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"Gun control doesn't work just like "gun free zones" don't work.
The only way gun control will work is a total and complete ban of guns" --Gunnut-I could not disagree mote because:-
I may have a perspective which is either center-left or Leftist, yet I'm a realist ! I know that the the attachment , the opponents of gun control and and any stringent and rational regulations governing gun-ownership, harbor towards the hallowed , sacrosanct and infallible IInd amendment , is more formidable than the umbilical cord tying the newborn babe to its mother.
So even though it would be ideal, I am not suggesting banning of guns nor seizure of guns, like they have done in Australia. My ideas are mostly borne out by some of the recommendations made in the following article:-
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/...uce-gun-deaths
The ideas written as a narrative and recommendations made which struck a cord with me are:-
"I don’t think I’m being reductionist in describing the NRA’s position on gun safety as pretty basic: Guns are good; gun regulations are bad. That’s unfortunate because the key insight in the perpetually fruitless gun control debate is that our social problem is deaths from guns, not the guns from themselves.
That distinction opens up the door to what I’ve always believed is the sanest approach to gun policy: a public health approach. What if we treated guns like cars, cribs and small electrical appliances? What if we focused less on the guns and more on when, where and why people get hurt or killed by them?
Automobile safety is an encouraging example. America’s roads are much, much safer than they were a half century ago. We didn’t become anti-car. We didn’t take cars away (except for some chronic drunk drivers). We made cars and roads safer and minimized the situations in which Americans were most likely to kill themselves on the road.
[Check out editorial cartoons about gun rights and gun control.]
In 2010, the last year for which we have data, roughly 11,000 Americans died in gun homicides; 19,000 died by gun suicide; and 600 died from gun accidents – over 30,000 gun deaths a year. To put that in perspective, the faulty General Motors ignition switch at the heart of the current massive recall has been blamed for 13 deaths. Not 13,000. Not 130. Thirteen.
Experts believe that a high proportion of gun deaths are preventable. David Hemenway, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, has been an advocate of the public health approach to gun deaths for decades. I first met him when I was writing about this subject for The Economist in the late 1990s. The NRA annual meeting prompted me to call Professor Hemenway and ask what his top three reforms would be if our goal were to reduce unnecessary gun deaths.
Here are three sensible policy changes that would enable Americans to keep their guns and not die from them, too:
Universal background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Unlike drugs, just about every gun starts out legal. (You can make heroin in the remote regions of Afghanistan; you can’t make a handgun that way.) Regulations that make it harder for legal guns to end up in the hands of criminals and psychopaths will make it less likely that those criminals or psychopaths rob or shoot the rest of us.
More responsibility on the part of manufacturers for producing safer guns. The phrase “safer gun” may seem like an oxymoron; it’s not. There are many ways that gun technology can be improved to reduce inadvertent harm. Guns can be childproofed, so that young children cannot fire them. Guns can be equipped with “smart chips” so they cannot be fired by anyone but the owner. (This makes them both safer and less likely to be stolen.) Recording the unique ballistic fingerprint on every firearm would make it possible to trace any gun used in a crime back to its owner.
Lean on gun dealers to do much more to prevent “straw purchases,” in which a person buys a gun legally with the express intent of passing it on to someone who cannot buy a gun legally (e.g. a convicted felon). We do not consider it acceptable for retailers to sell liquor to people who are underage. So why is this practice in the gun trade not more rigorously opposed, including by gun enthusiasts? Let me connect the dots: If it is harder for bad people to get guns, then fewer bad people will have guns. "
However the recommendations made by Charles Wheeler the author of the above-article, forgets to make one very important recommendation which is :
> Mandatory annual neuro-psychiatric evaluation before annual "concealed firearms permit" and "gun registrations" can be renewed. An evaluation which would be comprehensive enough to reveal any abnormal /significant decline in safety awareness, safety judgement, visuospatial perception abilities {not just confined to simple vision testion such as errors of refraction but also depth perception, retinal evaluation, visual figure versus ground distinguishing ability ,etc), hearing (both peripheral and central auditory ) evaluation, and gross and fine motor abilities of our fingers, hands, arms, etc }. When I become a responsible gun owner which I intend to become fairly soon, I do not mind to pay extra taxes to the Federal Govt and perhaps extra premium to the Health Insurance Provider (and I would prefer a single payer system similar to what they do in Ist world nations with socialized medicine--topic for debate on another thread :-) ) to enable the Federal Govt to pay for these evaluations and also subsidize based on an obvious means-tested sliding scale of income, for people who cannot afford to pay higher taxes or higher health insurance premiums.
> Accelerate research in the Universities and research institutions of the US to fund more studies by Bio-mechanical Engineers (whose domain of research it would be) to constantly improve and evolve the "smart gun" technology and options.
> Make the revocation of the immoral ban imposed by the Right-Wing sects of the Democratic party and the Republicans---legislative and executive branches of the Federal Govt --on public health organizations like the GA based CDC from conducting studies exploring co-relational or causal studies of public health hazard from gun ownership and gun use --permanent and irreversible !
The above list is not exhaustive ! But lets make safer guns, and lets have stringent "concealed firearms permit" and "gun registration" annual permits and lets all enjoy gun use , abiding by and NOT infringing on the "divine" IInd amendment--worshiped and fiercely protected-- as though written in stone by none other than the seemingly omniscient and omnipotent DIVINE POWER -- and not human, fallible, legislators--even if they were our revered founding fathers !
