Knee-Jerk Gun Control Legislation

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Many people insist on gun control legislation any time there is a shooting. It is politically hard to sell and as a life-saving measure it is a waste of time and resources. Time, resources, political capital and energy spent on a fruitless effort to control a significant minority of the population could instead be productively used to actually save lives. 

When we get news of a random mass shooting, it is as good a time as any to oppose senseless death. It is not such a good time to make rules for hundreds of millions of people. Maybe things should change, but not by angry actions in the heat of the moment. This is not the time to design public policy.

More than five thousand people die in the United States every day. If you save just one percent of those people, you save the lives of fifty people. You save not just fifty people today, but fifty people every single day -- more than ten thousand people a year. 

We already know things that will both save lives and make life better. Those things are supported by sensible evidence. 

Consider this: "Historically, every other developed nation has achieved universal health care through some form of nonprofit national health insurance. Our failure to do so means that all Americans pay higher health care costs, and 45,000 [annually] pay with their lives." -- Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, staff physician and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

If you fight to get absolute no-brainer fixes like Universal Health Care you will save lives.

When it comes right down to it, it seems that people don't really want to help. It is every man for himself. They can help, but in practice they just won't.

The Second Amendment allows the people at the bottom to be armed against despotic oppression from the top. Gun control would be fine if done at a local level such that people could gain back control of their government if needed.


It is weird how invasive and tyrannical the U.S. Federal government has become. I think it would be a very bad idea to disarm while central government continues to expand its control. 

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