Guns and People

Guns don't kill people; people kill people, says the NRA.
People use guns to kill people, says Pug Mahoney.

   "That's the price we pay for our right to bear arms under the Second Amendment," say gun advocates.
   What's with this "we" stuff?
   Speak for yourself. That may be the price you are willing to pay. But it's really being paid by others, not by you. When someone close to you becomes that price and you watch them die, then you can say it was an acceptable price. Then you can talk about a price you are willing to pay. Until then, be quiet.
         
   There are now more guns in America than there are people. Some 370 million guns in a country with a total population of 350 million, according to a summary of various estimates.
   But no matter how you count them, it's clear that America leads the world in the number of guns available to people, and also leads the world in the number of gun deaths, including homicide, suicide and accidental shootings.
   Conclusion: More guns leads to more deaths.
   Fewer than 5 percent of the world population is American, but they own 42 percent of all the guns in the world. And Americans were responsible for fully one-third of all mass shootings worldwide from 1966 to 2012, according to a study by Adam Lankford of the University of Alabama.
  America's gun homicide rate was 33 per million in 2009, according to a report in the New York Times, compared to 5 per million in Canada and 0.7 in Britain. (Here's a link to that report: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings)   
   Each time there is a mass shooting in America, the current president proclaims, "Now is not the time" to talk about stricter gun control.
   But when is the time? When will that time come? How many more must die before government officials wake up and smell the gun powder?
   
   The president has also said that mass shootings are a mental health issue, not a gun issue. That's only partly true, and it's no reason to accept these tragedies as "the price we pay" for the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right to bear arms. 
  Moreover, this attitude ignores the opening phrase of the Second Amendment: "A well regulated militia ..." The rest of the amendment refers to this militia as being "essential to the security of a free state," and the right of a state's "people" -- plural -- to keep and bear arms. There is no reference to the right of an individual to have as many firearms as one might want.
   Clearly, a person with an unhealthy or dangerous mental status should not have access to a high-capacity, military style weapon, or even a single-shot pistol.
   Nevertheless, gun advocates insist there is little that can be done to limit, much less eliminate, mass shootings such as those so common in America. Studies have shown a clear correlation between the number of guns in a country, and the number of violent deaths caused with these firearms. Further, the extent of mental or emotional health issues had little bearing on the final statistic, that more guns means more death.
   To claim that mass shooting is primarily or solely a mental health issue and not a gun issue is to ignore fact and reality, and therefore little can be done. It is the price we pay for the right to keep and bear arms, according to that argument.
   It is a fallacy to believe that understanding means acceptance and acceptance brings agreement.
   Reasons are not always excuses.
   We can understand the reasons for a person's speech or behavior, but that does not mean we must accept it or agree with it. Some speech or behavior is unacceptable no matter the reasons or circumstances. We may understand the reasons, but that does not excuse the speech or behavior.
   This is especially true for gun violence. Too often, guns and people don't mix.