- A good man with a gun cannot always protect us from a bad man with a gun, the N.R.A. notwithstanding.
- Loopholes continue to allow mentally unbalanced persons to have easy access to guns.
- Tax cuts for the wealthy have not resolved the problem of providing care for the mentally ill.
- The murder of the deputy does not provide post facto justification for the shooting of unarmed black youth.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
IMPORTANT LESSONS
The ambush shooting of a Texas deputy sheriff by a mentally deficient black man has important lessons for us all:
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All are excellent points! I'd also like to add that, currently, background checks don't apply to private transfers of guns (which constitute 40% of all gun transfers). Federal law prohibits domestic abusers from gaining access to a gun ... unless it's through a private transfer. The law also excludes domestic abusers who are in dating relationships (Boyfriend Loophole). Also, Open Carry laws are a direct threat to public safety; more guns do not equal a safer society. Guns in the public space both normalize weapons and violence that can occur with their use. If it communicates anything, carrying a gun in public tells bystanders that the carrier is prepared to kill someone. The problem is that the majority of shootings are of family members, friends, coworkers, acquaintances, accidental shootings, and suicides ... none of those are making people safer from crime. In fact, those shootings are the crime. The 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high — 104 percent higher — than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws. These are not my opinions, they are facts!
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