The only way gun control will work is a total and complete ban of guns" --Gunnut-I could not disagree mote because:-
I may have a perspective which is either center-left or Leftist, yet I'm a realist ! I know that the the attachment , the opponents of gun control and and any stringent and rational regulations governing gun-ownership, harbor towards the hallowed , sacrosanct and infallible IInd amendment , is more formidable than the umbilical cord tying the newborn babe to its mother.
So even though it would be ideal, I am not suggesting banning of guns nor seizure of guns, like they have done in Australia. My ideas are mostly borne out by some of the recommendations made in the following article:-
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/...uce-gun-deaths
The ideas written as a narrative and recommendations made which struck a cord with me are:-
"I don’t think I’m being reductionist in describing the NRA’s position on gun safety as pretty basic: Guns are good; gun regulations are bad. That’s unfortunate because the key insight in the perpetually fruitless gun control debate is that our social problem is deaths from guns, not the guns from themselves.
That distinction opens up the door to what I’ve always believed is the sanest approach to gun policy: a public health approach. What if we treated guns like cars, cribs and small electrical appliances? What if we focused less on the guns and more on when, where and why people get hurt or killed by them?
Automobile safety is an encouraging example. America’s roads are much, much safer than they were a half century ago. We didn’t become anti-car. We didn’t take cars away (except for some chronic drunk drivers). We made cars and roads safer and minimized the situations in which Americans were most likely to kill themselves on the road.
[Check out editorial cartoons about gun rights and gun control.]
In 2010, the last year for which we have data, roughly 11,000 Americans died in gun homicides; 19,000 died by gun suicide; and 600 died from gun accidents – over 30,000 gun deaths a year. To put that in perspective, the faulty General Motors ignition switch at the heart of the current massive recall has been blamed for 13 deaths. Not 13,000. Not 130. Thirteen.
Experts believe that a high proportion of gun deaths are preventable. David Hemenway, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, has been an advocate of the public health approach to gun deaths for decades. I first met him when I was writing about this subject for The Economist in the late 1990s. The NRA annual meeting prompted me to call Professor Hemenway and ask what his top three reforms would be if our goal were to reduce unnecessary gun deaths.
Here are three sensible policy changes that would enable Americans to keep their guns and not die from them, too:
Universal background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Unlike drugs, just about every gun starts out legal. (You can make heroin in the remote regions of Afghanistan; you can’t make a handgun that way.) Regulations that make it harder for legal guns to end up in the hands of criminals and psychopaths will make it less likely that those criminals or psychopaths rob or shoot the rest of us.
More responsibility on the part of manufacturers for producing safer guns. The phrase “safer gun” may seem like an oxymoron; it’s not. There are many ways that gun technology can be improved to reduce inadvertent harm. Guns can be childproofed, so that young children cannot fire them. Guns can be equipped with “smart chips” so they cannot be fired by anyone but the owner. (This makes them both safer and less likely to be stolen.) Recording the unique ballistic fingerprint on every firearm would make it possible to trace any gun used in a crime back to its owner.
Lean on gun dealers to do much more to prevent “straw purchases,” in which a person buys a gun legally with the express intent of passing it on to someone who cannot buy a gun legally (e.g. a convicted felon). We do not consider it acceptable for retailers to sell liquor to people who are underage. So why is this practice in the gun trade not more rigorously opposed, including by gun enthusiasts? Let me connect the dots: If it is harder for bad people to get guns, then fewer bad people will have guns. "
However the recommendations made by Charles Wheeler the author of the above-article, forgets to make one very important recommendation which is :
> Mandatory annual neuro-psychiatric evaluation before annual "concealed firearms permit" and "gun registrations" can be renewed. An evaluation which would be comprehensive enough to reveal any abnormal /significant decline in safety awareness, safety judgement, visuospatial perception abilities {not just confined to simple vision testion such as errors of refraction but also depth perception, retinal evaluation, visual figure versus ground distinguishing ability ,etc), hearing (both peripheral and central auditory ) evaluation, and gross and fine motor abilities of our fingers, hands, arms, etc }. When I become a responsible gun owner which I intend to become fairly soon, I do not mind to pay extra taxes to the Federal Govt and perhaps extra premium to the Health Insurance Provider (and I would prefer a single payer system similar to what they do in Ist world nations with socialized medicine--topic for debate on another thread :-) ) to enable the Federal Govt to pay for these evaluations and also subsidize based on an obvious means-tested sliding scale of income, for people who cannot afford to pay higher taxes or higher health insurance premiums.
> Accelerate research in the Universities and research institutions of the US to fund more studies by Bio-mechanical Engineers (whose domain of research it would be) to constantly improve and evolve the "smart gun" technology and options.
> Make the revocation of the immoral ban imposed by the Right-Wing sects of the Democratic party and the Republicans---legislative and executive branches of the Federal Govt --on public health organizations like the GA based CDC from conducting studies exploring co-relational or causal studies of public health hazard from gun ownership and gun use --permanent and irreversible !
The above list is not exhaustive ! But lets make safer guns, and lets have stringent "concealed firearms permit" and "gun registration" annual permits and lets all enjoy gun use , abiding by and NOT infringing on the "divine" IInd amendment--worshiped and fiercely protected-- as though written in stone by none other than the seemingly omniscient and omnipotent DIVINE POWER -- and not human, fallible, legislators--even if they were our revered founding fathers !
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