Thinking of Bringing a Gun into Your Home?

“We Should Not Have This In Common”

Actually, “THIS” has become so common, that we have become inured to the slow walk to nothing in response.  Santa Fe, Texas.

Number 45 promises that this will and must stop, but other than finding a moment to make it all about himself (remember Parkland: “I think I would have run in there and stopped the shooter, really, I do.”) : he’ll do nothing.

Sound cynical?  Read the messages from David Hogg and others from Parkland.  They’ve suffered and know already the cold reluctance of those in the thrall of the NRA to assist them or all of us in any way.  At my age, cynicism might be expected with the pains of aging.  At their young ages, living in our current America is just as debilitating for their souls.  God bless them for the fight.

“Prepare to watch the NRA boast about getting higher donations,” one Parkland student, Cameron Kasky, said on Twitter. “Prepare to see students rise up and be called ‘civil terrorists’ and crisis actors. Prepare for the right-wing media to attack the survivors.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/us/santa-fe-parkland-shooting.html

Usually after the mass shootings – Sandy Hook, Aurora, Las Vegas, Parkland – data indicates a quick jump in gun sales, but surprisingly that expected increase seems to be dropping off recently. 

It’s noticeable because “recently” can be tracked quickly from data and numbers of background checks and purchases of weapons (especially long guns) with the many mass shootings we have in 2018. 
After Sandy Hook, the terrifying image of a deranged child killing children with an AR15 and a sensible President disconnected from the political bridle of the NRA caused a tidal wave of anxious gun-wanters to purchase weapons they figured would rightfully be blocked from sales. Later with a new occupant in the White House, reactions to shootings no longer presents a fear of any ban whatsoever: not on bump stocks, not on refusing purchases for the mentally ill, not on age limits.   

“We're only 20 weeks into 2018, and there have already been 22 school shootings where someone was hurt or killed. That averages out to more than 1 shooting a week.” https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/02/us/school-shootings-2018-list-trnd/index.html

After the Parkland shooting, background checks for long guns like AR-15’s leaped up 12.6%.  I know that sounds amazing, but it’s way down from earlier numbers – when Obama was President.  After Sandy Hook, for example, the percentage increase for long gun purchases (again, assault weapons) was over 50%.  Now with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the fear of political or legal response to any mass shootings by those who want their long guns has noticeably decreased. 

 The graph below shows an arrow pointing to Trump's Inauguration and the drop in sales of one company (Smith & Wesson).  Other sales in other companies have dropped as well.

Quite opposite this national right-wing relaxation of fear and paranoia, local gun manufacturers in Illinois like Springfield Armory are going to the mat with a Democratically controlled General Assembly and their partner in Bruce Vincent Rauner.  The last messages sent out by the Geneseo based company demand everyone prepare to fight any attempt to override the Governor’s veto of a bill to demand Illinois gun retailers to become licensed. 

In addition, Springfield Armory wanted everyone to stop the following bills: (HB1467) banning bump stocks, etc., (HB1469) banning high capacity magazines, (HB1664) Hotlines for people to call in individuals who are demonstrating clear and dangerous behaviors who have guns, (HB1465) raising the age for gun purchases to 21.  But you can also get a special deal on the new “Saint” from Springfield Armory if you hurry:

And so, we stumble along as a nation playing this pattern of horror  è  surprise  è  thoughts and prayers  è  blame of mentally ill, students themselves, number of doors in a school  è  START OVER. 

BUT I JUST WANT A GUN…FOR PROTECTION?

Scientific American produced a careful exegesis/study of what guns specifically do in our country and how such weapons alter our lives.  It’s a very worthy and sobering read.

Since Wayne LaPierre and Grover Norquist and the K Street lobbyists have fallen like a hard rain on Washington’s willing swamp-dwellers, the numbers of Gun related deaths from increased ownership of guns have not changed in many ways – EXCEPT ONE.

Police interventions have by and large remained the same.  Accidental shootings have remained stable or decreasing.  Homicides have shown nothing significant in any increase, altho0ugh data used by Scientific American does not include this last year when we have been under the weight of 24 hour news reporting. 

The difference is suicides.   In 2014, according to Scientific American, nearly two-thirds of gun deaths occurring in the United States were suicides: 21,334 people. A jump of nearly 5000 people.

Bring a gun into the house, and you have changed the possible outcomes of your own or another’s life’s end in significant manner.  How?  You’ll never quite know, except that statistically, when you’re having that down moment, or that feeling of despair, there’s an ultimate outcome in a box next to your bed or on the shelf above your sweaters. 

“Several studies now confirm that suicide is often a decision made suddenly. If the moment somehow passes safely, the evidence suggests, lives can be saved in the short and long term.

“There's a fair amount of research showing that the suicide crisis is time-limited,” says John Mann, a professor of translational neuroscience at Columbia University who studies suicide. Two thirds of those who survived a suicide attempt, according to one 1991 study, had started planning their course of action less than an hour beforehand. Another study notes that almost half of the 82 people who attempted suicide said they had started thinking about their current attempt less than 10 minutes earlier. Moreover, in the case of guns especially, an investigation by the New Hampshire medical examiner's office showed that nearly one in 10 suicides by firearm from 2007 to 2009 involved a weapon that was purchased or rented the preceding week—often within just a few hours.”   https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-plan-to-prevent-gun-suicides/

The danger to yourself from yourself or your family, therefore, is magnified once you purchase a weapon; more terribly, it is confirmed when you provide such agents of death for your children – returning their arms to them after confiscation, leaving them free to take and use, allowing them to purchase or hold them even as you know the mental angst of someone who needs intervention.  These are other issues facing the person who might jump at securing their Second Amendment right after Santa Fe…or the next catastrophe. 

Please consider what the NRA will never tell you.