Let's melt those Guns!

(GP Blog Post 4)

I've been fortunate to have the much needed research at hand, since I used it for a previous class.

Every day in 2011, 23 people were killed by firearms in the US.  Of the over 8000 (eight thousand!) people killed that year, 500 were under 18 and 100 under 12.

Here are the reasons why gun control in the United States is highly inefficient: too many people die, criminals access guns too easy and, it's expensive!

To those of you who say that "people kill people, not guns", please check the numbers.  Don't tell me you could kill me with a pencil or a frying pan as easy as you could with a gun-that is an impractical fallacy, and I'm not four years old...  Kids die because their parents don't store their guns properly: in 2009, 129 people  between the ages of 1 and 19 died using guns they found in their homes (Ross, 2012 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/child- %09gun-deaths-newtown_n_2347920.html).  US gun deaths are expected to exceed traffic fatalities by 2015.

80% of the 1.4 million guns stolen between 2005 and 2010 have not been recovered (Wood, 2013 at http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2013/01/17/home-gun-safety-stolen-firearms/).  The sentencing guidelines call for 2-2.5 years in jail for a straw buyer who buys and provides 12 gun to a felon.

In 2005, the economic impact of lost lives was 37 billion (Young, 2012 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/guns-%09deaths-sandy-hook-shooting_n_2325706.html).  This year, gun manufacturers will profit almost one billion on sales of 11.7 billions.  Who's the dummy here?

What are we to do?  Enter Australia and their sweeping 1996 gun reforms: 700,000 guns were removed and destroyed from 12 million people; private firearms sales and  possession of firearms for self defense became prohibited (Chapman, Alpers, Agho and Jones, 2006, at http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/12/6/365.full).  As a result, gun related deaths went from 627 to 332/year; suicides, the largest cause of gun deaths in AU, went from 491 to 246; and mass shootings went from 13 over 18 years to zero (none!) in 10.5 years after.  It worked!

To conclude, the sad reality is that gun owners don't store their guns safely, criminals get guns too easy, and thousands die every year while the gun manufacturers rake in billions in profits.  People should not own guns in the US just because it’s legal.  The US government will not take over and impose martial law if the civilians don't own guns, just as the middle ages are not coming back!

We need more gun control.  If you disagree, go ahead and tell that to the families of the 20 people that died from a firearm just in the past week.  Go ahead!