Thursday, June 16, 2016

Head in the Sand for Guns

One reason America has failed to address the epidemic of gun violence (30 deaths a day), apart from the misconstrued 2nd Amendment {19.04.13}, is that it refuses to apply the traditional tools of science and policy research that have been applied to every other public health issue such as teen deaths from drunk driving, heart disease, and cancer. Australia banned assault weapons in 1996 after experiencing multiple mass shootings. Their death rate from gun violence has dropped dramatically. Legitimate hunters and legal owners of weapons will not miss prohibition of semi-automatic military rifles designed to do one thing well: spew high velocity rounds at high rate in order to kill the maximum number of humans as quickly as possible. As one TV comic phrased it, its time for America to grow up and solve the problem. Gun dealers and manufacturers are not patriots in disguise, they are purveyors of a potentially lethal product that are hiding behind a wealthy political lobby too powerful for our feckless, cash-dependent politicians to cross. This address by a gun policy expert from John Hopkins University provides some other rational policy proposals that will reduce the death rate from guns in America: