue in Europe, and now are worldwide, including right here in the Land of the F(r)ee.
Once again, a distorted statement of facts by a person who really wants to ban guns incrementally: No mention that 70% of the gun fataities are suicides.
Fortunately, you will not get your way during my lifetime owing to the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. In fact, I am looking forward to the ridiculously restrictive and irrational gun ordinances in the liberal-dominated cities to fall in the next year or two. Not to mention Cuomo's ignorance-based "SAFE Act" will also wind up on the scrap heap of history.
2
@KenC Many of those suicides would not have occurred without the easy availability of guns.
3
@KenC
It’s the statistics that you cite that are distorted. It’s 70 % if suicides that the method is by firearm. 70 % of shooting deaths are not suicides. Even if that were the case, are you callously discounting those deaths as insignificant? If so, your casual disregard for human life is the precise reason people like you shouldn’t be walking around carrying guns.
2
KenC: I somehow missed your sense of dismay over the 40,000 fatalities/annually or any of your ideas on how to get the US to become as safe as almost all other countries in the world.
1
Where does NRA get its money? Where does those money go?
Do not follow the blood.
Follow the money.
It is just a business transaction. Nothing to do with Second Amendment.
27
"In 2017 the House and Senate got together and revoked an Obama-era regulation that had made it harder for mentally ill people to purchase a gun."
As horrible as Republicans are, this is incredibly outrageous and unbelievable, even for them.
27
You know, from the perspective of a Native American, the problem with guns really is a problem with immigrants.
139
@BA_Blue You know, that's perfectly accurate. Y'all had zero problems with gun violence, back in the day. Thanks for the reminder!
6
@BA_Blue: Touché! Brilliant!
10
@BA_Blue. Ha! Point well-taken!!
4
The truth about guns and their impact is blindingly obvious from the outside. How come some Americans cannot see it? I guess it is due to intensive brainwashing by the NRA, the gun industry lobby and all those on their payroll (read GOP primarily).
There is nobody more blind than the one who does not want to see.
The same thing could be said about climate change and many other things.
The problem is first in American psyches. The solution does not look easy unfortunately. The current government is constantly playing on fears and reinforcing the worst gut responses. Going by your gut instinct and THINKING are two diametrically opposed ways of approaching life problems. It seems that too many Americans have forgotten the use of their brain...
16
Gail, it's true! When guns are outlawed, only immigrants will have guns.
2
Guns are necessary for weak and frightened people. A gun in your pocket makes you powerful and invincible. Walk into a bar or restaurant with a Glock in your belt and you will be treated with respect or fear. A gun in empowering especially if it is concealed. Unless your job requires it having a a bunch of guns does not make one manly; less so, in my opinion.
In the early 1940's the kids on my block played a version of cops and robbers. We called it "guns" and all the kids, ages 9 or 10 etc, had cap pistols, water pistols, toy pistols of every description. I had 6 or 7. All the kids, a dozen or more would spread out with their "guns" and someone would yell "go" and everybody started "shooting" one another. You had to be close and you would point your gun and yell da da, da da, your dead and if your victim was older he would yell "missed, da da your dead and you would be out of the game. By the time I was 12, I no longer played with guns. It was a childish fantasy and I joined the Boy Scouts. Some never grew up. I could have qualified for a gun permit and never wanted one around the house to cause an accident. I prefer 911.
8
@Sheldon Bunin You are an example of sanity and courage. I have long thought that guns have special appeal to the fearful and mentally weak, unfortunately.
1
I have lived outside the US for five years and not even medical marijuana can make me want to move back during the Trump/gun lover era.
14
Irrational States of America
From time to time I find it necessary here in Sweden to explain to someone that lesson number one about America is that it consists of 50 states, each with its own level of irrationality. Yes, I know, one cannot assign an irrationality or racism index to a country or state but perhaps one might measure the percentage of legislators who are openly racist or openly irrational?
Clearly, the concept of rational human being does not apply to Matt Gaetz. Gail presents the irrefutable truth, hard facts. Gaetz presents irrefutable lies.
What to do?
Perhaps one answer is that provided by Donald Trump for the people who live where I lived for 40 years, western upstate New York. He stated, no jobs, move!
So if you are a parent in Florida who would like your children to go to school without facing a domestic killer, move. But to what state or country? Florida to Massachusetts perhaps. But how long before MA becomes another CT?
Once in a while a reply writer expresses envy of me, that I was able to move to Sweden, and all I can suggest is maybe he or she move to the Sweden of North America, Canada.
What this comment is really about is the elementary question: Is rationality as a mode of thought simply doomed to become an extinct species, like the Neanderthal and Denisovans? Perhaps the real answer is, we homo sapiens are next.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
13
The 2nd amendment is very brief. Every discussion of the guns issue should include repetition of its exact words, including especially: "well regulated." This column doesn't mention that specific qualification in the Constitution, just as the NRA never does.
22
@Expat Bob It’s mentioned over and over and over with the same result: the NRA and their supporters constantly leave it out of the “conversation”. Mentioning it here, again, would make no difference.
7
And in order to understand the meaning of the words: “Well regulated militia” reference must be made to the Militia Acts past shortly after the amendment was promulgated. These acts specified that all(white) males hade to buy, at their own expense, a musket, powder horn, powder, and balls. These were the arms intended by the framers of the Constitution. Where are the learned strict constructionists on this issue?
Most states have extensive training requirements to get a driving licence, why not a firearm licence?
Safe firearm use requires training. The US needs stricter licensing laws including extensive practical training and testing in real life self-defence and other legal firearm use scenarios including accident avoidance. There should also be mandatory video training showing what happens when things go wrong. I hope most gun owners don't actually want to kill someone. We need to make sure they know how to avoid that happening. Training should also include suicide prevention and help hotline information. All of this should be on top of criminal background checks.
I'm not a fan of guns myself, but I know a number of people back in the states who are responsible gun owners. I don't want to take away their rights, I just want to make sure everyone who has a gun has the training and responsible attitude that they do.
19
Why are there more gun related events in America in comparison to other democratic nations? Is it having a diverse population? Canada and Britain do without our level of violence. Availability? Almost every western country has rules guiding the purchase and ownership of guns without our murder rate. Violent movies, TV shows, video games, etc.? Aren’t these entertainment venues enjoyed elsewhere?
Mr Gaetz would seek to deflect the question of our horrific gun violence. There should be a call for better reporting surrounding gun deaths so that accurate information would give a clearer picture of this national disease. Calls have been made in the past for a scientific study of gun violence, and rejected by the Republicans.
Nothing will be accomplished. Guns are but one part of the culture war that divides our nation. Even if a detailed study was approved and completed, the results would still be disputed. There are surveys that show 15% to 25% of Americans believe that the sun revolves around the earth.
A fact is not a fact because I do not believe it. Stopping our gun violence appears to be Sisyphean.
5
You know I get it. There are legitimate uses for guns. Hunting, target shooting, collectors, etc.
But there are no reasons not to make guns safer. The US and state governments are likely to be the single latgest purchasers of hand guns on the planet.
If they were to mandate all new weapons that they will buy must be capable of being used only by their owner. This is a reasonable requirement, no cop wants his gun used against him or her. My phone does this, so the technology exists. Don’t require people to buy these themselves or upgrade existing guns but give the people the opportunity to buy these safer weapons. No laws requiring the technology to be used either.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
16
@Thomas
No, you do not ‘get it.’ The major reason for the second amendment was to insure our rights; you know, those little things like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I'm going to try bringing a perspective about over restricting guns with another continental sized country, Brazil.
Over restricting laws on guns won't solve the issue. Here in Brazil, to obtain a gun you need to be over 25 years old, pass through a tough background check (which i agree) and make an argument of why you need a gun. The last one face the problem of police officers arbitrarily disagreeing on - i faced this issue, my argument was: i live in a violent city and need to protect my family, because police alone isn't enough. I honestly know a handful number of people that have a gun - most of them illegally.
So it's a very restrictive country, wouldn't you agree? Yet over 40 thousand were murdered with a gun here. But it wasn't always like this. Back in the day, before guns restrictions were enacted by Lula (former president and member of a left-wing party - found guilty of corruption, AGAIN), the homicide by guns were LOWER. And i also would like to point out that a plebiscite, in 2005, were made on this matter. 63% of brazilian people DIDN'T WANT IT - like the people's will mattered to politicians.
