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The New England Journal of Medicine "article" cited by Shermer is actually a letter to the editor written by three gun-control activists. It wasn't peer-reviewed and contains many statements that are simply false. Of course mainstream media, who are always desperate to find any support for gun control, widely disseminated the claims of the authors anyway.

Analyze the data [1] for yourself. There were a total of 43,676 gun-related deaths in 2020, excluding instances where the shooter was a police officer. Of those deaths, 56% (24,292) were suicides. The 19,384 homicides were less than half the number of motor vehicle fatalities (40,698). The CDC data are consistent with a report [2] in the Harvard Political Review, which noted that suicides accounted for nearly two-thirds of the gun deaths in 2019.

While the letter to the New England Journal of Medicine is flawed, there has been a large increase in violence in America during the past two years. From January 1st to April 10th of this year, robberies in the New York transit system are up more than 70% year over year. Felony assaults in the subway have increased by 28%. Grand larceny is up by more than 100%. The problem isn't more guns. More American families had guns at home 50 years ago than they do now. According to the Rand Corporation, 45% of American homes had a gun in 1980. In 2016, that percentage had dropped to 32%. The problem is that people have become more violent, and Democrats have increasingly removed the major deterrent to crime by refusing to prosecute criminals.

The use of antidepressants in this country is increasing dramatically. Between 1991 and 2018, the total consumption of Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, increased in the US by more than 3,000%. In Canada, state-funded antidepressant prescriptions for young people doubled over the last decade. During the COVID lockdowns, SSRI prescriptions increased by more than 20%. More than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021. That's the highest annual death toll ever recorded and a 15% increase from the year before.

So, people are more depressed, more unstable, more suicidal, and, in some cases, more dangerous to others. In addition, people are increasingly disconnected from other human beings. In 2020, adults in the United States spent an average of 8 hours every day on digital media staring at a screen. That's a 20% jump from 2019. The lockdowns made it worse, especially for school-age kids, who were the least likely to spread or suffer from COVID yet were often subjected to the most severe isolation.

One of the people who spent a lot of time online during the pandemic was the shooter in Uvalde. The shooter in Buffalo also spent a lot of time online. In fact, he blamed the Internet for radicalizing him: "I spent almost a year planning this attack," he wrote on April 26. "Oh, how time flies. If I could go back, maybe I'd tell myself to get the f off 4Chan and the worldtruthvideos and get an actual life. Too late for that now."

Both shooters were detached from their peers and families, and both were mentally ill. We should be focused on what makes people like them dangerous, and how we can better help them, rather than blaming the inanimate objects they used to commit murder. If they hadn't used a gun, they would have substituted a knife, crowbar, bomb, arson, or, like the murderer in Waukesha, a car.

As Democrats try to use the recent mass shootings to justify pushing gun control legislation that would outlaw rifles such as the popular AR-15 platform, it’s worth noting that knives, clubs, hands and feet actually kill more people than rifles. If you examine the 2019 FBI homicide data [3], the vast majority of gun deaths do not involve the dreaded semiautomatic rifles Democrats want to ban. Only 364 people were killed by rifles out of 10,258 gun deaths that year, and not all of those rifles were semiautomatic. For comparison, 600 people were killed in 2019 by the use of hands or feet, and 1,476 were killed by use of a knife. More people (397) were killed by the use of a blunt object, such as a hammer or bat, than were killed by rifles.

As is always the case with mass public shootings in general and school shootings in particular, the response of the Democrats, besides trying to exploit the tragedy for political gain, is to do nothing but call for more of the sort of gun control legislation that failed to prevent these shootings in the first place. Regions where the Democrats are in charge and have implemented the strictest gun laws, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, have the highest homicide rates in the country.

Shermer says that "gun control is a pro-life issue," but more lives are saved by guns than are taken by them. More than 2 million lives [4] are saved each year when potential victims use a gun to defend themselves. That's over 5,000 lives saved each day, and far more than the number of gun homicides. In most cases, simply brandishing a gun is enough to send an attacker running.

