@Olivier5,
Nicholas Kristof wrote:Usually pundits toss out their own best arguments while ignoring the other side’s, but today I’m going to try something new and engage directly with the arguments made by gun advocates:
You liberals are in a panic over guns, but look at the numbers. Any one gun is less likely to kill a person than any one vehicle. But we’re not traumatized by cars, and we don’t try to ban them.
It’s true that any particular car is more likely to be involved in a fatality than any particular gun. But cars are actually a perfect example of the public health approach that we should apply to guns. We don’t ban cars, but we do work hard to take a dangerous product and regulate it to limit the damage.
We do that through seatbelts and airbags, through speed limits and highway barriers, through driver’s licenses and insurance requirements, through crackdowns on drunken driving and texting while driving. I once calculated that since 1921, we had reduced the auto fatality rate per 100 million miles driven by 95 percent.
Sure, we could have just said “cars don’t kill people, people kill people.” Or we could have said that it’s pointless to regulate cars because then bicyclists will just run each other down. Instead, we relied on evidence and data to reduce the carnage from cars. Why isn’t that a model for guns?
The "make them safer while retaining their useful qualities" model doesn't apply with guns because Freedom Haters are not trying to pursue that goal. The only thing Freedom Haters want to do is violate civil rights for fun.
Nicholas Kristof wrote:Because of the Second Amendment. The Constitution doesn’t protect vehicles, but it does protect my right to a gun.
Yes, but courts have found that the Second Amendment does not prevent sensible regulation (just as the First Amendment does not preclude laws on defamation). There is no constitutional objection to, say, universal background checks to obtain a gun. It’s crazy that 22 percent of guns are obtained without a check.
Unfortunately Freedom Haters try to use the background check system as a weapon to deprive people of guns even when they've done nothing wrong.
Until we come up with strong protections against such abuses, that's a hard
no on expanding background checks.
Nicholas Kristof wrote:We all agree that there should be limits. No one argues that there is an individual right to own an antiaircraft gun. So the question isn’t whether firearms should all be sacrosanct but simply where we draw the line.
Limits on Constitutional rights are allowed only when they can be justified with a good reason. Freedom Haters constantly pursue limits that are unjustifiable. This is because their goal is not to save lives, but merely to violate people's rights for fun and entertainment.
Nicholas Kristof wrote:When more Americans have died from guns just since 1970 (1.4 million) than in all the wars in American history (1.3 million), maybe it’s worth rethinking where that line should be.
Murderers will kill people regardless of whether they can do it with a gun or not.
And regardless, only a total gun ban would deprive murderers of the ability to have guns, and people have the right to have guns.
Nicholas Kristof wrote:Whoa! You’re inflating the gun violence numbers by including suicides. Almost two-thirds of those gun deaths are suicides, and the blunt reality is that if someone wants to kill himself, he’ll find a way. It’s not about guns.
Actually, that’s not true. Scholars have found that suicide barriers on bridges, for example, prevent jumpers and don’t lead to a significant increase in suicides elsewhere. Likewise, almost half of suicides in Britain used to be by asphyxiating oneself with gas from the oven, but when Britain switched to a less lethal oven gas the suicides by oven plummeted and there was little substitution by other methods. So it is about guns.
I say that is nonsense. Suicidal people will usually find a way, just as homicidal people will usually find a way.
Regardless though, only a total gun ban would prevent suicidal people from having access to guns, and that would be a grave violation of our Constitutional rights.
Nicholas Kristof wrote:No, it’s more about our violent culture. The Swiss and Israelis have large numbers of firearms, and they don’t have our levels of gun violence.
Yes, there’s something to that. America has underlying social problems, and we need to address them with smarter economic and social policies. But we magnify the toll when we make it easy for troubled people to explode with AR-15s rather than with pocketknives.
If there were a way to prevent dangerous people from having guns
while still respecting due process, that would be all right.
People have the right to have ordinary rifles for self defense however, and the AR-15 is just an ordinary rifle.
Nicholas Kristof wrote:You liberals freak out about guns. If you have a swimming pool or a bathtub, that’s more dangerous to neighborhood kids than a gun is. Kids under age 14 are much more likely to die from drowning than from firearms. So why this crusade against guns, but not against bathtubs and pools?
Your numbers are basically right, but only because young children routinely swim and take baths but don’t regularly encounter firearms. But look at the picture for the population as a whole: Over all, 3,600 Americans drown each year, while 36,000 die from guns (yes, including suicides). That’s one reason to be talking more about gun safety than about pool safety.
Not really accurate to include suicides and homicides (which would happen anyway) in a comparison about preventable accidents.
Nicholas Kristof wrote:Note also that a backyard pool isn’t going to be used to mug a neighbor, or to invade a nearby school. Schools don’t have drills for an “active pool situation.” And while some 200,000 guns are stolen each year, it’s more difficult to steal a pool and use it for a violent purpose.
Irrelevant.
Nicholas Kristof wrote:Moreover, we do try to make pools safer. Many jurisdictions require a permit for a pool, as well as a childproof fence around it with self-locking gates. If we have permits and safe storage requirements for pools, why not for guns? What’s wrong with trying to save lives?
Freedom Haters are not pursuing measures that are designed to save lives, but are instead pursuing measures that are designed only to violate civil rights for no reason.
