I particularly liked this. It seems to me that the enjoyment of one's freedom to own and use guns very quickly diminishes the freedom of others.
"People are buying guns to deal with their anxiety of feeling they have no safety or they have this need for their political sense of freedom, but not everybody shares that level of personal threat," says Joan Burbick, author of "Gun Show Nation," a critique of American gun culture. "And when you're going to insist upon this in public spaces or shared spaces like a basketball game or a park, then you're really intruding into where other people get their personal sense of safety."
One of the closing paragraphs contained some statistics which I suppose are to show the innocuous and even beneficial nature of the gun obsession.
Moreover, the number of deaths caused by a gun in the US has been declining even though the number of guns carried in public has been growing. Federal statistics show that between 2005 and 2009, the number of annual murders committed with a gun dropped from 10,158 to 9,146. During the same period, the number of justifiable, or defensive, homicides rose from 196 to 261.The declining number of murders, approximately 10%, over those 5 years is partly due to better trauma care in hospitals. Advances in medical procedures and lessons-learned from past experiences accounts for a good bit of that. Fewer people who are seriously wounded die.
But more importantly, when either side of the gun debate presents statistics on gun violence to support their argument, they're leaving out the important fact that gun availability is only one factor. Other factors which contribute are, social conditions in the country, unemployment and education, the various waves of illegal drugs being introduced into the society. There are many variables, the gun is just one, but it is one of the most tangible and one about which something should be done, in addition to addressing the other social ills of course.
The number of defensive justified killings rose dramatically, but aren't those numbers laughingly small. Please keep in mind that many gun-rights advocates claim there are 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year, yet only a couple hundred result in death. Don't get me wrong, the fewer people killed with guns, the better I like it, but don't go telling me this handful of justified killings is why we need laxer gun laws. Guns still cause more harm than good, in my opinion.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
