The Human Cost of the Second Amendment

[SecularMotion]

Wisconsin, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine. We all know these place names and what happened there. By the time this column appears, there may well be a new locale to add to the list. Such is the state of enabled and murderous mayhem in the United States.

With the hope of presenting the issue of guns in America in a novel way, I’m going to look at it from an unusual vantage point: the eyes of a nurse. By that I mean looking at guns in America in terms of the suffering they cause, because to really understand the human cost of guns in the United States we need to focus on gun-related pain and death.

Every day 80 Americans die from gunshots and an additional 120 are wounded, according to a 2006 article in The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Those 80 Americans left their homes in the morning and went to work, or to school, or to a movie, or for a walk in their own neighborhood, and never returned. Whether they were dead on arrival or died later on in the hospital, 80 people’s normal day ended on a slab in the morgue, and there’s nothing any of us can do to get those people back.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/the-human-cost-of-the-second-amendment/

[gejohnston]

1. there is a logical fallacy for that.

from 1934-1968 ours federal gun laws were, on balance, about as strict as Canada's. From 1968-1977, our federal gun laws were stricter than Canada's in many ways. Yet they still had a lower murder rate.

[Eleanors38]

2. Many a prohibitionist movement was given birth in the emergency room. Then died there.

Ganja, Gays, Guns, Gin, abortion.

It doesn't work.

[ileus]

13. didn't you read? That's the risk we take for owning things.

not only are we to expect it, but we evidently should accept it...

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. from The Opinionator ?

I've got an opinion, too.

"to really understand the human cost of guns"??

.... From One Nurse to Another:


Stop the Fucking Wars!!!

[MotherPetrie]

5. Gun fans simply don't care. WHen humans get in the way of sacred bullets, it's the humans' fault.

[virginia mountainman]

7. Would you want some cheese with that wine???? nt

[PavePusher]

11. The Whaaaa-mbulance will arrive shortly after the Thought Police.

Current waiting times are 5 minutes to Infinity, assigned randomly, paralleling those of Real-Life(tm) emergency waitning periods.

No consideration of actual severity or How Important You Are(tm) will be taken or given.

[GreenStormCloud]

6. 50 of those 80 were suicides and would have commited suicide some other way.

In the other 25 that were murders, the murderer would have used something else, like a knife or club. The victim would still be dead.

Three of those deaths are from either law inforcements or an armed citizen defending themselves from violent criminals, and I don't mourn the passing of a thug.

Two of those were accidents. Sad, but with a nation of 312 million there will be some accidents.

[ileus]

8. It's a cost I'm not willing to take, that's why I carry.

Safety first....

[Surf Fishing Guru]

9. Spare me . . .

What an amateurish and juvenile exercise in creative writing. In the quest to offer a unique and compelling commentary she only comes across as an naive and uninformed agenda driven do-gooder social engineer who is focused on telling everyone what to do and how to live. Let's examine this a little bit . . .

"With the hope of presenting the issue of guns in America in a novel way, I’m going to look at it from an unusual vantage point: the eyes of a nurse. By that I mean looking at guns in America in terms of the suffering they cause,"

Not unique or novel. Anti-gun rights activists have been trying to frame regular gun ownership and linking that to criminal and suicide gun deaths in the context of being a "public health crisis" for decades.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1580033/

http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2898%2900060-9/abstract

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=397742

"Every day 80 Americans die from gunshots . . . Those 80 Americans left their homes in the morning and went to work, or to school, or to a movie, or for a walk in their own neighborhood, and never returned. . . ."

Since more than half of those deaths are suicides, (55%), it's much more likely most of those deaths occurred while the person was alone in a dark room in their home with a bottle of booze next to them and a bottle of psychotropic drugs in their medicine cabinet stemming from failed "therapy" from a mental health "professional".

Since 2006 is mentioned the actual numbers of total gun deaths that year from all intents was 30,896. Suicides numbered 16,883 and actual homicides numbered 12,791 (35 per day).

So, it is evident she is overstating the true number of people who could honestly be said to have "left their homes in the morning and went to work, or to school, or to a movie, or for a walk in their own neighborhood, and never returned" by over 128%.

"In a way that few others do, I became aware early on that nurses deal with death on a daily basis."

Spare me the self-serving appeal to authority.

"The focus on preserving life and alleviating suffering, so evident in the hospital, contrasts strikingly with its stubborn disregard when applied to lives ended by Americans lawfully armed as if going into combat."

I resent her premise of laying the moral blame (or even more absurd, the actual blame) for violent crime on the law-abiding citizen. I reject her implicit absolution of violent criminals for their misdeeds and such thinking infuriates me and other law-abiding gun owners and only makes people on the left appear out of touch. Such kooky appeals to emotion are ignored in any discussion of public policy and the person presenting such BS is immediately dismissed as offering any worthwhile opinion on issues of public policy.