In the moment you make having a gun illegal, only outlaws will have it.
4
@L Vieira
Your comment hardly justifies a response, but someone has to point out that the United States and Brazil differ in a few other ways than gun laws. These include multiple coups, dictatorships and national bankruptcies in the last 30 years. The current constitution is less than 40 years old. The current and previous president are accused of corruption on a grand scale, along with dozens of other high-ranking officials. While it is true that Donald Trump would like to make the US more like Brazil, the two hardly present an opportunity for a controlled comparison of any specific policies.
Instead, compare the United States to Canada, Australia or Sweden, if you want to get insights on the effects of gun policy. You'll see that unrestricted gun ownership leads to massively higher rates of gun violence and suicide.
45
Agreed on Brazil's past issues. Yet we have had a reasonably political stability from the 90s, after Collor's impeachment and Plano Real were enacted, until 2010. Apart from the scandals, our population was relatively contained and emerging at fast pace. Restricting laws on guns in Brazil raised homicides by 10% from 2005 to 2016. And i've made a comparison based on size, because of the difficulty of managing a big Country is greater than a small one. There's so much difference between cultures from region to region, that is hard to keep track of and make accurate law for all
@Norwester
Also, current elected president isn't involved in corruption scandals. His son, Flavio, is being investigated because of his suspicious bank account's transactions (that he claims to have documented proof of the legality of them), as he should be (his own father said that he won't interfere with the investigations and will stand by the law), and, until now, nothing has been found. The current president is rather a very controversial figure, but not involved with corruption schemes
Anyone in this country who belongs to an HMO and has ever been to counseling (or in therapy) probably "has a history of mental illness" on record. The gun background checks, unfortunately, will increase stigma against seeing mental health professionals. Those who really need help now have an additional reason not to ask for it.
I speak as a mental health professional who has argued against that blanket description (marriage counseling is now a "history of mental illness" according to many insurers) for the sake of potential patients who would sensibly prefer not to have that stigma on yet another "permanent record" in America. What really chills me, in this report, is the realization that people with loaded guns in their carryons are roaming around in the airports.
5
lexicron,
If HMOs and other insurance companies are labeling any interaction with psychiatry workers, such as marriage counselors, that should be corrected. Gun restrictions should be limited to people who are mentally ill, not seeking help with their marriage. Psychology professionals should be speaking out against a general label like that. So, are you speaking out? I would guess no, since you are using that practice to defend limiting background checks.
Lockdown Nation, thanks NRA!
13
I disagree. The last person who should have a gun at hand is an embittered person going through the emotional trauma of a marriage breakdown and possibly also a fight over child custody etc. The ease by which such a person could kil themself or others in that situation is enormous.
11
@Lexicron
Merely seeking counseling does not warrant the label of “mental illness”. And you are wildly inflating terms when you falsely claim that people who seek marital counseling get slapped automatically with a “mental illness” label.
People who have been hospitalized in a psychiatric unit, however, do meet the “ history of mental illness” threshold.
People on certain medications likewise fit the criteria.
Please do not engage in hyperbolic scaremongering.
1
Ditch Mitch.
98
Most 2nd Amendment supporters concede that some weapons are too lethal to be in civilian hands, e.g., the banning of submachine guns in the 1930s. So let's dissect that idea a bit.
There's close to universal acceptance of "too lethal," so the questions remains what metric defines that.
I suggest a standard called the Maximum KPM, or the Maximum number of people a given device can kill in a minute.
I'm pretty sure that the NRA would agree that personal nuclear weapons, with KPMs of hundreds of thousdands or even millions of people is too high.
I'd like to ask them what their boundary number is.
Note that the use of such a metric would give a concrete and well-defined shape to the debate.
Knives: max 5 KPM usually direct, rather than remote/
Arrrows: max 3 KPM
Handgun: max 6 KPM
AR-15: 300 KPM (shoot up a crowd in Las Vegas)
Bazooka: 400 KPM (take down a jet)
I'd like to hear a Senator asked point blank:
So Senator, what KPM are you comfortable with?
138
The right of any American to become a gun death statistic, shall not be infringed by moderate gun laws, that exist in every other developed nation.
The US has a gun homicide rate, roughly at least ten times the rate of comparable other developed nations. The US has the most guns in private hands of any nation on earth. Gun massacres with at least four killed, rarely make it on to the national news, they are so common.
Trump cherry picks a few Americans whose loved ones were killed by an illegal immigrant.
Trump ignores the hundreds of Americans killed each year in gun massacres. There are thousands of Americans each year who lose family or loved ones to senseless gun violence.
When the death of innocent school children, a President, and other presidential candidates seems to make zero difference on Congress and their task to make America safe again by dealing with the epidemic of ongoing gun violence.
60
I apologize for submitting to the temptation to insert a concern that may be somewhat off topic but the overwhelming minimum of concern, not only in the USA but throughout the entire world’s influential sectors, as to the current scientific conclusions that global warming indications point to a twenty-year coming interval of sustainable life for the entire human civilization before everything collapses. The annual USA deaths of tens of thousands of citizens is quite horrifying but the juggernaut of global warming wherein the threat of the entire life of the planet is opposed with totally insubstantial remedies seems to me quite related in that the economic and social forces that enforce action are similarly arrayed in preventing immediate and energetic remedies most necessary to save both humanity and our ecological existence. Both huge threats are ignored because the world’s functioning systems are weirdly petrified into ignoring approaching consequences out of the financial and political systems that seem impossible to acknowledge the monstrous consequences.
35
@Jan Sand
At least we can be comforted by the fact that we’ll have plenty of guns available to defend our hoarded food and other supplies against the masses of people who are “economically challenged” by the destruction and shortages of food and water.
See? You weren’t off topic at all!
1
I love your columns Gail, but please don't be one of those people who quotes vague numbers of 'gun violence', but knowingly includes suicide with other forms of gun violence. You may or may not agree with someone else's decision to end their lives with a gun, but I hope you will agree that suicide is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT type of action than using a firearm to harm someone else.
16
@chad
It's not completely different. Suicide is facilitated by the handiness of the gun. Shooting in anger is facilitated by -- guess what.
117
No, it's not. Suicide with a gun is a gun death. The easy access to firearms makes an attempted suicide much more likely to be fatal than any other means.
44
@chad Actually it's not.
A large number of these suicides are crimes of passion. Someone feels despondent, and uses the first tool in reach. For many Americans, it is not a screwdriver or a bottle of bourbon. It is a firearm. They are ubiquitous.
9
4,239 weapons that were found by TSA trying to be smuggled onto planes. And to think the Seattle airport police force,was using pot sniffing dogs to stop passengers from taking a legal substance, in that state at least, out of state.
38
Throughout human history the advances in civilization have moved with the development of instruments that made procedures easier and more convenient. Probably not many people made toast before the invention of the electric toaster. Luckily, it is not remotely possible to make eating toast fatal. Gun, on the other hand, are designed to threaten, injure, and kill and they have no other function and the easy convenience of a twitchy forefinger confers great power upon people who, under current social, political, financial and economic restrictions are made to feel immensely victimized and powerless. The loss of the ability to obtain the ultimate power of life and death is possibly a factor in the defense of firearm possession. When social and other conditions permit a population to influence to a reasonable degree, their lives and to be heard and responded to so that their lives can be made sensibly endurable these more rational and peaceful accommodations may make it possible to attain a less dangerous and acceptable and less frustrating society with peaceful alternatives to manage their lives.
18
@Jan Sand, while guns were developed to a large extent as weapons of war, they have other, peaceful uses. In many areas hunting is a cherished tradition; many people enjoy target shooting, which is a learned skill requiring lots of practice; collectors are legitimate (and non-threatening), as well. And let's not forget defense of house and home, as the Supreme Court affirmed in Distict of Columbia v. Heller.
6
@P Cleaveland Abso true. Which does not diminish our obligation to apply common-sense rules, like those governing stepladders.
34
@P Cleaveland
The last and only time I shot a gun was in basic training in Keesler Field in the US Army Air Force in 1944 where I qualified as a marksman in the 45 caliber automatic pistol, the 30 caliber carbine and the grease gun machine gun. My ears rang for a week after and I am grateful I never was required to enter combat as a radar technician although I maintain tremendous respect for those who were required to fight in a war against the fascists. I grew up and lived in New York City and had friends throughout the city including Harlem where it was rumored as dangerous but I never needed nor wanted a gun. I have always loved and had as pets dogs and cats and mice and rats and hedgehogs and seagulls and a wonderful sparrow and crows and a rabbit and minor smaller creatures and the concept of unnecessarily killing any of them strikes me as rather perverse as long as I could afford a can of tuna fish or a pizza.
