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Look, people, guns are not the problem, we are
CRAIG MEDRED - OUTDOORS
Published: April 29, 2007
Last Modified: April 29, 2007 at 03:19 AM
LAN'AI, HAWAII -- Once more a tragedy is fueling those now old arguments about the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment protection of the right to keep and bear arms.
Americans love guns or fear them.
At the pier on this island off Maui, you could see both -- the gun lovers toting their cased shotguns from the ferry toward the shuttle bus that would take them to a popular shooting clays range; the gun nervous eyeing the gun cases as if they might contain weapons that would jump out and begin shooting on their own.
Away from the pier later -- sitting in the shade of the deadly, cancer-causing tropical sun -- I read a San Fransisco Chronicle columnist ranting on how America would be a better place if guns were simply banned. It was a piece obviously not written by someone who once shot a grizzly bear off their leg to ensure the damage would end just above the ankle.
There is, obviously, no arguing with the contention that banning guns from this country -- if that were possible -- would eliminate gun deaths.
Likewise, there is no argument that banning motor vehicles would eliminate motor-vehicle deaths.
Motor-vehicle accidents killed about 43,000 people -- 5,000 of them innocent pedestrians -- in 2005.
About 30,000 people died from guns in the same year, more than half of them intentionally. Suicide is a horrible thing for the family and friends of the victim, but it is not something of concern to any of us in society at large.
Homicides -- one person shooting and killing another -- numbered about 12,000.
Given the numbers, you can see the chances are about three times better you'll be killed by someone driving an automobile than someone wielding a gun. Not only that, the stranger who kills you -- if you are so unlucky -- is far more likely to be the driver of another automobile than someone wielding a gun.
Given these realities, we would clearly be safer if we banned cars than if we banned guns.
But all of this is also open to all kinds of speculation and differing interpretation. As has been observed before, there are liars, damn liars and statisticians.
You can make almost any argument you want on this issue, and the residents of the virtual world are doing that now.
The latest tragedy at Virginia Tech, one side argues, might have ended with only a few people dead if there had been an armed citizen on the scene to shoot it out with the killer.
The latest tragedy at Virginia Tech, the other side argues, wouldn't have happened at all if there was better gun control, if it was hard to get a gun, if guns were banned, etc.
Both arguments are as valid as they are invalid.
No one can know what might have happened if there had been someone on the scene able and willing to stop the killer with a bullet. Likewise, no one can know if any gun law would have stopped, or even slowed, this killer's commitment to his murderous task.
And the real problem is that this whole argument about gun control distracts from the real issue in this country, which is a national epidemic of rage.
In the latest case, the rage might have been fueled by mental instability, but it remains symptomatic of the rage that seems to boil just below the surface all across America.
When kids get mad at each other in Anchorage now, they don't decide to pull on the gloves and have it out in the ring; they try to kill each other.
Sometimes, too often, they use guns. Other times, though, it's knives or baseball bats or boots. The problem isn't the weapon of choice, it's the anger.
Why that is? I don't know.
Why it is isn't talked about more is equally beyond my knowledge.
Maybe it is a question too hard to address. Or maybe it is like other issues we, as a society, just don't want to confront.
Look, if we really wanted to save people in this country, we would stop worrying about gun control and institute mandatory, government-enforced daily exercise.
It's a documented fact exercise improves mood, which might help people deal with some of the rage, but that's the tip of the iceberg.
The really serious death rates in America aren't tied to gunfire or automobiles, at least not directly. They're tied to lifestyle.
Consider these numbers on annual deaths from the Centers for Disease Control:
• Heart disease: 654,092
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,884
• Diabetes: 72,815
All of these are, in significant parts, what are called "lifestyle diseases.'' If as much time and energy was spent worrying about them as is spent fretting over gun control, lots of lives could be saved.
Even a 10 percent reduction in deaths from heart disease would save more people than eliminating all deaths from motor-vehicle accidents and firearm homicides combined. The latter deaths, of course, are impossible to zero out no matter what is done. The former is something about which we might be able to do something.
So is the flu. Flu and pneumonia, according to the CDC, kill more than 61,000 people per year.
If the people intent on trying to ban guns in this country put the time, energy and money they spend on that issue into seeing that the old, the young and the infirm got flu shots, they might be able to save more lives than they would by totally eliminating homicide by firearm.
And the reality is that banning firearms is a stupid, utopian idea. Yes, it would make the world a safer place, unless you're the guy with a grizzly bear's teeth already in your leg or a single woman confronting a man with a knife in your home.
Guns aren't bad things or good things. They're things, inanimate objects, chunks of metal with no will of their own.
They're really not the problem. We are.
We are a society in which solving problems with violence has become an almost accepted norm. Our entertainment is full of it. We celebrate gun violence on film.
And when someone acts this out in real life, we blame the gun. There is something wrong here, all right. I'm not sure it's firearms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig Medred is the Daily News outdoors editor and an opinion columnist. Reach him at cmedred@adn.com or 257-4588.