"Gun advocates say that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The truth, though, is that people with guns kill people,"

An honest examination of gun violence / homicides finds that both the victims and shooters are usually already criminals (and most are legally prohibited from owning a gun).

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-31-criminal-target_N.htm

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-30-baltvictims_N.htm

"And while there can be no argument that the right to bear arms is written into the Constitution, we cannot keep pretending that this right is somehow without limit,"

Trauma centers are treating the failures of the criminal justice and the mental health systems, not any deficiency in the Constitution or its application.

If the writer really wants to effect change perhaps she should move from oncology to psych? . . .

"No one argues that it should be legal to shout “fire” in a crowded theater; we accept this limit on our right to speak freely because of its obvious real-world consequences. Likewise, we need to stop talking about gun rights in America as if they have no wrenching real-world effects . . . "

A legal idiot too, who didn't see that coming?

"Many victims never stand a chance against a dangerously armed assailant, and there’s scant evidence that being armed themselves would help."

You mean you have never seen any evidence . . .

Over 30 years ago the Justice Department put the number of victims of crime defending themselves at an average of over 80,000 a year:

"On average in 1987-92 about 83,000 crime victims per year used a firearm to defend themselves or their property. Three-fourths of the victims who used a firearm for defense did so during a violent crime; a fourth, during a theft, household burglary, or motor vehicle theft."

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/ascii/hvfsdaft.txt

Since then millions of CCW permits have been issued . . .

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Government stats also show that those who defend themselves with a firearm are the least likely to be injured . . . even less than those victims who offer no resistance to the criminal:

"At a minimum, victims use guns to attack or threaten the perpetrators in about 1 percent of robberies and assaults--about 70,000 times per year--according to NCVS data for recent years. These victims were less likely to report being injured than those who either defended themselves by other means or took no self-protective measures at all. Thus, while 33 percent of all surviving robbery victims were injured, only 25 percent of those who offered no resistance and 17 percent of those who defended themselves with guns were injured. For surviving assault victims, the corresponding injury rates were, respectively, 30 percent, 27 percent, and 12 percent."

https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/fireviol.txt

"I have a request for proponents of unlimited access to guns."

I have a request for do-gooder social engineers like our nurse here . . . When presenting your position don't wildly exaggerate your 'supporting' stats, don't tell us you have special powers of observation and understanding, don't make fallacious legal arguments that on their face violate fundamental American principles (i.e., our resistance to prior restraint) and finally, as we see directly above, don't argue against extreme, non-existent positions you have invented for your 'opponent' . . . Of course you 'feel' authoritative and correct when your position is set against against the enemy of all that's good and pure, those, "proponents of unlimited access to guns". Problem is you might as well be railing against the dangers of carnivorous pink unicorns. Your 'enemy' is the broken mental health system and the broken criminal justice system, not law-abiding citizens.

[friendly_iconoclast]

14. +1. Good smackdown to a whiny appeal to emotion there.

[slackmaster]

10. Basic gun safety should be taught in public schools

[PavePusher]

12. I see nothing in the Second Amendment or the rest of the Constitution....

that allows people to commit crimes.... so that argument is null and void.

Suicide would seem to be covered by the 9th and 10th Amendments as an individual Right. YMMV.

[Atypical Liberal]

15. This just in: "People die from guns!" Story at 11.

People do good things with guns, and people do bad things with guns. That's just the way it is.

[Francis Marion]

16. The Human cost of NOT having a Second Amendment

You don't want to make this argument, but here it is.

Aushwitz
Ravensbruck
Dachau
Treblinka
Saschenhausen
...and many others, for a total of 12 million deaths.

Soviet Gulags- far more than 10 million inmates; we have to estimate how many died.

Great Leap Forward- from 18 to 40 million deaths from starvation.

The Killing Fields- well over a million people murdered.

And Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Sudan...

Given the choice between protecting myself and family and NOT being able to do so?

I'll take two AK-47s, please.

NEVER AGAIN.

[Grave Grumbler]

17. +1000

[Remmah2]

18. Some people think all that stuff is made up and fabricated.

Because it does not affect them directly.

You for got the KKK lynchings and native indian genocides. (USA homeland).

[trouble.smith]

19. guns don't kill people, criminals kill people and criminals don't obey gun laws, be they old or new.

Last edited Thu Oct 18, 2012, 11:59 PM - Edit history (1)

I wonder why some folks can't grasp that obvious reality. It really makes their whole anti-gun argument specious. They just keep putting it out there though, hoping to attract enough useful idiots to their cause to effect some kind of change.