6 Real Ways We Can Reduce Gun Violence in America the once deeply conservative time.com promises. Not to put too fine a point on it, Sean Gregory, Chris Wilson, Alice Park and Alic Jenkins offer Time readers the same sh*t in a different wrapper. Here are the fearsome foursome’s proposals . . .
1. Buying a gun should be like buying a car — “Lawmakers can learn lessons from auto safety. To start, they can put in effect more rigorous requirements for owning firearms. “For the most part, it is much easier to be a legal gun owner in America than it is to be a legal driver,” says David Hemenway, director of the Injury Control Research Center at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.”
2. Pass gun laws that actually reduce gun violence – “Researchers are also finding links between right-to-carry laws–which require governments to issue concealed-carry permits to citizens who meet certain requirements–and spikes in firearms crime. A 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper estimates that 10 years after the adoption of right-to-carry laws, violent crime is 13% to 15% higher than it would have been without those policies.”
3. Doctors can help reduce gun violence. Let them – “Doctors say such gag laws and restrictions hamper their ability to discuss issues that can affect patient safety; after all, they talk about the dangers of smoking or of not wearing a seat belt in a car. “My role is not to be judgmental,” says Dr. Joseph Wright, chair of the committee on emergency medicine for the AAP. “We are asking about and providing information about what science has demonstrated as the most effective ways to keep children safe in homes with guns.”
4. Invest in smart gun technology – “All the pieces appear to be in place. The safety technology is available. Entrepreneurs have introduced products that use biometrics to identify a weapon’s rightful owner while locking it for everyone else. Such smart guns may not prevent mass shootings with firearms purchased legally. But they can prevent crimes or suicides with weapons owned by somebody else. They can also cut down on accidental shootings. According to the CDC, an average of 500 people are shot to death unintentionally every year.”
5. Eliminate funding restrictions on gun violence research – “Some states are trying to pick up the slack. California recently opened the nation’s first state-funded firearms-violence research center, on the Sacramento campus of the University of California, Davis. Such investments are urgent as the failure to find answers carries a steep cost. “People are dead today,” says Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the new center, “as a result.”
6. End illegal immunity for gun manufacturers – “No one benefits from frivolous lawsuits. But holding manufacturers liable for the misuse of their products, experts say, would incentivize them to make firearms safer. “If pillows caused fatalities at that level, those companies would be bankrupt,” says Fleegler of Boston Children’s Hospital. “If there were 500 deaths a year associated with any consumer product, it would be banned, regulated, fixed. But here, nothing.”
Let’s see . . . driving’s not a right, carry laws decrease crime, docs should stay in their wheelhouse (but if they don’t it’s a free country), talk to New Jersey about smart guns, the current CDC research regs only ban gun control advocacy, and gunmakers’ legal immunity is no different than carmakers’.
That’s #enough of that.
So what could America do to reduce “gun violence” without dinging its citizens’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms?