Over the years, I have come to believe that from time to time, The New Yorker Magazine publishes an article which has a fundamental impact on the way we discuss political issues and events. I am thinking, for example, about ‘Fire in the Lake,’ the 1972 article by Frances Fitzgerald, which set the national discussion about Viet Nam onto a proper track.
I was hoping that the recent article by Ian Frazier, ‘Fighting America’s Gun Plague,’ might do the same thing. After all, the article appeared at the same time that a serious Congressional debate about gun violence is about to take place.
Unfortunately, Frazier’s article doesn’t move the discussion about gun violence forward at all. What it does is promote the same, basically useless bromides for dealing with gun violence that the gun-control community has been promoting for the past 20 years.
The USA doesn’t suffer 125,000 intentional gun deaths and gun injuries every year because guns aren’t safely stored. We don’t have a fatal violence rate that is 7 to 20 times higher than any other advanced country because we don’t require that personal transfers of guns be FBBI-approved. We don’t have a gun-homicide rate which is the 3rd-highest cause of deaths for people between the ages of 25 and 34.
Most of all, we don’t have gun violence because we own 275 million guns, or 300 million guns, or 375 million guns, or whatever the real number is.
We have gun violence for one, simple reason – ready? We are the only country in the entire world which allows guns that are designed and used only for killing human beings to be commercially and legally sold.
This many come as a great shock to my many friends who are active in the various efforts to reduce the violence caused by guns, but anyone who believes that a Glock 17 handgun or an AR-15 rifle can be made ‘safe’ just by talking about gun ‘safety,’ doesn’t know anything about guns. But what does Ian Frazier and his group of activists at New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (NYAGV) believe? That we can reduce gun violence by lobbying for ‘gun-safety’ laws.
New York State now has a very strong gun-safety law. It requires that “all guns in homes with children be under lock and key.” The law, known as Nicholas’s Law, was passed in 2015 and the NYAGV group takes well-deserved credit for getting this measure onto the books. Frazier’s article about gun violence is basically a paean to the work being done by the NYAGV.
There’s only one little problem, however, when we sit down and try to figure out whether Nicholas’s Law has made guns more ‘safe.’ New York State registered 849-gun deaths in 2015, the number dropped to 772 in 2017 and went back up to 821 the following year. Know how many of these deaths each year were accidental? Since 2010, the number of accidental gun deaths in New York State has never been higher than – ten!
Do me a favor and please don’t respond to the previous paragraph by telling me that ‘every life’ is important. That’s not the point. The point is that The New Yorker Magazine says that Ian Frazier’s article is all about how we should ‘fight’ America’s gun plague.
So, tell me. If the “Chinese virus” was only killing 10 people in the United States every year, would we be calling it a pandemic or a plague? No, we wouldn’t be paying attention to it at all.
I have been saying what follows again and again for the last nine years since I started writing about gun violence before the massacre at Sandy Hook. So, I’m going to say it again.
Until we get rid of guns that are only designed to do one thing – end human life – we won’t get rid of gun violence, no matter how many trips a bunch of school kids make to Albany or to Washington, D.C.
Want to understand what needs to be done? You can read it right here: Home | Mysite 1 (bantheseguns.org).
Want to get things started? Try https://www.change.org/bankillerhandgunsnow or https://www.change.org/Ban_Assault_Rifles_Now.
And yes, as soon as my 501c3 application is approved, there will also be an organization you can join.
Apr 23, 2021 @ 13:34:39
You just post the same thing over and over again. It’s been going on for years. Some gun grabber makes a statement. But they don’t say EXACTLY what you want to them to say, so you whine about how wrong they are and how they should just be saying BAN BAN BAN the scary black racist combat assault bottom loading slaughter weapons. You’ve gotten a lot less subtle about it recently. But anyone with a brain could tell that you’ve always wanted buy back (read: CONFISCATE) a large number of guns from law abiding citizens.
Hopefully you’ll convince some of your fellow antigunners though. The more antigunners loudly proclaiming their support gun confiscation, the better. This will damage the credibility of the antigun movement in general and cause infighting in their community. That will be a very good thing for REAL gun people.
Have you come up for a name for your antigun organization? Here’s a suggestion: “Hypocrites who own the very guns they want the government to confiscate.” What do you think, too many syllables?
I wouldn’t give my “killer guns” if there were a mass shooting every day. Got it?
Apr 23, 2021 @ 13:51:10
It’s not “Time To Get Rid Of Killer Guns” it’s “Time To Get Rid Of Our Judicial System”
Juan Foster, 38, was identified as the man who fired shots from a silver Jeep Cherokee, striking an 18-year-old man as the victim walked out of a convenience store in the 200 block of West North Avenue in June 2019, police said at the time.
The victim suffered two gunshot wounds to his torso and graze wounds to his shoulder and elbow.
Now, Foster has pleaded guilty to the aggravated discharge count in exchange for two years probation from Judge Catherine Haberkorn, court records show. Prosecutors dropped the two weapons charges as part of the deal.
“T W O Y E A R S P R O B A T I O N”
This is not an anomaly for the Chicago area.
Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws and what good are they if prosecutors continue to drop weapon charges?
No, lets just go after the low hanging fruit. Besides it’s easy money and doesn’t take much brain power when writing about it.
Apr 23, 2021 @ 14:34:39
Again, this is not an anomaly. Look at most any big city court records with firearm charges and I believe you’ll find similarly results.
Prosecutors charged a North Side man with felony possession of a firearm without a valid Firearm Owner ID (FOID) as well as five misdemeanor counts of unlawful use of a weapon, misdemeanor possession of exploding bullets, misdemeanor possession of anabolic steroid, and a city violation of possessing a firearm silencer.
The state agreed to drop all charges except one count of possessing a firearm while ineligible to hold a Firearm Owner’s ID card. In return for his guilty plea, Mather received a sentence of two years probation and credit for 487 days he spent on electronic monitoring. He also paid $974 in fines and court costs, records show.
Judge Catherine Haberkorn oversaw the case.
At the time of the police raid, Mather was on bond for misdemeanor domestic battery and criminal damage to property. The domestic battery charge was later dropped, but he did a year of supervised release on the criminal damage case, which court records show also had a domestic element. A judge terminated the supervision satisfactorily in September 2020.
ONCE AGAIN, GUNS ARE BAD.
Apr 23, 2021 @ 16:27:58
….More Hot Air and Hipocracy from Mike “the Negligent Discharge Guy”.
When are you going to give up YOUR Guns?