Shermer: "I'll have much more to say about this problem when my rational faculties return." When it comes to this problem, Shermer's faculties have been missing for decades and seem unlikely to appear. Mental illness, drug abuse and broken families can lead to violence. Part of the appeal of gun control is the simplicity of its narrative, but it ignores the real drivers of homicide. Politicians and pundits should devote more time and resources to policies that might actually reduce violence, rather than simple-minded tropes that are politically expedient but help no one.

1. https://wisqars.cdc.gov/data/analyze-compare/home

2. https://harvardpolitics.com/suicide-gun-related-deaths/

3. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019

4. https://www.theepochtimes.com/gun-control-myths-how-politicians-the-media-and-botched-studies-ignore-basic-facts-on-gun-control-larry-elder_4336405.html

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I love the connection you’ve made between gun violence and abortion. So obvious. I’m mad at myself for not thinking of it.

Anyway, for my brief comment on gun control, I offer the text of a yet to be published letter-to-the-editor I sent to the local paper.

The Second Amendment, which established the right to bear arms, is moot. And it has been for over 100 years. In 1903, HR 11,654, “a bill to promote the efficiency of the militia and for other purposes, and to replace the Militia Law of 1792," was passed into law. It became known as the Dick Act.

The Act, with its subsequent amendments, effectively did away with the militia in the 2nd Amendment. It set up the National Guard and Reserves in its place.

“Arms” means weapons of war. Arms are used by an army and kept in an armory. “Present Arms” is a command in the military.

There are those, of course, who want the 2nd Amendment to say something that it doesn’t say, that it is the right to own guns for any purpose. But rendering the 2nd Amendment inoperable doesn’t mean there is no right to own guns.

That right is a matter of common law or one of the unenumerated rights in the 9th Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” – like owning guns.

Congress has the power to regulate commerce. A common use of that power is to assure that products are safe. Guns, by their nature, are not safe. Therefore, Congress is free to establish such rules as are necessary to make guns safe, including the manufacture, sale, use, and conditions of ownership. If only they would.

As Alexander Hamilton wisely observed, “When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation”

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If you’ll permit me taking a second bite of the apple, here are a few thoughts on abortion.

A driving force behind the objection to abortion, which is seldom discussed, is the oppressive influence of patriarchy. Back at the dawn of civilization, the concept of property ownership was born. For too many reasons to discuss here, women in some parts of the world became property and, thereby, subordinate to men.

When a female is born, she takes her father’s surname. Essentially, she belongs to her father. That being the case, paternity became a big deal. A woman’s virginity was to be protected until marriage, thereby confirming who the father is while ensuring that no bastards were produced.

This is a country dominated by believers in Christianity. For them the ownership concept is found in the Tenth Commandment:

“10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his donkey, or anything that is thy neighbor’s [property].”

A good example of women as the property of men is the marriage ceremony. The bride’s father is asked to “give his daughter away,” which just affirms the fact that he has transferred his property, the wife-to-be, to her husband so that she then becomes his property. She then takes on his surname. (And sometimes, ‘ol dad gets a nice dowry as a bonus.)

It used to be that the wedding vows required the bride’s promise to “obey” her husband. The most commonly cited reason for including the word “obey” comes from the bible:

Ephesians 5:21-24: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”

Notwithstanding the influence of religion, men exercise their superiority over women across the world in both Eastern and Western societies. But most don’t realize it. Here in the U.S., it was only in the 20th century that married women could buy, sell and own property, enter contracts, and vote. Native American women for centuries had those and other rights that have been denied to women who are descendants of male-dominated cultures, including right here in the good ‘ol U.S. of A.

Paternity and patriarchy are so baked into our culture that granting women the right to use contraception, the morning-after pill, and other means of stopping a pregnancy, including abortion, are anathema to the idea that women can control their bodies without male approval.

So, when it comes down to abortion and laws pertaining thereto, men still want their dominance over women. Subconsciously or not, they still regard women as property. This is not to say that men are misogynists. Those that are are probably not even aware of it. It’s just that men are incapable of knowing, feeling, or appreciating what goes on in a woman’s body. With that in mind, I think it wise that men shouldn’t make laws regarding the health of women. Doing so merely underscores the inequities and reduces women to the status of slaves. And slavery is both illegal and immoral, at least in this country.