8
At one time people thought the end of slavery was never going to happen. People think the same about the 2nd amendment today. Today I am just one voice for repeal. But someday the overwhelming tide of history will turn against guns.
141
@SC so I should lose my right to defend myself because some people decided to shoot other people.
I'm sorry Gail, but I can't agree with you that "Americans are very very very much in favor of background checks" because, to put it simply, if they were we'd have them. In MY book, gun control legislation figures heavily on my list of important issues that a candidate must be in favor of in order to gain my support. Well guess what? 10 Democratic senators have A ratings from the NRA and Bernie Sanders did NOT support the ban on those automatic weapons that he said his "hunting state" favored. Now why any weapon other than a hunting rifle could be needed to go looking for venison is beyond me. People SAY they're in favor of regulations but then fail to carry through on their convictions by demanding action, plain and simple, and while there's no doubt that Republicans have a vile record on the issue - no, not vile, more like immoral and criminally complicit in the violence in this country - Democrats are not united in their support for substantial restrictions. Better yet, how about the movement to repeal the misinterpreted Second Amendment? How about starting THOSE hearings in the House?
39
One problem with guns is the sheer number of them. Personal crises occur and, absent a readily available firearm, will usually end without anyone being killed. Just having a gun available at the time of crisis can turn a situation into a tragedy. Add to those incidents deaths and injuries caused by accidental discharges of firearms, and you have our current situation.
The common element in all of these tragedies is the presence of a readily available gun. There are just too many guns, in the wrong places.
51
We have a terrible problem with guns in the U.S. The solution is not to take away all the guns. The solution is to enact sensible gun laws. And to deal with the crisis in an honest and rational way.
Obviously, mentally ill people, those who pose a danger to themselves and/or others, should not have access to guns. But we also need to face reality. There are many, many mentally ill people in this country. And many of them have guns. That promotes mental health issues in the rest of us. We are (at least to some extent) afraid of public spaces. We are afraid of our neighbors. Why? Because in order to "safeguard our liberty," we have granted far too much liberty to gun owners.
Are you nervous about any of this? Are you feeling a little traumatized? Are you on any medications because of it? Well, for those of you in this situation, for those of you who would never harm another person, I have a warning for you. If you ever find yourself in the hospital for depression, *never* mention guns. There is so much paranoia, due to our inability to regulate these weapons, you will be an easy target for hospital "risk assessment." It's called "duty to warn." You will have no recourse. Your right to own a gun will be revoked, your reputation at work can be destroyed, your life can be irrevocably damaged. So just keep your mouth shut.
Violence due to guns is a major problem, for sure. But there is collateral damage to our society, too, in ways you might not consider.
10
I posted pretty much this same comment last February in Andrew Rosenthal's column ("Times Pick"):
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/opinion/guns-age-limit-mental-hospitals.html?action=click&contentCollection=undefined&contentPlacement=1&module=stream_unit&pgtype=collection®ion=stream&rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fandrew-rosenthal&version=latest
There are two sides to every equation (here we have gun violence vs civil rights). There are something like two million Americans on the prohibited-carrier list (Brady Bill). How many felons are there? How many mentally ill? How many "others"?
Has anyone done a robust analysis parsing this list to see how many had their gun rights restored? How difficult was it? What were any lasting effects on their credibility, their careers, their lives? This research would be a difficult task. Still, it would make for a great article. I don't see people working to try to figure it out.
When you gun control adherents finally realize that portrayals of gun violence in Movies, Television and video games are the cause of mass murdering mayhem, then I will agree with you. I don't think you have the courage to fight the real causes.
8
These are things that are available to almost every country in the world. And I don’t believe we have that many more mentally ill people than other countries. And yet we are such an outlier when it comes to mass shootings.
Perhaps these are not the main causes. There was a plot in the Times some time ago that showed guns per capital vs mass shootings per capita for a range of countries. Every country but one was clustered in the bottom left corner near the origin - except one outlier- the US, which was up in the far upper right. Seems like a pretty strong correlation.
If you like owning guns and have been told that every attempt to regulate them is a plot to take them from you, it must be attractive to blame the mentally ill (which of course you are not) or video games. I have never seen any data that points to those as the culprits. It is only people who are worried that regulation means that someone is going to come and take their guns who seem to know these must be the reasons.
41
@DKSF
I do not have a gun and don't want a gun. I was raising the issue of media influence, not defending guns.
1
@DKSF excellent point. Gun fanatics don’t like the stigma of possibly being mentally ill themselves (And I am supposedly mentally ill with depression and have two sons with mental illness who don’t own guns) so I don’t Share the stigma problem. But I think this is really a crucial point because a lot of fanatics about guns are probably suffering from fear and paranoia. Those are mental illnesses.
1
Illegal aliens are not the problem. The problem is space aliens. If they came down to Earth, they could impose martial law and strip everyone of their weapons, then enact strict gun control measures to minimize the number of guns floating around -- maybe just in gun clubs. The current toxic mix of so-called constitutional rights and the commodification of deadly weapons makes it impossible to make progress without a Higher Power.
17
Seen online: “I want any young men who buy a gun to be treated like young women who seek an abortion. Think about it: a mandatory 48-hours waiting period, written permission from a parent or a judge, a note from a doctor proving that he understands what he is about to do, time spent watching a video on individual and mass murders, traveling hundreds of miles at his own expense to the nearest gun shop, and walking through protestors holding photos of loved ones killed by guns, protesters who call him a murderer.
After all, it makes more sense to do this for young men seeking guns than for young women seeking an abortion. No young woman needing reproductive freedom has ever murdered a roomful of strangers.”
1770
@Janet Brilliant, yes!
Unfortunately, following that example, once a young (or old) man did get a gun, or have 5 or 10, there would be no further interest or care about them and whatever happens next is just God's Will.
39
Thank you for this comment. After the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, we formed a group called Gays Against Guns. One of the things we do is go to gun shows and take hand-outs with information and statistics about gun violence. We also bring people who stand silently, dressed in all-white, and veiled, who hold placards with information about someone who lost their life to gun violence. They act as a reminder of the real cost of gun ownership and gun culture. I’d urge you, or anyone reading this, to follow our lead. In order to change the culture we must confront it. Walking across a bridge or having a rally is great, but we’re just talking to ourselves. It’s been our experience that the people who attend gun shows are mostly nice to talk to. But they probably get their information from different sources than we do. Let’s all pitch in and level the playing field a little. We just might save a life.
112
Thank you Janet, point well made.
43
I normally expect at least a chuckle or two from Gail's columns.
But the ridiculousness surrounding our lack of oversight as regards firearms and the callous acceptance of absurd numbers of gun deaths due to our fecklessness makes even her abilities unable to bring humor to the situation (though she did valiantly try).
18
We are the primary arms merchant in the world, externally and internally. So why would a wall, even if it were 100 miles high, make any difference?
41
How can we get more of the media spreading the word about the facts Ms Collins raises? Why aren’t all the network and cable stations (save Fox so-called ‘news’) pointing out these things on a daily basis? Why aren’t senators other than Sen. Murphy pointing out the hypocrisy of their NRA-sponsored colleagues in everything they say? We should all be screaming these things from the rooftops. For all we love her writing, we need more than Gail Collins writing her periodic columns about this.
18
A great column. The GOP goes on with its shameless support of guns despite the evidence based research that tells us that guns are the problem, not the solution. The vast majority of immigrants are escaping violence.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna884956
22
It will be a year on Valentine’s Day that students and teachers died at Parkland with protests and promises that we’d finally have some protections. However, Trump is too busy sullying each branch of government while the reprobate Republicans with their NRA/Russian connections safeguard guns while destroying human lives.
All the while, Trump holds us all hostage to his wall, and the Republicans rant along with him while children are separated from their parents, and journalists are killed or dismembered by cold-blooded authoritarians in Russia and Saudi Arabia who think nothing of using chemical agents to kill anyone who opposes them.
Trump has triggered chaos in this chaos in this country and within the world. He needs to be put behind walls.
