Things you thought were true about
guns, but really aren’t
By Will Collette
Guns do not offer protection. Wayne
LaPierre, the NRA and all our local gun-nut yokels are dead wrong – sometimes
literally – in insisting that more widespread gun ownership means more
protection and less crime.
Scientific evidence to back up the
NRA’s point of view is lacking, and thanks to the NRA, there is a lot less
research available to argue against their position. That’s because the NRA got
its disciples in Congress to forbid federal research on gun violence.
Another study done for the NIH
before the NRA won the ban on research was a 2006 study that showed a marked increase in men’s
testosterone levels after using
firearms and were three times more likely to engage in aggressive act. You’d
think the NRA would like research like that – shows guys with guns have balls,
right?
Despite the NRA’s victory in banning
federal funding for gun research, that research still gets done, though not as
extensively as it would be. For example, click on this link to a January 2013 study reported in
the New England Journal of Medicine on gun deaths and children.
This study looked at the 6,570
deaths in 2010 among young people aged 1 to 24 years old. They conclude that the
odds of children dying by gunfire increases the more readily available guns
are. Many of these deaths could have been prevented by getting guns out of the
house.
Now, that’s not a popular idea in a
lot of places including Charlestown, where our CCA Party Town Councilors scorn the idea of simple measures
like gun buy-backs that often give families an incentive to get rid of an
unused gun that might otherwise become a fatality-producing plaything.
Here’s an abstract of a Journal of the American Medical
Association article that notes
that gun ownership leads to higher rates of suicide and higher incidence where
the gun is turned on the owner.
Guns in the home do not keep people
safe. Again, remember the macho Texas prosecutor and his taunt to his killers
that he was armed and ready. Contrary to NRA propaganda, the Johns Hopkins School of Public
Health found that
women living in homes with one or more guns are three times more likely to be
murdered by gunfire. If their domestic partner has had a past history of
abusing them, the likelihood is five times higher that they will be shot to
death.
In the on-going debate over guns and
gun violence, there is just too much bullshit being peddled by gun advocates
that flies in the face of logic. And flies in the face of the evidence.
When we have ignorant men like the three CCA Party Councilors scorning one of the few ways we
currently have to at least get a few guns out of homes, we need to ask why? Why
do supposed intelligent men buy into outright lies and make fun of what little
the NRA has left local authorities with as ways to control gun violence?
Five Rhode Island municipalities recently held Rhode Island’s first gun buy-back and, at the end of that day’s business, they removed
just under 200 guns from the streets. I’m sure some of those guns were old.
Many some of them don’t work. But lots of them, regardless of their age, still
hold the potential for death for children, for spouses and girlfriends, for
settling arguments in bloody fashion or for ending one’s own life. Two hundred
down, and lots more to go.