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I'd like to see the best evidence available particular legislation can reasonably be expected to reduce harm in the US, especially given our somewhat unique culture wrt weapons, war, and Am Exceptionalism, and factors like drug prohibition, et al.

Also nice would be: the strongest counters to arguments from:

- "good guy with a gun"

- hunting

- Bkgd checks don't work

- 2nd Amendment

- Illegal/underground sales

- Switzerland (high gun ownership, low gun homicide rate)

- other?

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What gun-control legislation & enforcement would have prevented an adult with no prior mental or criminal record from buying a gun?

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Just not that simple to do a comparison. What about the 107,000 drug overdose deaths last year due to our open border? What about the human trafficking due to the open border? Terrorists coming across. What about the teacher that left the door ajar and now 19 children are dead? Common practice in these school shootings is to go in immediately to limit the killings. But that didn't happen hear did it? The Democrats are doing a lot more damage to our country than the Republicans ever did. How many babies died because they couldn't get formula? I'm really disappointed in you, Michael. Maybe it's the emotion that is affecting all of us but I thought you more analyzing than this.

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By definition, restrictions on human behavior diminish at least one person's liberty. Most of us recognize that and can have intelligent and even rational discussions about how to calibrate the compromise.

Most of us also understand the concept of diminishing returns. At some point more restrictions do not achieve significant reduction in bad outcomes. Take deaths from vehicle accidents. Yes, 43,000 dead in 2021 is a large and tragic number, and 10% higher than in 2020. But the rate for 2021 was 1.33 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled, down slightly from 2020. In other words, you could have circled a (paved) earth more than 3000 times before reaching a even chance of dying.

Could we reduce vehicle deaths further? Certainly. We could continue to add features (and expense) to vehicles. We could try to improve driver performance. Or we could turn the most direct knob and reduce the miles driven.

What about deaths attributed to guns? Again 45,000 deaths in 2020 is a huge, tragic number. Even if we filter out suicides (a very different kind of tragedy), 20,000 gun murders is too many. Averaged over the entire population, that translates into a murder rate of about 6 per 100,000. And for average people outside high risk demographics and areas, that number is smaller. Should that be lower? Of course. Could it be lower? Sure--but at what costs to rights, including rights that might not matter to you? And how effective would new restrictions be? How much more intrusive and severe would restrictions need to be to make a difference? In a nation of 330 million, what would it take to reduce murders by 10% or 50%? And what about 100%?

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I hesitate to contribute anything because it often invites insults, but, we'll see how it goes.

I'm a bit surprised at the logic (or lack thereof) in this piece, and I attribute to the emotion of the moment. Emotions I share. But, frankly, as an admirer and long time reader of Shermer's, I'm disappointed by the argument he lays out.

For example, the comparison to the automotive industry regulatory efforts and how we treat cars is very flawed because we're not talking the same kind of regulation (pretty much anyone can and does get a license to drive a car, often as early as 16).

I like the comparison to the abortion issue, but that again is specifically aimed at one particular segment of the population and useless as an argument against a larger percent of the population, and if you're trying to reach that segment, using flawed logic won't work. Because it's not that they don't agree that school shootings are abhorrent, it's that they don't agree on how to go about addressing the issue.

I would like to see specific proposals rather than hear "we must do something" even as we acknowledge it's a complicated issue, and that very little is known about many of the mass shootings. Note that I'm excluding the ever-shifting definition of mass shootings that includes gang shootings and incidents where the assailant was known to the victims (families and friends shooting each other).

I read all the suggested controls we could put in place . . . Fine, let's say we can put those in place, and then? What do we do for the next indescribably horrific and random shooting by someone whom we cannot begin to understand?

Can anyone articulate the motive and chain of events that leads someone to look at a child's fearful face and still shoot them?

Always, in hindsight, we figure out "all the signs were there" . . . and we did nothing.

Understand, I'm not saying let's do nothing. I'm saying stop making cosmetic suggestions and approach it from multiple aspects. It's the mentality you have to change, and it's not going to happen at the stroke of a pen. We had a long and twisted road here and thinking we can fix it with a couple of pieces of legislation will have us continue on that path.

Yes, we should have more gun control, more laws, more checks, etc. etc. But, tell me . . . have we eliminated alcohol-related moralities? According to the CDc, about 12 kids a day die because of alcohol-related events. But we don't see their faces and names in the news. Why is that not flagged as a huge problem?