30
"All you can do is keep on trying." My hat's off do all those who do. It is such a Sisyphean task, pushing that cursed rock up a steep hill only to have it roll back down over and over again.
Keep pushing that rock, good men and women of courage and stamina. The fact that American gun violence has worn me out shouldn't apply to you. The country needs people stronger than I am. Thank you for your persistence.
20
Beyond "Duh Wall" jokes this is a very serious and complex issue.
Suicide rates in the USA are greater than the homicide rates. In one span of seven or eight years we had a rash of 5 to 12 year old children dying by suicide every 5 days.
Men are more likely to commit either suicide or homicide than women.
We had an actor for president, Reagan who firmly believed that Psychiatry was a communist plot. His lunatic legacy is still with us. It's also difficult to reconcile cultural/regional issues when it comes to gun ownership. It's bizarre to think of legalizing guns, when living in the crowded cities like NY where a paranoid subway rider, (who wouldn't be) might turn and fire on someone they thought were groping them or picking their pocket, only to find that their short six year old accidently bumped them.
Out in these here parts, one needed a strong back, a bible and a darn good rifle to survive.
IMHO we need universal healthcare, and a higher minimum wage. Obtaining those things is like banging your head against the wall!
11
Is it possible to require an ethics/morality/intelligence test before being able to run for Congress?
Or ban NRA campaign donations beyond $25.00?
23
We are living in a post fact world. Stooges like Gaetz abound but only fools agree with him. Trump has done more to destroy the ability to have any intelligent discussions about this issue. He has literally torn the fabric of our society to what I pray is not a point of no return. When you hear Mitch McConnell say that making sure every citizen has no barriers to vote is a “Power Grab”, you just have to sit in amazement that a petrified senior Senator still affects our lives so deeply. We have never stopped fighting the Civil War.
35
Meanwhile, over in England:
"Surge in young knife deaths amid police cuts and 'a climate of fear."
And in America:
"number of people killed every year from driving and cell phones In 2013, 3,154 people were killed in distraction-related crashes - cell phones. About 424,000 people were injured in crashes involving a distracted driver"
4
@MrMikeludo while there were close to 40,000 injuries in GB last year due to knife assaults, only 40 of those resulted in a fatality.
Contrast that with the 40,000 gun -related deaths in the US that same year.
Apples and oranges, Sir.
38
@Cheryl
Recently (January?), their were more murders in London than in New York City. I believe that all but one in London were committed by immigrants. I lived in England for a year. If I hadn’t left, I probably would have obtained a gun and committed suicide. It was dull, anti-American, antisemitic, and legally and socially constricted in behavior, thought, and speech.
@Cheryl
In the United States:
“At nearly 40,000 deaths, America recorded the highest absolute number of gun deaths in nearly 50 years. The increase in the firearm death rate, at least in 2017, was driven by suicides. Sixty percent of gun deaths last year were self-inflicted.”
In the United States:
“In 2017, there were 70,237 drug overdose deaths in the United States.”
In the United States:
“Thousand Oaks makes 307 mass shootings in 311 days.”
The primary – neurophysiological, cause for the dramatic increase in those numbers, over the course of the past 100 years, is the ever growing – exponentially effected, consumption of absolutely abstracted dopamine inducing stimulus, ie – television – movies – cell phones, which causes this:
"Damage to prefrontal cortex , area of the mind responsible for controlling irrational, animalistic, and aggressive behavior."
If you would like to severely diminish – if not completely eliminate, ALL of those deaths, simply eliminate ALL “abstracted dopamine inducing stimulus,” again, ie: television – movies – cell phones – media of any an/or all kinds, except – of course, for this:
“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is a good thing, but if salt has become insipid, how can you season it again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.” Mark 9: 48-50
So, if you want to “prove” you “care” about the human race, ELIMINATE those things, AS I DID, if not, you should just be quite.
Thank you for keeping the important issues front and center.
12
Thanks you, Ms. Collins for pointing out the ludicrous argument Representative Gaetz makes in linking illegal immigrants to the national epidemic of mass shootings. These horrific mass murders are done by all too often by white men, all born and raised in the USA. I agree with Senator Murphy’s belief that the endless rejection of any gun legislation looks like a moral green light to these unbalanced killers.
Come to any of the frequent gun shows here in Fort Worth and across Texas to see how easy it is to buy all the assault weapons you can carry without any background check. According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 12 states require background checks on any gun show purchase, 8 states require background checks on hand guns, and the remaining 30 states do not require any background check at gun shows.
Texas passed the “Campus Carry” law two years ago, allowing guns to be toted throughout the college campuses here in Texas! This year, for the third time, Texas Republicans will again try to pass a “Constitutional Carry” bill that would allow gun owners to openly carry their firearms around town without getting a “License to Carry” permit! Until the gerrymandering is corrected in Texas, there is little hope of getting sensible gun legislation approved down here.
21
Why don’t people just read the second amendment. The ruling was wrong. It simply says guns for a well regulated militia to protect the country.
29
Guns, violence and death. Demonizing immigrants for a problem that is not theirs, but ours. Greed. The NRA buying off their political minions at the expense of the rest of us, as usual. Children dying senselessly, for a profit. Another sunrise (and sunset) in America.
Thank you for taking on this difficult issue, Gail Collins. We have become our own worst enemy. All we really have is each other. If we still can't figure that out, then we are doomed.
19
What is most distressing is not the 40,000 gun fatalities per year; after all a large percentage of them are suicides and how can anyone object to an instrument which facilitates such a basic natural right. And "accidents" will be "accidents" (I suppose some people die while choking on a steak dinner).
No, what really bothers me, as an American, is the fundamentally treasonous poison spewed by the NRA in its encouragement of personal ownership of weapons of war. The purpose of such weapons, we are told, is the "defense of individual freedom"; that is to say they are appropriate for killing fellow citizens and more pointedly American public officials who we may identify as "tyrannical". To date not that many public officials have been shot; but the perception that Americans should be armed against their own government has succeeded in poisoning public discourse.
11
Thank you Gail for letting loose here. Your humor generally helps lighten the day's tragic folly, but once in a while it's bracing to feel your rage.
10
What is this strange power the NRA has over our elected legislators? NRA contributions are not big, compared to say the pharmaceutical lobby. And the NRA's finances are in decline. So what is it?
13
@Charles Tiege....it's the norms the NRA and its fans and politicians have set for the country, distorting the 2nd Amendment, equating gun possession with freedom, independence from big govt 'control'.
Notice that the news media hardly talks about this--they only report the shootings. So the gun lobby has set norms for the media too.
5
@Charles Tiege
People without much in the way of abilities and self confidence feel they can “level the playing field” when they are loaded up with guns. Pharmaceuticals not so much.
4
So easy to pretend that the threat can be walled off from the outside, so hard to look at the dangers within. Within our homes, our schools, our concert venues, our churches, our legislators' pockets...
12
Think of the mass shootings in your memory - Parkland, the Charlestown Church, Las Vegas, the Colorado theater, the Florida nightclub, or the one that sticks most in my memory, Sandy Hook school. Not one would have been avoided by a wall. We need legislators not beholden to the NRA to keep guns out of the hands of disturbed individuals and reasonable regulations for the rest of us. But as someone so aptly put it, the "Guns Over People " party will not allow the wishes of the majority of Americans to prevail.
26
In a typical year, there are many more suicides (17,000-23,000) by firearms than homicides (11,000-14,000). Of both categories, roughly two-thirds come from single shots from handguns. https://apps.voxmedia.com/at/vox-firearm-suicides-versus-homicides/?initialWidth=740&childId=vox-firearm-suicides-versus-homicides__graphic&parentUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2015%2F10%2F1%2F18000510%2Fgun-suicide-homicide-comparison
5
@The Yellow Menace Two thoughts. First: total deaths is not the metric that's relevant to weapon type restrictions, but rather total potential deaths per minute in a single event, and at what range. On the other hand, your point is well taken that weapon type restrictions alone will be insufficient. States like Massachusetts that have successfully addressed gun violence have a focus on law enforcement screening of potential gun owners.
4
*in person* LEO screening, I should add
Gail, it’s because of all those marauding bands of “criminals and rapists” that have been illegally crossing our southern border for years, generations even, that fearful Americans have been compelled to create verifiable home armories to deal with this woefully unaddressed national emergency. Thus, these lawless immigrants have essentially placed the lethal weapons in the hands of our fellow countrymen, and women. They are the reason why gun-related death are rampant. Why is this obvious causal relationship so difficult to understand? MAGA!
