"If policymakers are to have a solid empirical and research base for decisions about firearms and violence, the federal government needs to support a systematic program of data collection and research that specifically addresses that issue," wrote the National Academy of Sciences in 2004.
How blessedly naive is their faith in our policymakers! As if a lack of information about gun violence is what's preventing reasonable gun control!
Despite lots of "stale" data like the classic Luby's massacre in Texas in 1991 with 23 killed and 20 wounded, Thurston HS in Oregon in 1998, Columbine HS in Colorado in 1999, the DC snipers in 2002, etc., since 2004, when the NAS pleaded for more research, we've gathered plenty of "data": Red Lake High School in Minnesota; Paradise, PA Amish School; Trolley Square Mall in Utah, Virginia Tech; Northern Illinois University; and more recently the attack on Fort Hood, the Rep. Gabrielle Giffords-Tucson massacre, the Batman movie massacre, and the Sikh temple shooting spree, and on and on. Still, the problem is that we need more data!....
Seriously though, we Americans are inured to terrible gun violence and shooting rampages. Only the victims' families give a s**t.
And gun nuts believe that all this needless carnage is the price we pay for our liberty: "The 2nd Amendment has kept us free for the last 200 years; we can't get rid of it now!" they argue. (I could just as easily argue that apple cider, or anything else that's been around for the past 200 years, has kept us free, but never mind these logical fallacies....)
Indeed, if you accept the silly premise that firearms are the only thing standing between Americans and tyranny, then certainly, 30,000 gun-related deaths a year is not too great a price to pay. No price, in terms of body counts, is too dear. There can be no empirical, rational argument against such an irrational belief.
By Dan Morain
August 10, 2012 | The Sacramento Bee
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