Dialogue Will Lead To Greater Gun Safety

To the Editor:

It’s a shame that, as the title indicates, the people discussed in the article “Moms prepare to take on the Gun Lobby” (The Newtown Bee, April 21, 2000) are mainly focused on disparaging gun rights supporters rather than safety. Ostracizing this group, whose goals strongly support a safer environment for our children, will only result in political grandstanding in this election year. This group has far more knowledge of firearms and their use than any politician, yet their knowledge is ignored. Do you know why many of the “sensible” proposals will at best do nothing? If the goals are safety, why not work together to help promote the extremely effective child safety program developed by the NRA which teaches a child what to do when he/she sees a gun?  Why not work to insure that gun owners know the four basic rules of safe firearm handling?  Why not work together to raise money to subsidize the purchase of lockable gun boxes for gun owners who can’t afford them, as well as educate them on the importance of securing their arms?

The statement that 12 children are killed each day is simply not supported by fact. Depending on who compiled the number, it may include 18-24 year olds as children. According to the National Safety Council, from 1970 to 1991, the number of fatal gun accidents for children between 0-14 declined from 530 to 227.  The decline continues to this day and was 181 in 1995. Even including those under 18, the number is less than 700. This is still totally unacceptable and we should work together to bring this number to zero. To put things in perspective, in the 0-14 group, 1,060 drowned, and 3,059 died in car accidents.  Do you have any idea how many less children would die in car accidents if fewer of us drove around in giant SUVs, which tend to do significant damage when colliding with sedans? Of course, we need our SUVs and no good person needs guns. Or do they?  How about Assistant Principal Joel Myrick who stopped a high school shooting spree in Pearl, Mississippi, or restaurant owner James Strand from Edinboro, Pennsylvania who did the same. Both disarmed the shooters at gunpoint before police arrived. Did you miss those incidents in the media? Most reports said the attackers were “persuaded” to surrender. Now a new “sensible” law disallows legal, well-trained citizens from being able to do anything like this again, so any future sprees have little chance of being resisted.  Can someone explain how this is “sensible”?  Explain it in Pearl or Edinboro High School.

The article criticizes the carrying of concealed firearms, but failed to mention the training and screening required to do so. It implies somehow that this is related to guns that go off accidentally (which is a misconception — guns don’t go off accidentally, they go off when the trigger is pressed, usually because the holder was not educated about safety). What is this connection and what data supports it? Consider carefully before you take away this right from the many people, including moms, who exercise it. An increasing number of women are choosing this option, and I see them all the time. On average, over 500 times a day, women use guns to defend themselves against sexual assault. These incidents overwhelmingly end without shots fired. Studies show, and they are open for scrutiny, that in states that adopted concealed carry laws, gun violence goes down.

In a time when we should teach tolerance and critical thinking to our children, here they will witness politicians using unsubstantiated rhetoric and media misinformation to disparage and destroy a group of citizens they don’t understand or agree with. They will see people blindly supporting this intolerance and joining the attack, in fact, asking Congress to “stop hiding behind” (i.e. ignore) the Constitution to achieve this end. Is this intolerance, lack of critical thinking, and blind political faith something to teach our children? Read a little history and see what it has done in the past.

If you are really interested in gun safety, put your phobia of firearms aside, and begin a dialogue with any one of the organizations representing gun owners. Working together, real results could be achieved. Continuing to demonize firearms only serves to make them increasingly more appealing to those deranged few looking for ways to terrorize us all.     

Thomas Bast

7 Ridge Road, Newtown                                               April 23, 2000