1
@John Grillo
"Why is this obvious causal relationship so difficult to understand?"
Because it'd not obvious that
>marauding bands of “criminals and rapists” that have been illegally crossing our southern border for years<
are the cause of rampant gun deaths.
What's obvious is how easily this image can be turned into am exciting subject for t.v. shows -
2
The mouth breathing representatives of the republican party, like Gaetz, will have their moment of truth. Nobody is immune from gun violence.
5
We'd better get that wall built just in case the 120 privately owned guns per 100 people in our country all stop working.
6
But the US keeps winning, just as Trump promised. Every year the US wins the title for most people who die by gun-intentional, accidental and suicidal. Trump, I am tired of winning!
11
Much has been said of the NRA’s epic wealth concentration system. Not so much has been said about how effective NRA-supporting voters are at getting their 2nd Amendment champions elected even though quantitatively they are not nearly as large as they seem. Why?
Because huge percentages of people who do not want Wild West gun laws to dominate all 3,007 counties of the United States do NOT vote. Why?
Because when mainstream media outlets like, uh...the NYT, inaccurately predict Democratic candidates will most certainly win on Election Day for months on end, uh...lots of Democratic voters stay home and watch Game Of Thrones or Politically Incorrect or whatever the United States of HDTV is endlessly streaming.
The media theorist Neil Postman warned about Americans “amusing themselves to death” back in the 1980s. Who knew all those years ago that the landlord of Trump Tower would one day occupy Pennsylvania Avenue?
Irony is for ironing.
Democracy is for showing up and VOTING. And that’s only the first day of Kindergarten if sensible gun laws will ever become reality.
9
Gail, you never write a bad article. I have one suggestion for future articles - rather than refer to the NRA or the gun lobby, I believe we should be referring to people like Gaetz as members of the Gun Manufacturer's Lobby. Every single word they speak is silently about the money gun dealers are making. Gaetz is simply a salesman.
18
Thoughtful and well said! Thank you, Gail Collins!
5
Flash - just announced today, from Independence Hall, Philadelphia - year of our lord 1776:
The following firearms are allowed to be purchased legally within the United States of America without waiting periods or background checks. Rifles or pistols - single shot, black powder, muzzle loading - single or double barrel OK. Lead balls or bird shot permitted. Due to weight and length, carrying slings allowed with rifles. Limit - 2 per person - males only - 18 or older.
12
This isn't a constutional thing, it is strictly business. Money makes the world go bang.
836
@Tim Lynch
It’s also tribal, a way for one group to separate itself from another that elites use to stay in power. Often these positions have no basis in fact. Or run counter to the groups stated positions.
A classic example is the Catholic Church’s positions on sex, starting with condoms. They prevent not just pregnancies but disease, like AIDS. But they are forbidden, and that ban has sentenced millions to suffering and death.
They consider two cells a human life that is sacred, but kill millions by banning condoms.
NRA and Republican positions on firearms require the same extensive application of pretzel logic.
41
50 years ago, I was working on a Presidential Commission in Washington to get more foreign tourists to visit the USA. Less than a week after I arrived, Martin Luther King was gunned down. A few weeks later, Robert Kennedy met the same fate. So instead of going to work the next day, I went to the headquarters of the National Rifle Association and joined a picket line.
Incredibly, the NRA is more powerful today than it was 50 years ago--and even the murder of 20 schoolchildren in Connecticut couldn't move most Republicans from their mindless following of the NRA.
I now have new hope. The students from Parkland are amazing. The Democratic House is stirring again. Meanwhile, the rest of the world looks at us in shock and disbelief.
Will we finally regain our senses? Or must EACH of us lose a loved one before the gun lobby is stopped?
1512
@bnyc
But we're fighting $50,000,000 or thereabouts of Russian subsidy to the NRA.
116
@bnyc While the Parkland students are amazing, it’s hard to be optimistic after the voters of Floida just sent Scott to the Senate and elected another Republican governor.
198
@bnyc The first part of your comment reminded me of when I was preparing to move to Thailand. My mother was afraid. I told her, can you imagine what people must say about this country, with the constant school shootings? "Oooh, don't go to America, they shoot children in their classrooms there." And they're not wrong!
81
as nutty as this sounds, I'm at the point where I firmly believe what kills people is Congress by their failure to enact reasonable regulations of armament and ammunition.
I would prefer no guns at all in the hands of civilians, but I do know my wish will never be granted in such a gun-loving society as ours.
Death of innocent first and second graders? doesn't matter.
Deaths of High school students? nah! that doesn't matter either.
No death of innocent bystanders matter in this day and age.
What matters is 18th century thinking. Militias!
We should armed ourselves to the teeth, in case a group of neighbors need to defend us against "invaders".
We do have a military now, don't we?
We have police officers now, don't we?
But 18th century norms should dictate 21st century reality. Go figure.
1161
@c should 18th century norms about the first amendment also dictate the 21st century reality or does it only matter with the second amendment and when it was written.
9
@Do. The first refers to an intangible right, the to one that is not only tangible but vastly different from its 18th century iteration
35
@c Of course, many of those who believe this is an unlimited "right" are actually arming themselves to protect against their own government, as they truly believe their guns may be confiscated at any time by what they perceive to be the greatest threat to their independence. Of course, this idea is only prevalent when Democrats are in control. In actuality, their personal safety is at far higher risk from the gun in the home than from any imagined jackbooted feds.
89
Polls may show that The majority of Americans to be in favor of gun regulations BUT, until they actually VOTE that way, that poll means as much as Clinton’s 83% probability of winning the presidential election in 2016. Votes not polls are what counts. Maybe one day progressives will learn that, but I am not optimistic.
12
The NRA markets guns by promoting freedoms and independence and second Amendment rights (with a sickening dose of paranoia about people black and brown). Why does a country that used to think of this organization as a gun safety organization, lock in into these sales pitches so completely? I've started to realize that it's not that our country believes so much in independence that puts guns in pocketbooks where toddlers can reach them and puts semiautomatic weapons in the hands of high school students - it's that we believe so little in personal responsibility. Thirty thousand people die every year from guns, but the people who bray about their second amendment freedoms are so horrifically irresponsible, they would rather bury their dead than stop and consider how their own actions contribute to death.
It used to be said that the unexamined life is not worth leading - now it's that those unexamined lives decided, surrounded by NRA propaganda that has replaced the American smell of apple pie with the emboldening weight of steel, that it doesn't matter whether other people can freely live their lives in safety from the millions and millions of guns flooding our concerts, our churches, our banks, and our schools. It only matters that they don't have to think about how they live their lives. It will be an awful realization, if and when it ever happens, to wake up after their long sleep and look at the body count.
19
As long as the NRA is able to contribute large sums of money to political campaigns, guns will remain everything that's good about the US.
If the NRA were seen for the anti-life, anti-law organization it is, sensible politicians wouldn't take its money. Before any sensible gun legislation can be passed in Congress, the public relations campaign against the NRA must become more effective. It is worse than useless to ask politicians to forego a steady source of legitimate campaign cash.
12
Given the difficulty of passing effective gun control laws at the national level, because the Senate and the White House is controlled by the GOP, why don't the strongly Democratic States pass much
stricter gun control laws at the State level?
States like California, Connecticut and New York.
The Democratic governor of California Brown in fact vetoed gun control laws in his last year in office in 2018!!!
But Why?
I wish Gail Collins would write more about why Democratically controlled States don't do much more at the State level to protect
their residents from gun violence.
8
@David
Look at Socrates excellent list in a prior comment. For the most part the states that are democratically controlled also have the lowest gun deaths per capita. They also tend to have the strictest gun laws. My state, Massachusetts has the second lowest gun deaths per capita in the country. We are also one of the most densely populated. Yet we somehow mange to live in harmony with our over crowded, hours long commutes and high rate of "fender bender" car accidents. We also have some of the strictest gun regulations in the country. Contrary to what the gun worshippers argue, strict regulation of guns seems to help lessen the carnage.
2
Gaetz does not get the seriousness of the issue of gun violence nor of the huge waste of resources the wall that the right wants happen to be. His argument comes down to nothing more than any means that would have prevented a murder is worth doing no matter how well it actually works to prevent all the murders that are happening. He’s too isolated in the right wing cloister to grasp any realistic context for appreciating the issue.