CRAIG MEDRED - OUTDOORS
Published: April 29, 2007
Last Modified: April 29, 2007 at 03:19 AM
LAN'AI, HAWAII -- Once more a tragedy is fueling those now old arguments about the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment protection of the right to keep and bear arms.
Americans love guns or fear them.
At the pier on this island off Maui, you could see both -- the gun lovers toting their cased shotguns from the ferry toward the shuttle bus that would take them to a popular shooting clays range; the gun nervous eyeing the gun cases as if they might contain weapons that would jump out and begin shooting on their own.
Away from the pier later -- sitting in the shade of the deadly, cancer-causing tropical sun -- I read a San Fransisco Chronicle columnist ranting on how America would be a better place if guns were simply banned. It was a piece obviously not written by someone who once shot a grizzly bear off their leg to ensure the damage would end just above the ankle.
There is, obviously, no arguing with the contention that banning guns from this country -- if that were possible -- would eliminate gun deaths.
Likewise, there is no argument that banning motor vehicles would eliminate motor-vehicle deaths.
Motor-vehicle accidents killed about 43,000 people -- 5,000 of them innocent pedestrians -- in 2005.
About 30,000 people died from guns in the same year, more than half of them intentionally. Suicide is a horrible thing for the family and friends of the victim, but it is not something of concern to any of us in society at large.
Homicides -- one person shooting and killing another -- numbered about 12,000.
Given the numbers, you can see the chances are about three times better you'll be killed by someone driving an automobile than someone wielding a gun. Not only that, the stranger who kills you -- if you are so unlucky -- is far more likely to be the driver of another automobile than someone wielding a gun.
Given these realities, we would clearly be safer if we banned cars than if we banned guns.
But all of this is also open to all kinds of speculation and differing interpretation. As has been observed before, there are liars, damn liars and statisticians.
You can make almost any argument you want on this issue, and the residents of the virtual world are doing that now.
The latest tragedy at Virginia Tech, one side argues, might have ended with only a few people dead if there had been an armed citizen on the scene to shoot it out with the killer.
The latest tragedy at Virginia Tech, the other side argues, wouldn't have happened at all if there was better gun control, if it was hard to get a gun, if guns were banned, etc.
Both arguments are as valid as they are invalid.
No one can know what might have happened if there had been someone on the scene able and willing to stop the killer with a bullet. Likewise, no one can know if any gun law would have stopped, or even slowed, this killer's commitment to his murderous task.
And the real problem is that this whole argument about gun control distracts from the real issue in this country, which is a national epidemic of rage.
In the latest case, the rage might have been fueled by mental instability, but it remains symptomatic of the rage that seems to boil just below the surface all across America.
When kids get mad at each other in Anchorage now, they don't decide to pull on the gloves and have it out in the ring; they try to kill each other.
Sometimes, too often, they use guns. Other times, though, it's knives or baseball bats or boots. The problem isn't the weapon of choice, it's the anger.
Why that is? I don't know.
Why it is isn't talked about more is equally beyond my knowledge.
Maybe it is a question too hard to address. Or maybe it is like other issues we, as a society, just don't want to confront.
Look, if we really wanted to save people in this country, we would stop worrying about gun control and institute mandatory, government-enforced daily exercise.
It's a documented fact exercise improves mood, which might help people deal with some of the rage, but that's the tip of the iceberg.
The really serious death rates in America aren't tied to gunfire or automobiles, at least not directly. They're tied to lifestyle.
Consider these numbers on annual deaths from the Centers for Disease Control:
• Heart disease: 654,092
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,884
• Diabetes: 72,815
All of these are, in significant parts, what are called "lifestyle diseases.'' If as much time and energy was spent worrying about them as is spent fretting over gun control, lots of lives could be saved.
Even a 10 percent reduction in deaths from heart disease would save more people than eliminating all deaths from motor-vehicle accidents and firearm homicides combined. The latter deaths, of course, are impossible to zero out no matter what is done. The former is something about which we might be able to do something.
So is the flu. Flu and pneumonia, according to the CDC, kill more than 61,000 people per year.
If the people intent on trying to ban guns in this country put the time, energy and money they spend on that issue into seeing that the old, the young and the infirm got flu shots, they might be able to save more lives than they would by totally eliminating homicide by firearm.
And the reality is that banning firearms is a stupid, utopian idea. Yes, it would make the world a safer place, unless you're the guy with a grizzly bear's teeth already in your leg or a single woman confronting a man with a knife in your home.
Guns aren't bad things or good things. They're things, inanimate objects, chunks of metal with no will of their own.
They're really not the problem. We are.
We are a society in which solving problems with violence has become an almost accepted norm. Our entertainment is full of it. We celebrate gun violence on film.
And when someone acts this out in real life, we blame the gun. There is something wrong here, all right. I'm not sure it's firearms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig Medred is the Daily News outdoors editor and an opinion columnist. Reach him at cmedred@adn.com or 257-4588.