January 22, 2016 5:24 AM

Is there common ground to be found in the argument over common sense gun control?

FOR those of us who argue in favor of gun safety laws, there are a few inconvenient facts. We liberals are sometimes glib about equating guns and danger. In fact, it’s complicated: The number of guns in America has increased by more than 50 percent since 1993, and in that same period the gun homicide rate in the United States has dropped by half. Then there are the policies that liberals fought for, starting with the assault weapons ban. A 113-page study found no clear indication that it reduced shooting deaths for the 10 years it was in effect. That’s because the ban was poorly drafted, and because even before the ban, assault weapons accounted for only 2 percent of guns used in crimes…. Americans are absolutely right to be outraged at the toll of guns. Just since 1970, more Americans have died from guns than all the Americans who died in wars going back to the American Revolution (about 1.45 million vs. 1.4 million). That gun toll includes suicides, murders and accidents, and these days it amounts to 92 bodies a day. We spend billions of dollars tackling terrorism, which killed 229 Americans worldwide from 2005 through 2014, according to the State Department. In the same 10 years, including suicides, some 310,000 Americans died from guns.

It’s easy for opposing sides in the gun debate to demonize and antagonize their counterparts on the other side of the argument. Lord knows I’ve been a participant in (probably more than) my fair share of the arguments. I still believe what I’ve always believed- that our society is awash in guns and the intransigence and refusal of Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © to even consider discussing what to do about the problem IS largely the problem. That (at least in my mind) may well be true, but I also realize that it’s not the whole picture. What gets lost in the anger and recrimination is the fact that we really just don’t have much data on many of the problems we Liberals would like to see addressed. Congress refuses to allocate money to study gun violence, primarily because the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby fears the result wouldn’t reflect well on their entrenched interests.

As much as those of us who support common sense gun control hate to own up to reality, the fact is that not all of the currently available data breaks in our favor. There’s still much that’s unknown, so a good deal of our argument rests on emotion, experience, and anecdotal data. It’s certainly not the way a reasonable person would proceed to move forward, but given the number Americans dying from gun violence on a daily basis, sometimes waiting for solid data only means acquiescing to yet more carnage.

So how DO we move forward in the hope of finding something resembling common ground?

[O]f course we should try to reduce this carnage. But we need a new strategy, a public health approach that treats guns as we do cars — taking evidence-based steps to make them safer. That seems to be what President Obama is trying to do.

Research suggests that the most important practical step would be to keep guns away from high-risk individuals, such as criminals, those who abuse alcohol, or those who beat up their domestic partners.

That means universal background checks before somebody acquires a gun. New Harvard research confirms a long-ago finding that 40 percent of firearms in the United States are acquired without a background check. That’s crazy. Why empower criminals to arm themselves?

Some evidence supports steps that seem common sense. More than 10 percent of murders in the United States, for example, are by intimate partners. The riskiest moment is often after a violent breakup when a woman has won a restraining order against her ex. Prohibiting the subjects of those restraining orders from possessing a gun reduces these murders by 10 percent, one study found.

The idea that we shouldn’t be able to talk to one other is absurd. Those of us on the “common sense side” of the gun control debate tend to stop in our tracks when Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © begin screaming. What if we stopped letting them intimidate us into silence? What if we waited for the screaming to stop and kept demanding dialogue?

And what if Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © could stop screaming and actually listen for a change? Perhaps they’d realize that no one’s talking about taking their guns. Maybe they’d come to understand that all we want is to talk and find a solution? We’re tired of people dying, and we’re tired of the lack of dialogue contributing to the continuing carnage.

It’s time for good people on both sides of the argument to work for change. I’m still naive enough to believe there’s middle ground that can be found somewhere. We owe it to the victims and those soon to be victimized to find it and stop what bloodshed we can.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 22, 2016 5:24 AM.

Not all Republicans are created equal was the previous entry in this blog.

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