Yes, there have been murders committed by citizens of foreign countries who have not had permission to be here but as a class the proportion of violent crime committed by immigrants is far smaller than for American citizens. The Wall is unlikely to stop illegal entry into our country. It might slow it but that is even uncertain. The availability of guns to people who are liable to use them against others without justification is the problem. That problem is unrelated to the borders and undocumented people in our country.
11
Gail - I read your column, became sad, closed the browser and decided to play freecell. (My computer life is not complicated.) And then I thought, perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me so here I am again. Turns out I'm not delusional, nothing in your column had changed. How unfortunate.
Of course, that's just me. At least, I don't ascribe to the truly insane belief that more guns in more hands will make this a safer country. How the argument, that more thorough background checks won't help to reduce gun violence can be made is beyond me. But then again, I'm not getting paid by the NRA.
32
No one is in favor of more gun violence, especially responsible gun owners and collectors. It seems there should be a distinction in the regulations between people who are legitimate hunters or collectors and the young gang-bangers trying to make an image for themselves in the community. Unfortunately, even the best of the gun owning public gets dragged down in regulations with the lowest of the low gang members and criminals who use guns to steal and protect their drug rackets. Lawmakers would be wise to make this distinction in order to get more public support for measures to keep guns away from criminals.
3
None of the incidents mentioned in the piece involved gang violence. The guy in Vegas was not a gang member. He was a gun hoarder. The gunman at Parkland was not a gang member. Nor were the shooters at the temple in Pittsburgh, the club in Thousand Oaks, the churches in Texas and Virginia. There is one common denominator - they were all male, and most were white. And several, but not all, had long histories of mental illness.
We have a problem in this country with males & guns, and as long as we deny that, there will be more victims to bury.
49
We have about 30,000 gun deaths a year.Over 60% suicides .
Very serious,but a different issue.
All told,about 12,000 criminal homicides.
We have 70,000 opioid deaths a year.
I spent 25 years in law enforcement and 4+ in the military,including a year in Vietnam.
I know guns pretty well.
I agree with background checks.
Not however,without hand on semi autos,magazine limits,and definitely not registration.
I'm not about to become a geriatric mass killer,but will not tolerate being meddled with to no purpoxe.
2
@Joe Maybe you need to read what doctors say about those horrible weapons, and consider the rights of others than yourself. It could be you or someone you care about whose organs are shredded beyond repair next. Why should the gun-rabid make the rules?
5
If people like Congressman Gaetz think guns are such a great idea, why are guns banned from the Capitol Building? They should welcome their constituents walking around and coming to visit them while armed.
667
@Linda ..a very good point.
The NRA cultists and their political puppets always do say that more guns will make everyone safer.
Fill the Capitol Building with crowds exercising their 2nd Amendment rights and feel safe. And with so many 'good guys with guns' running around, the entire budget for building security can be dropped.
56
@Rebel in Disguise
"Fill the Capitol Building with crowds exercising their 2nd Amendment rights and feel safe."
Safe...you mean until a dropped book hits the floor with a smack...
17
Thanks for this thoughtful report, Ms. Collins. I believe that nothing substantial will be done about guns in this country until and unless we acknowledge two things: 1) there are way too many guns available, legally and illegally, and 2) there are way too many people who have guns who shouldn't. It appears that more citizens are starting to recognize this, but the hard part is convincing politicians, who should be working on behalf of the people instead of a right-wing fringe group, (today's NRA) to do something.
37
Our gun problem and the gun debate have little in common. Illegals and Pakland and airplane passengers and the mentally ill have little to do with the problem. Gun violence in the US is almost all about gangs and poverty and violent crime and suicide. Everyone likes to talk about gun violence that is exceptional, dramatic and shocking. But there are tens of thousands of gun deaths each year, and most are not particularly notable to the general public. They are part of the fabric of life in the US, and the problem is about poverty and despair more than anything else. Why don’t we talk about that?
15
@michjas
Gun deaths period is a much bigger problem not just violent but depends on how you define violent. All gun deaths by gun are violent deaths and after watching requiem for the dead I saw statistics that still are harrowing and learned how death by gun is mostly due to people not being responsible. Complex problem...
6
@michjas
Yet these same republicans argue against raising the minimum wage, having better social safety nets, funding for access to mental health and anger management, affordable housing, better funding for education, childcare, after school programs, etc. Why don't they talk about that?
2
Would it really be so impossible to achieve both?: (a) immigration reform (including - but certainly not limited to - physical barriers in some select spots); and (b) dramatically improved gun control measures? Perhaps we can couple these 2 issues so each side feels that they have one win, their respective bases will cheer, and ALL Americans will benefit.
12
@GBR Bad legislation and blackmail comes from coupling. Better that each suggestion be presented, debated and voted upon entirely separately. Coupling and bundling for American Pickers only.
15
Here's a possible solution.
Could the legislators enact a requirement that all White House residents and visitors be fully armed at all times in self defense?
And watch what happens next time there's a fireworks display in the area.
Problem solved.
44
This is an absolutely FANTASTIC idea! After all, the gun pushers keep asserting that more guns in people’s hands makes us safer. Who’s more important to keep safe than the President? I say a Democratic Congressperson should introduce this bill immediately! It would be amazing to witness the spectacle of Republicans contorting themselves to oppose it. Or maybe they would be true to their “principles,” which would be amusing.
12
Legitimizing guns for all everywhere puts many guns in circulation, leading to more shootings--- for various reasons. And it sets up a psychological attitude, that problems can be solved with guns.
Gun violence is constantly in the news. For some, it's a role model. It can stir up paranoid, angry people to see solutions to their deranged feelings, and copy what they see happening.
In countries with strict gun laws, citizens don't see guns possession as a norm. Their political parties don't run on platforms to sell more guns to more people. Their gun makers don't give politicians a letter rating like the NRA does here.
They don't have constant media coverage of public and private shootings.
And any shooting victims they have get medical treatment without worrying if about insurance or cost.
The high wall we really need to protect Americans is one that other democracies have. Not on our borders, but a wall separating politics from corporate mega donors. Then the NRA couldn't subsidize politicians for gun maker profits, or put out messages that guns equal American Freedom.
It's a long road to gun sanity and safety, but it starts with disconnecting gun maker profits from subsidizing political candidates.
The media hardly discusses reforming our camaign financing, as if it's a taboo topic, but most US voters favor it, as well as stricter gun laws. Thus our democracy isn't working.
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@Meredith
Best comment I’ve seen in a while since it includes the fact that, in addition to weak or non-existent gun laws, who knows how many of the dead and wounded had no healthcare insurance to cover treatment?
And the fact that the NRA actually has the gall to give letter ratings to the congress people who give them “the most bang for their bucks” is just my mind boggling!
I’ll bet a lot of their recipients wish they wouldn’t.
10
The NRA of hunters and target shooters has been replaced by the NRA of insurrection.
There is no other justification for horrible high capacity military assault weapons like those used by Stephen Paddock in Las Vegas to injure 851 and kill 56.
Apparently the GOP is all in on the insurrection thing, possibly with a little help from the Russians.
199
@ Look Ahead WA
"the NRA of insurrection". -- This is because neither NRA nor NSSF have been literate enough to read in the original German the immortal and unforgettable words attributed to Wilhelm Tell: "I want (lack) my arm when I want (lack) my WEAPON". In the two translations into English, the German word Waffe = weapon was replaced by historically incorrect "bow". Neither organization had adopted the citation as its motto, because neither is interested in archery.
2
Many years ago I taught hunter safety courses for the California Fish and Game Commission. I qualified as a NRA instructor in firearms safety, and passed a state test for certification.
I began collection a list of firearms accidents, I can still remember some of them, and these by people who should have known better. None of them were undocumented aliens, hey were the "Good guys with a gun the NRA tells us we need for our safety.
A boy shooting varmints from the top of a RV in the Mojave, accidentally fires into the RV and kills his mother. A father in a duck blind at the Salton Sea bangs the but of his shotgun on the ground and blows the head off his son, a father leaves his daughter in a tree to wait for the deer he was going to flush. Two other hunters see her in the tree and one thinks she is a bear and shoots her. Three hunters riding in a jeep, with bullets in the chamber, which is illegal to start with, worse yet one has his finger on the trigger. The jeep hits a bump, his gun fires killing the driver, it crashes killing one of the other ones, on bullet, two dead. Several cased of a hunter seeing something move in the trees or brush and killing another hunter.
