Yesterday: “Tobacco is Part of the Fabric of America” Today / “Guns are Part of the Fabric of America”

Yesterday: “Tobacco is Part of the Fabric of America” / Today: “Guns are Part of the Fabric of America

Is the United States Becoming the “Dead Children’s Society”?

Once there was a notion that there was nothing we could do about smoking, the leading killer of Americans. Yet with warning labels, lawsuits everywhere against BIG TOBACCO, from 1965 to 2019, the prevalence of cigarette smoking in the U.S. decreased from about 42% to 14%, today sinking further to 12%. BIG GUNS witnessed that trend. In 2005, under pressure from a powerful NRA campaign, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a federal law that provides broad immunity from many lawsuits to gun manufacturers. Take that one law away, and you can bet that BIG GUNS will be forced to moderate gun sales, particularly assault weapons, many of which have made the drug cartels south of the border into de facto states, often with more American-made firepower than their governments (many of which have been “bought” anyway).

The notion is that as Americans, that we do not have a real choice on limiting civilian firearms. Gun ownership, after all, is protected by a clear Second Amendment in a virtually unamendable Constitution. Indeed, the last amendment, enacted over two decades ago, dealt with the relatively innocuous proposition that Congress could not give itself a raise absent an intervening election. That 27th Amendment was introduced two centuries before it was passed… in an era without the current levels of severe polarization.

Note, the Second Amendment is anything but crystal clear. Passed as part of the Bill of Rights, the clear intention was to allow citizen soldiers (the “well regulated militia”) to keep their firearms used to secure our nation in the Revolutionary War. In the two plus centuries following the enactment of that Bill of Rights, there was not a single Supreme Court ruling that established a wide-ranging civilian right to own and keep firearms. But in 2008, an increasingly conservative Supreme Court, under Justice Antonin Scalia’s novel “originalism” theory (where historical context trumps everything else), looked only at guns in existence in 1789 (flintlocks and muskets). Heller vs DC introduced as law that radical notion of a ubiquitous American right of civilian gun ownership. For the first time in American history.

Heller was decided four years after the sunset provision of a federal statutory ban on assault weapons… that was never challenged. There are at least 30 million AR-15-like assault weapons among the estimated 330 million firearms in civilian hands today. For the past two years, gun homicides had been the leading killer of children and teens, as the above chart illustrates.

But these numbers are based on private studies (like the April 6, 2023, Pew Research statistics above). The well-funded NRA used their power to kill the federal government from providing Americans with facts. Passed in 1997 the so-called "Dickey Amendment" effectively bars the national Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from studying firearm violence – an epidemic the American Medical Association has since dubbed "a public health crisis." And yet in late June, the Surgeon General also announced that the huge acceleration of gun deaths has risen to the level of a public health crisis.

“Surgeon General Murthy said there is ‘broad agreement’ that gun violence is a problem, citing a poll last year that found most Americans worry at least sometimes that a loved one might be injured by a firearm. More than 48,000 Americans died from gun injuries in 2022… Doctors quickly praised Murthy’s advisory. The American Academy of Family Physicians, for example, has considered gun violence a public health epidemic for over a decade… ‘Family physicians have long understood, and have seen first hand, the devastating impact firearm violence has on our patients and the communities we serve,’ the group’s president, Steven Furr, said in a statement.” Associated Press, June 25th. The NRA quickly labeled this announcement as the Biden administration’s effort to take constitutionally sanctioned guns away from law abiding citizens.

But facts in that referenced poll, released by the Kaiser Family Foundation on April 11, 2023, had some startling statistics:

• Experiences with gun-related incidents are common among U.S. adults. One in five (21%) say they have personally been threatened with a gun, a similar share (19%) say a family member was killed by a gun (including death by suicide), and nearly as many (17%) have personally witnessed someone being shot. Smaller shares have personally shot a gun in self-defense (4%) or been injured in a shooting (4%). In total, about half (54%) of all U.S. adults say they or a family member have ever had one of these experiences.

• Gun-related injuries and deaths, as well as worries about gun violence, disproportionately affect people of color in the U.S. Three in ten Black adults (31%) have personally witnessed someone being shot, as have one-fifth of Hispanic adults (22%). One-third of Black adults (34%) have a family member who was killed by a gun, twice the share of White adults who say the same (17%). In addition, one-third of Black adults (32%) and Hispanic adults (33%) say they worry either “every day,” or “almost every day” about themselves or someone they love being a victim of gun violence (compared to one in ten White adults). And one in five Black adults (20%) and Hispanic adults (18%) feel like gun-related crimes, deaths, and injuries are a “constant threat” to their local community, more than double the share among White adults (8%).

• The majority (84%) of U.S. adults say they have taken at least one precaution to protect themselves or their families from the possibility of gun violence, including nearly six in ten (58%) who have talked to their children or other family members about gun safety, and more than four in ten who have purchased a weapon other than a gun, such as a knife or pepper spray (44%), or attended a gun safety class or practiced shooting a gun (41%). About a third (35%) have avoided large crowds, such as music festivals, or crowded bars and clubs to protect themselves or their families from the possibility of gun violence. Three in ten (29%) have purchased a gun to protect themselves or their family from the possibility of gun violence. Smaller shares, but still at least one in seven, have avoided using public transit (23%), changed or considered changing the school that their child attends (20%), avoided attending religious services, cultural events or celebrations (15%), or moved to a different neighborhood or city (15%).

• One in seven (14%) adults say a doctor or other health care provider has asked if they own a gun or if there are guns in the home, while about one in four (26%) parents of children under 18 say their child’s pediatrician has asked them about guns in the home. Few (5%) adults say a doctor or other health care provider has ever talked to them about gun safety.

• Four in ten (41%) adults report living in a household with a gun. Among this group, more than half say at least one gun in their home is stored in the same location as the ammunition (52%), 44% say a gun is stored in an unlocked location, and more than one-third report a gun is stored loaded (36%). Overall, three in four (75%) adults living in households with guns say any of their guns are stored in one of these ways, representing three in ten overall adults (31%). About four in ten (44%) parents of children under age 18 say there is a gun in their household. Among parents with guns in their home, about one-third say a gun is stored loaded (32%) or stored in an unlocked location (32%). More than half of parents (61%) say any gun in their homes is stored in the same location as ammunition.

Do these numbers represent the America you want? That most Americans want? I think not.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Americans, who love their children as a super-priority, are anything but powerless in fixing this horrific problem.