More of the Same from the NRA: “Saturday Night Special”

Marchers against gun violence outside the state capitol in Denver. 1MM4GC.org

The boys from Lynyrd Skynyrd--who just may have seen a problem or two with guns—lay it out in the song “Saturday Night Special.”

“Hand guns are made for killin’/Ain’t no good for nothing else..
And if you like your whiskey/ You might even shoot yourself.”

Here Colorado, lawmakers have some grand ideas. The first was to let teachers take their guns to school. That got quashed yesterday.

The second was to require businesses either to let people carry guns on their property or to have an armed security guard.

If you think the solution to gun violence is more guns, take a look at this article in Time. Your Brain in a Shootout: Guns, Fear, and Flawed Instincts

Even trained officers only hit their target 18% of the time. When police fired at an armed man outside the Empire State Building in New York City, they hit the suspect 10 times and hit nine bystanders.

The shooter in Aurora was able to kill or wound 68 people in 90 seconds. Now imagine 10 people taking out their guns and shooting at him. (They’d have to be pretty good to start shooting soon enough.) Would they hit ninety bystanders?

Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time have a good version of “Saturday Night Special” on Freegal. And it tells what is more likely to happen with more guns: more lethal crimes of passion.

NRA Gags Science: “The Sound of Silence”



Children hold signs "Gun violence is a public safety issue" at rally in Denver of One Million Moms for Gun Control.

 Before 1996, the CDC was systematically studying gun violence as a public health problem, according to this article from Business Insider.

When the CDC started reporting that the prevalence of guns led to an increase in gun violence, the Republicans cut off any funding that had to do with studying gun violence.

Kind of like the kid who thinks you can’t see him when he covers his eyes.

It may seem weird to study gun violence as a public health issue. Doesn’t it just happen when a bad guy shoots a gun?

The thing is, good practices and laws can reduce injuries and death,

That’s what happened with drunk driving.

For decades, Americans just shrugged at the deaths caused by drunk drivers. What were you going to do if the bad guy tanks up then gets behind the wheel of a car?

You can do quite a bit, it turns out. Cracking down on people with DWI’s and DUI’s was certainly part of it. But you can also look at things like raising the drinking age, sobriety checkpoints, making cars safer...in other words, you study the problem as a whole system of things going wrong.

We should be studying and talking about what goes wrong with gun violence. We should get scientists and law enforcement and—yes—gun owners into a national conversation about what can help minimize our gun injuries and deaths.

But, the NRA prefers the sound of silence.

“Hello darkness, my old friend.”

If you want to remember how the story goes, the Simon & Garfunkel song is on Freegal. 

Fallacies, Sudafed, and the NRA: “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”



At a rally at the Colorado state capitol. Million Moms for Gun Control

 I live halfway between Columbine and Aurora, scenes of the some of the biggest mass shootings in our country—both of them places I have been to in the course of day-to-day life.

I finally decided it was time to do something besides shake my head at the terribleness of it all and joined this rally at the state capitol, organized by Million Moms for Gun Control.

One argument that the “no restrictions on guns” side uses that drives me crazy goes like this. “If we outlaw assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, only the bad guys will have them.”

They’re pretending that they don’t know what laws do. Very few laws can actually reach out and stop the hand of a “bad guy,” whether he wants to get in a car intoxicated, write a forged check, or cook up a batch of meth in his basement.

Yet, we don’t throw up our hands and say, “No use making a law. They’re going to do it anyway.”

It seems to me we make laws to outline what is and isn’t permissible in our society. And to provide law enforcement with a way to trace, track, predict, and perhaps prevent some of these things from happening.

Take Sudafed. A perfectly lawful thing, if used correctly. A little red pill you take if your head feels stuffy.

It’s also a major ingredient in meth. When meth started to cause dangers to the community, congress rolled the following restrictions on Sudafed into the Patriot Act. Here are the provisions, from the FDA website:

The Act allows for the sale of pseudoephedrine only from locked cabinets or behind the counter.  The law:

·         limits the monthly amount any individual could purchase

·         requires individuals to present photo identification to purchase such medications

·         requires retailers to keep personal information about these customers for at least two years after the purchase of these medicines.

If I am so tracked when I buy an allergy and cold remedy, why can’t people who buy big ammunition magazines be similarly tracked? And why can’t we have background checks for all sales, no matter who the seller and the buyer are?

After the Sandy Hook massacre, people seem newly invigorated to put reasonable limits on guns. But, we have to keep pushing because the NRA is sure enough going to push back.

That’s why I think of the song “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” Freegal has a wonderful version by Sweet Honey in the Rock.  It’s worth taking a listen to all the songs on the album.