And these are the so called "Good Guys" by the NRA. Now we have a deranged group of Republicans that want others like themselves to be allowed to keep and own guns. Do you even feel safe around the "Good Guys?"
1208
@David Underwood
Thanks for the dose of reality, Dave. Does it make me feel safe? Not so much.
52
@David Underwood
If someone feels the need to carry a weapon in public I would suggest they got out more often, but it's the ones who carry with a round in the chamber that make my blood boil. A handgun without a round chambered might as well be a poorly-designed hammer, with a round chambered it's an accident waiting to happen. Handling a gun that way just expresses an undue and irrational fear that some small fraction of a second is going to make the difference in the violent encounter they will almost certainly never ever have, while making an accidental discharge eminently and constantly possible. Without arming the gun, that accident is impossible. I'm sickened by every story of deliberate gun violence, but the deaths by sheer selfish ignorance from such mishandling of weapons are the hardest to deal with, especially because so many of the dead are children.
131
@David Underwood thank you for this post. I was raised by a father and a stepfather who both hunted and both drilled into me and my siblings that when it comes to firearms, there is no such thing as an accident: only negligence or intent. I like to think if we demand that such people as you describe above are charged, convicted and jailed of criminally negligent homicide, “accidents” would drop dramatically. Rights come with responsibilities, and that includes whatever rights we are accorded by 2A.
128
Think about this, many of the self inflicted gunshots are accidents. Many unforeseen pregnancies are accidents. Imagine if the Supreme Court sided with the Louisiana legislator and allowed them to, effectively, leave a population of 5 million with one abortion clinic. Imagine if Louisiana had gun laws as strict as their abortion laws want to be. The outcry would be deafening because you would be changing the law. The last time I checked, abortion is legal and therefore, the law of the land (for fifty years now) and the rest of the world is following suit. We're not going back to back alleys and we know longer trust the men in the big hats to have our best interests at heart. All of the women I've known who have had an abortion spent a long time deciding. It wasn't as fast as pulling a trigger.
227
Gail, Mexico probably wants a nice tall solid concrete barrier, because it would stop the bullets coming in from the US side. Even if they are fired by the Border Patrol. Of course, Mexico has its own gun violence problems, but our own sanctifying of the God of Gun in this country is a problem much more worthy of $5,700,000,000 in 'throw it on the wall and see what happens' solution funding than "the Wall". Considering that immigrants (legal and illegal) are less likely that good old US citizens to commit crimes, reducing gun violence will likely do much more for American's safety than any Trumpian xenophobic construction projects. I just can't understand why Republicans in Congress seem to lose their conscience as soon as they are elected. Not a one of them has the honor to admit, even to themselves, that they have sold their souls to the NRA for campaign contributions and a few votes. I sure hope God is keeping track, and collecting the bill when His opportunity comes to every one of them. You hear me Mitch? Make your peace, if you think you can... and say hello to the Devil when you get where you're going.
62
@Jim Brokaw
With Undocumented immigrants being so scary & dangerous & mean & ornery & stuff, you’d think that Trump golf course in Bedminster NJ would be a perpetual crime scene, he has so many employed there.
Well, then again, given the shenanigans of Trump, his Cabinet members & his sons & daughter, it pretty much is a perpetual crime scene.
8
@Jim Brokaw
What you're saying is "Shame on Mitch." But you're (rhetorically) addressing it to Mitch himself.
Practically nobody admits to himself that he's a sinner. I suspect that Mitch himself believes he's doing the Lord's work. Iago is a fictional character.
2
@Jim Brokaw
"I sure hope God is keeping track, and collecting the bill when His opportunity comes to every one of them. You hear me Mitch? Make your peace, if you think you can... and say hello to the Devil when you get where you're going."
They don't believe in God. They don't believe in the bible and the tenets it teaches. For if they did they could never behave the way they do, mainly out of fear of eternal damnation. But it makes for a good campaign speech to quote hell fire and damnation for the gullible masses who turn a blind eye to every conduct and action these despicable elected officials display that is contrary to the Bible and its teachings. These republican congressmen (and women) only believe in money and power and manipulation. God, repentance and accountability never enter the equation.
5
I prefer to call them machines that make killing easy. Everyone has anger issues, and it is currently far more likely that people unable to control their rage can get their hands on weapons of destruction, singular or plural. It keeps one's hands clean, too.
Anybody who thinks women are better able to defend themselves with guns should look at the statistics. It is all too common for terrorized women to be victims of gun owner bullying. And when a woman does have a gun? She fires at the ceiling and goes to jail, leaving her children bereft, while the violent ex gets off scott free.
I'm a nonviolent person, and I'm sure that a gun in my hand would be used against me. (I have some experience and stories I won't share to back this up.) I just don't have the urge to kill. If I get angry, I'm ashamed of myself, even if I'm right. That's the true Christian way, mind you, check out the Gospels.
But even if you do "believe" in guns, surely you don't believe in senseless killing. And surely you know that anger management is an issue that is more common with gun owners than with the nonviolent majority.
Please. Just. Stop!!!!!
97
@Susan
As usual, your personal conviction shines while your plea does not fall on deaf ears. One wonders how many ''outcasts'' of society plan their revenge based solely on the inequality, disparity and rejection of them by certain segments in power ? We can never truly know, because we are not allowed to study, put it all together and actually do something about it.
Alas, we keep up the fight, but by peaceful means.
Keep the faith.
29
@FunkyIrishman
Praise from the praiseworthy is praise indeed. Keep the faith baby!
28
Matt Gaetz is a National Enquirer headline-spouting bobblehead impersonating a congressman. Adding to examples Gail noted: Gaetz squired to Trump's State of the Union address -- Chuck Johnson, a banned Twitter troll, accused Holocaust denier and vocal affiliate of the "alt-right" white nationalist movement. Gaetz has argued that WaPo's Khashoggi isn't really a journalist, and Haiti is basically just "sheet metal and garbage," when attempting to defend Trump's racist "shithole countries" comments. Gaetz' side job includes preening for Alex Jones' InfoWars and Fox Entertainment News; the more outrageous the lies the better in true Trump genuflecting form.
Florida deserves better: one of Parkland's parents in office instead of this racist loser.
Source: https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2018/10/18/florida-rep-matt-gaetz-is-a-terrible-person
https://www.gq.com/story/matt-gaetz-trumpiest-congressman-in-washington?verso=true
709
@Ann
How can there be enough people who would vote for this kind of non-human being?! Since there apparently are enough in his district, that's scary.
68
@Ann now what has to happen is that the Parkland young MUST go to his district and organize someone decent from either party to run against him. Then target every Congressman/woman like him across the country and do the same. Regardless of what anyone thinks there are enough decent citizens in any Congressional district to elect solid, decent Reps.
34
@Ann. If Florida deserves better they should vote better.
19
Globally, the United States led the world in the rate of firearm deaths in children and youth (ages 1 to 19) among countries with available data in 2016.
The child/youth firearm death rate in the US was 36.5 times higher than in a dozen comparable high-income countries around the world.
We're #1 ! ... in dead children by gunshot.
https://cnn.it/2CnDQC8
And if you're looking to increase your chances of dying by gunshot, your best chance is to head over to a red state, where gun anarchy is the law of the land in the name of "free-DUMB !"
Location Firearm Death Rate per 100,000 by state
Alaska 24.5
Alabama 22.9
Montana 22.5
Louisiana 21.7
Missouri 21.5
Mississippi 21.5
Arkansas 20.3
Wyoming 18.8
West Virginia 18.6
New Mexico 18.5
Tennessee 18.4
South Carolina 17.7
Oklahoma 17.2
Nevada 16.7
Idaho 16.4
Kentucky 16.2
Kansas 16
Arizona 15.8
Georgia 15.4
Indiana 15.3
Utah 14
Ohio 13.7
North Carolina 13.7
Colorado 13.4
North Dakota 13.2
Pennsylvania 12.5
Texas 12.4
Florida 12.4
Maryland 12.3
Illinois 12.1
Oregon 12.1
Virginia 11.9
South Dakota 11.9
Maine 11.7
Delaware 11.7
Vermont 11.7
Michigan 11.3
Washington 11.1
Wisconsin 10.6
New Hampshire 10.4
Iowa 9
Nebraska 8.3
Minnesota 8.2
California 7.9
New Jersey 5.3
Connecticut 5.1
Rhode Island 3.9
New York 3.7
Massachusetts 3.7
Hawaii 2.5
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm
"Drop dead, America !"
