Blog

If you’re not outraged by the nation’s gun violence, you should be. If you’re outraged but doing nothing, recognize that your inaction contributes to the problem. If you’re a state or U.S. lawmaker who follows the gun lobby script, it’s time to acknowledge that gun violence is a public health issue.

Here are suggestions for both concerned citizens and lawmakers. First, the suggestions for citizens.

1. Understand what works. The gun lobby wields power because it knows that money talks and its members are vocal and loud. Politicians listen when campaigns contributions are on the line, and they fear the wrath of angry gun zealots.
2. Get involved. Join a gun policy group—Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Sand Hook Promise, Everytown for Gun Safety or the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence—and learn about pending gun issues. Donate and help fund the cause.
3. Get vocal. Contact your legislators about pending gun legislation. Send emails or call. Make it known what bills you support and which you consider to be dangerous. 
4. Use social media. Facebook isn’t just for anniversaries and cute puppies. Educate your friends about pending gun bills and ask them to get involved.  Vote out the legislators who have been seduced by the siren song of the gun lobby. They’re easy to recognize. They’re mostly Republicans.

Suggestions for lawmakers:

1. Acknowledge that the majority of Americans want a safer world. The people who fight all gun restrictions, no matter how reasonable, are a minority.
2. What matters is a legal analysis of the Second Amendment. While the meaning of those 27 words is not readily clear, they certainly don’t mean that all Americans are entitled to possess all types of guns, all the time and everywhere, no matter the situation. 
3. Disregard the gun lobby’s propaganda. The gun lobby wants you to believe that any restriction on gun ownership violates the Second Amendment. Not true. Courts have consistently held that reasonable restrictions are constitutional.
4. Mandate background checks for all weapon transfers and expand the three-day waiting period to conduct those checks. 
5. Make decisions based on evidence. The gun lobby offers lots of anecdotes but little evidence about why more guns is a good idea. Forget the fiction that more guns promote safety and pay attention to research. States with universal background checks have lower pediatric firearm-related mortality rates. More firearms in homes means an increased risk of women being shot by their significant other. And as a recent study shows, as concealed carry permits increase, so does violent crime.    
6. The U.S. suffers from at least seven types of gun violence: murders committed in the commission of a felony, domestic violence, gangland violence, mass murders, serial killings, accidental shootings of children, and suicide. Each has its own unique set of dynamics, and we know little about each. There’s no one fix for this array of violence.  
7. Adopt a strategy of being proactive. The gun lobby’s approach to gun violence is reactive—more people should carry guns. That’s akin to battling disease by simply doling out penicillin to the sick, instead of getting ahead of the problem and teaching good hygiene and health habits and inoculating people.
8. Follow the guns. We have virtually no system in place to trace guns used in crimes.  
9. Recognize sophistry when you see it. The gun lobby’s mantra for opposing gun legislation—“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”—is silly. Of course, inanimate objects by themselves don’t kill, but in the hands of people, guns caused over 39,000 deaths in 2017. That’s why we need reasonable restrictions on what guns people can access.

[This post was published as an op-ed in The Columbus Dispatch on August 24, 2019.]

________________________________________

Jack D’Aurora writes for Considerthisbyjd.com

_______________________________________________________