Random school shootings kill fewer kids per year than are intentionally murdered by their parents. What are we doing about parents who murder their children? Why can't we stop it?

Again, I'm not trying to engage in "what-about-isms", and I'm very much in favor of gun control. The threshold to owning a gun should be high, with training and safety requirements, but first admit that our society, and specifically because of the way our society works, it favor criminals and unbalanced individuals and anyone with twisted intentions . . . because we don't have the legal tools to remove dangerous individuals from circulation until they act.

That's the so-called price of freedom, not the guns. People who buy guns react to that potential cost. When someone doesn't have any other recourse, they will seek the means to protect themselves, and buying a gun is one of the cheapest options (be that a smart or stupid decision). You coming along and telling them they no longer have that right because someone else might abuse it isn't going to cut it as an argument.

Admit that specifically because our legal system is set up to respond to violent crime as opposed to prevent it, it's very difficult to tell people to disarm. This is especially true since cops have formally and summarily abdicated the second part of their supposed motto (to serve and protect).

We've had an increase in gun deaths because in 2020 people were scared, and now more people with little to no training in the use and safe storage of guns, are gun owners. People might not like it, but even with more checks in place, those people would still have bought those guns (even people previously against owning guns) . . . because they were scared and because our legal system does not restrict their right to do so.

Also because people perceived we came close to having a societal breakdown (something that some say is still possible), a perception largely fueled by the media. People don't think about buying guns when everything is going well.

And to those who naively say we could just repeal or even change the Second Amendment, please, inform yourselves.

Yes, states can regulate guns, but we don't enforce the the laws we have, and I suspect new laws would be difficult to enforce. And, what do you do about the 300M guns already in circulation?

Before you suggest confiscation, please, take a civil liberties class and read the Constitution, otherwise you're just sounding ignorant.

If you want meaningful change, you have to engage the majority of the population, and change the culture, and you don't do that by denigrating them. And you don't do that by proposing things that make little to no sense to the people who would be affected.

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We have tons of gun control laws. And criminals don't care what the laws say. That said, we certainly do need to focus on our large and growing mental health crisis.

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The USA is a Failed State. It cannot be saved because the powerful do not want it to be saved.

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Four years ago, when — as now — the nation was reeling from the horror of a mass school shooting, a retired Supreme Court justice suggested a radical solution: getting rid of the Second Amendment.

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Four years ago, when — as now — the nation was reeling from the horror of a mass school shooting, a retired Supreme Court justice suggested a radical solution: getting rid of the Second Amendment.

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“The pro-life movement is about the value and equality of all human beings. The belief that all human life is created equal regardless of size, level of development, education, and degree of dependency.”

This dogma is seriously flawed, and it should not be used by progressives (including Michael) to support gun control. What is a human being? Are human zygotes, embryos, and early fetuses human beings? Hell no! “Human being” and “human person” are the same thing. A human organism does not become a human being or a human person until it acquires the capacity for consciousness at around the 24th week post conception, as I asserted in a Skeptic article. Pro-lifers oversimplify and make category errors.

Human zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are NOT totally equal. They are alike in that they are alive, human, and organisms, but they are different in just about every other respect – biological and psychological. Unique DNA profiles and womb environments ensure this diversity. The author of this dogma is trying to make a moral or political statement seem as if it is a biological statement. It’s not. Not even close. What he is hiding is something like this: “A human zygote should be considered to be a person and should be assigned the same human rights as an adult human person or even a baby.” That is a moral and political claim requiring rational justification, and I believe it is nonsense. Human rights are not for all human life. They are for the lives of human persons!

Level of development, the brain having developed the capacity for consciousness while in the womb, should certainly be critical in the assignment of human rights. Yes, AFTER human organisms become human persons with consciousness, then rights ought to be assigned EQUALLY, without regard to “size, level of development, education, and degree of dependency” and without regard to race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or age.

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We are far from perfect north of the border, but sure am glad we live here! This irrational behaviour and set of beliefs belies the international facts and experience.

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This image made by survivors of mass shootings says it all:

https://marchforourlives.com/thoughtsandprayers/

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