Thanks, Guns Over People party !
Nice GOPeople.
1271
@Socrates
Thanks. I am proud of my state (MA), and afraid that the Supreme Court is eager to damage our ability to cut back on the enhancement of uncontrolled rage with weapons designed to kill in a hurry at a distance, so the killer need not have any blood on his person.
170
Alaska and Hawaii. The 2 non-contiguous states. One is tropical and the other one is frozen. They both became States in 1959. And they both have populations of approximately 15% self-identifying indigenous and/or mixed indigenous populations. One has the highest rate of gun deaths of all States. The other one has the lowest. Why? I always figured that places like Florida, for example, were so crazy because of the weather. It’s nice out. Everyone is outside in public and in each others’ faces. Well, that’s not why. I am not being facetious (it seems I have to say that a lot these days.) when I ask you, Socrates; do you know? Why? Please,
36
@Mix Rix
Much bigger gun/hunting culture in Alaska - often for subsistence, and protection against predators. Very harsh wilderness much of the year. Hawaii grows food year-round.
41
Heather Sher, a doctor involved in caring for Parkland shooting victims wrote In the Atlantic about the devastating injuries caused by an AR-15 rifle vs injuries from handguns.
She wrote of handgun injuries, "If the bullet does not directly hit something crucial like the heart or the aorta, and the victim does not bleed to death before being transported to our care at the trauma center, chances are that we can save him."
Of the AR-15 injuries, she said, "One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle that delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. Nothing was left to repair—and utterly, devastatingly, nothing could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.
She concluded by saying, "I pray that these are the last such wounds I have to see, and that AR-15-style weapons and high-capacity magazines are banned for use by civilians in the United States, once and for all."
Unfortunately Florida's Representative Matt Gaetz and others like him, such as Sen. McConnell, all stooges for NRA, stand in the way and don't seem to care.
1990
@RK
Yes, and if the Mueller investigation proves the link between the Russians and a $50 M contribution from them to the NRA subsequently used for political campaign donations, we have yet another reason to roll back gun availability, bump stocks, automatic weapon ownership, etc. The NRA-GOP link needs to be broken, which can only happen by continuing to support the Dems in 2020 and beyond.
182
@RK
It has to be their biological family for them to care.
42
Praying won’t get assault rifles off our streets. Only voting will. If you want to save people from senseless gun death, go to the streets and demand it. Go to the voting booth and vote out the people and the party that has blocked common sense gun laws for years. Become single issue voters. As JFK said: “On earth god’s work must truly be our own.”
61
I find it quite amazing that when it comes to guns, the gun advocates(Republicans and Trump) make the argument that gun laws will only be followed by the “good guys”. That “bad guys” don’t follow the law and will always get their guns and limiting guns in society will not keep the guns away from the bad guys. However, when it comes to drugs these same individuals want to build a wall because “drugs are pouring across the southern border“ and we have to keep the drugs out. Using their gun logic, the drug addicts will always get their drugs even if we eliminate drugs coming across the southern border. The problem is not the drugs, but the illegal abusers of those drugs.
Illegal drugs are a multi billion dollar business in this country. I maintain that you could build a wall encircling the entire continental United States and as long as there is a demand and billions to be made, the drugs will continue to find their way into this country.
254
@Brick Rigden Yes: the "criminals won't obey the law" is an argument against laws in general, and thus clearly unsound. Specifically, it neglects the effects on any enforcement.
22
@Brick Rigden
How utterly naive Americans are, or selectively ignorant. Way back in the 1970s , meth was being cooked up in row houses in Philly. Crack was cooking in the 80s. LSD under various permutations was cooking in tge 60s. Rorer 714s were on the streets in abundance,much like guns now. Was it immigrants? Nope, it was good ole American exceptionalism.
8
"of" any enforcement
3
Another good one, Gail. Unfortunately, I don’t think the political right gets irony. Or logic.
345
@B Wilkins
It doesn't mater whether or not they get it, because they just don't care!
18
The political right gets NRA money stuffed up in their mouths making them “speechless” against gun violence. True Christians they are.
11
Ah, Gail, if only irony was as compelling as lobbyists' campaign contributions. If only the GOP gave a whit about doing what voters want. If only people didn't fall for the fear-based messaging by the NRA. If only Americans and some of the Supreme Court justices understood that the 2nd Amendment is for militias. If only we could have age requirements, testing, and licensing for guns as we do for car and truck drivers, airplane pilots, ship captains. If only the nightmarish Congressional Republicans and Mitch McConnell were a bad dream. Sigh.
871
@Cordelia28. Exactly! We require car owners to carry insurance on their vehicles to cover any injuries/damages caused by someone driving that car. Why couldn't we do the same with guns? More dangerous guns would merit a higher insurance premium, as would gun owners with a history of accidents and poor choices.
Also just like driving, we could license people to operate firearms. Pass written and practical tests, renew every few years, and revoke the license as a consequence for citations.
23
Gail mentions the legislators "in their role as worker bees for the National Rifle Association."
Let's not drop that codependent coexistence so easily - the National Rifle Association its web of financing.
Discuss ?
76
@R. Law Not exactly sure what you mean, however, NRA money definitely helps Republicans, who follow their lead, get elected. The contract is obviously that no new laws restricting guns will be put forth and only laws that expand the ability of domestic violence perpetrators, the mentally ill, and men full of rage to buy more and more guns. In Michigan, gun laws that expand rights are frequently brought before the legislature and approved. There is no question that the NRA has blocked the enactment of rational background check laws, has stopped US funding for gun violence prevention medical research, and gotten their partisan message broadcast by politicians who take their funding.
55
@R. Law Are you referring to the influx of money from Russia through the NRA? I suspect that is one reason the RepubliCONs do not want to investigate the Russian connections between Kaptain Kaos and the Russian financiers. What better way to launder the money than through the NRA?
25
@R. Law
Let's not forget the NRA's apparent Russian patrons as well.
18
Perhaps the right of center dialogue will go something to this effect. Because so many guns are already in circulation, the proper thing to do is grab as many guns as you can. It's a bit like collecting life rafts just in case the big ship begins to sink, because we are surrounded by water.
But who sold the world those guns? And who profited by it? And who is getting campaign financing from it?
Here in NYC, when we have a flood with water coming from the ceiling, the first thing we do is turn off the water.
223
@Hank Schiffman
Actually not - if it's public-sector housing, you call a press conference to blame someone either in the state or federal government...
1
@W in the Middle
This wins the prize for ----- comment.
16
The 2nd Amendment is not anywhere near absolute, anymore than the 1st Amendment, but here we are trying to ban free speech (in the form of some protests), while blaming a segment of the population for the sole rise in firearm violence.
It's like blaming toast for alcoholism. Doesn't make sense.
Furthermore, we are not allowed to study the matter, or have any type of meaningful cross referencing to make law enforcement better equipped. (all the varying agencies barely speak to one another on this issue, let alone there being that loophole for background checks)
There is going to be an incredible amount of more carnage (4000+ carry on firearms - really ? ) before it even has a chance to get better. (when Democrats take power in 2 years time) Even then, there are plenty on our side that are beholden to the NRA as well. That may be changing, but I will believe it only when I see it.
I suspect that there will have to be an astounding amount of innocent victims that will have to pay the price before inertia has even a chance to take over. (it makes me ill to even type out that sentence)
We just have to do better. Hold your reps accountable.
296
I used to think “an astounding amount of innocent victims” might make a difference, but after Sandy Hook, it occurred to me that the NRA and its lackeys are willing to accept any number of innocent victims to preserve their “right” to own and carry guns. Innocent victims are the logical result of their policy positions, and they still choose unfettered access to guns—the trade-off is worth it to them. I think voters—especially those who consider themselves pro-life—should be constantly reminded of that.
54
The best hope to get sensible gun control legislation is to elect a Democrat president and Democrat controlled Senate in 2020.
19
@Michael
While I don't advocate it, I have concluded that our best chance of getting sensible gun regulation is if politicians' kids start getting shot. It's already been shown that politicians usually dismiss the need for mental health care until they have a family member face a mental health crisis. Whatever the issue, it has to literally hit home before our politicians will look past their own financial interests.
17