By Robert B Young, MD
Sometimes even mainstream media reports rationally about their favorite whipping boy, “gun violence”.
Robert B Young, MD
In this Reuters report by Ronnie Cohen on January 13, another study by Garen Wintemute, MD from the University of California-Davis’s Violence Prevention Research Program is discussed. It is apparently an analysis of rates and numbers of homicides and suicides by gun from 2003-2012. Wintemute and the VPRP have long taken a position against gun ownership. Wintemute is quoted here about who “the societal burden of gun violence falls on”, as if it’s a contagious illness affecting certain ages and races of people beyond their control. His answer, as always, is for more gun control laws, thinking that might be more likely because many legislators fall into the category of middle-age to older white men who most commit suicide with guns. (Of course, the other notable category he mentions are gunshot homicides, that of young black men ages 20-24, folks not very well-represented in government.)
For comment, Cohen turns to Catherine Barber of the Means Matter campaign, a suicide-prevention project of the Harvard School of Public Health. She also typically blames guns for their misuse. Guns are indeed highly lethal when accessible to impulsively self-destructive users. But here she disagrees that gun-control laws could reduce suicides. Instead, she actually sees “the need to be able to talk to gun owners” about securing firearms from vulnerable loved ones. She thinks “that’s a more productive approach because when you just go down the road of legislation, everyone gets angry and starts taking sides”.
Well, no kidding. How about talking to one another, encouraging people to behave responsibly in managing access to guns, and not using mournful tragedies as excuses to pass more laws restricting the rights of the vast majority of responsible, safe gun owners who care more than anyone for the safety of their families?
Maybe there is some hope.