The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has begun a new public awareness campaign to champion the safe storage of firearms in the home, the mission begun in 2012 by Gatling Gun Rescue.

We share their concerns. 

If you have one or more guns in your home, please evaluate how easy it would be for a child or other unauthorized person to obtain access. 

If you no longer need a firearm, and have no other means of disposing of it, please contact Gatling and we will remove it safely, without cost, and find a new home for it.
   
- Dr. Gatling

A 35-year-old man has been arrested and charged in connection with the death of a 2-year-old boy who allegedly shot himself in the head with an unattended handgun in his home in Fresno, Calif., police said.
 
Jace Alexander died July 5, 2018, after finding a 9mm Sig Sauer handgun in his home, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said.
 
"This was a death that was completely avoidable," the chief said. "It's a responsibility to our children to store (firearms) in a safe and secure manner."
 
Dyer said Ramos was booked on a felony charge alleging he failed to store his handgun properly. If convicted, he could be sentenced to three years in prison.
 
Ramos, who lived in the home with the boy's father, had a gun safe in his bedroom, Dyer said. But the chief added that the handgun had been left out.
 
Jace's death was the third fatal gun accident in Fresno in the past few years, records show.
 
In 2011, a 2-year-old boy shot his 6-year-old sister to death after finding their stepfather's handgun. In 2015, a 10-year-old girl killed her 8-year-old sister with a handgun belonging to their father, a lieutenant with the Madera County Sheriff's Department.
 
In the first case, a 34-year-old man received three years probation after pleading no contest to felony storage of a handgun. In the second case, the district attorney's office declined to prosecute. 

​There is only one gun store in all of Mexico. So, asks Los Angeles Times  Mexico City correspondent Kate Linthicum, why is gun violence soaring?
 
In an article published May 24, 2018, she describes the lengthy process a Mexican citizen must complete in order to purchase a firearm:
 
"To enter the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales [in Mexico City], customers must undergo months of background checks — six documents are required — and then be frisked by uniformed soldiers."
 
Linthicum reports the store sells an average of 38 firearms to civilians each day, while an estimated 580 weapons are smuggled into Mexico from the United States.
 
Meanwhile, gun violence homicides are on pace to set another record in 2018, her article says.
 
More than 100,000 Mexicans have been shot to death since the government began releasing records in 1997, Linthicum says, adding that most of the guns were smuggled from the U.S., where gun laws are more lenient than in Mexico.
 
Gun control advocates in the U.S., such as the Center for American Progress, blame lax American gun laws for contributing to the violence in Mexico and other countries.
 
"The United States has a moral obligation to mitigate its role in arming lethal violence abroad," a study by the Center says. "While there are many factors unique to each nation that affect rates of violent crime, there is more the United States could do to reduce the risks posed by U.S.-sourced guns that cross the border and are used in crime in nearby countries."
 
The report recommends restrictions including:
 
•          Instituting universal background checks for gun purchases
•          Making gun trafficking and straw purchasing federal crimes
•          Requiring the reporting of multiple sales of long guns
•          Increasing access to international gun trafficking data
•          Rejecting efforts that weaken firearm export oversight

As USA television begins the third season of "Shooter," based on stories and characters created by Stephen Hunter, I'd like to share one of my favorite non-fiction works by Hunter. The following text is Copyright 2001 by The Washington Post Company

Dressed To Kill
From Kabul to Kandahar, It's Not Who You Are That Matters, but What You Shoot
By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 26, 2001; Page C01
 
These days, we Americans fight our wars with weapons that seem to come from Industrial Light & Magic. Our planes are sleek and characterless, our professionals more cleanshaven technicians than warriors, their faces lit by the phosphors of a glowing screen, their language of battle techno-crisp and parsed.
 
It's all too Tom Clancy to be that interesting. Only a few of our thousands of men in and around Afghanistan even bother to carry rifles; the rest carry cell phones, Berettas and credit cards.
 
But the guys we are fighting are different.
 
They don't have night vision or missiles or even air power. Screens? They don't have no stinking screens. They have one thing: guns. And our few hundred Special Forces operators on the ground -- they're gunmen too. And that's why the front page of this or any other newspaper, or the richly detailed color sections of the newsmags, all look like photo spreads in Shooting Times. Guns are everywhere: knobby, wooden, all pipes and welded joints, ugly, oily, ungainly, battered, dusty, dinged and bent, festooned with straps and blades and bipods and scopes but somehow -- if you read the postures of the men who carry them -- totally comforting.
 
And not without meaning. Guns are like anything else; they don't exist in a vacuum but in a context -- historic, cultural, political, mechanical -- so if you know your guns and ammo, you can take a reading as any critic can from any art form, and learn some stuff.
 
American guns express America. They're not even guns anymore -- or rather, the gun part of them is only a small part of a larger system, with capabilities beyond the imagination of even the men who carried similar, but more primitive, implements as recently as during the war in Vietnam.
 
Our gun there was the M16; our gun now is the M4, a carbine variant of the M16, meaning the fourth modification of the weapon since it was initially adopted for jungle warfare back in the 1960s. (Yes -- guns are "edited"!) There's not much difference in the gun part: It's the same orchestration of bolt, chamber, barrel, magazine and stock; it has the same springs and levers and pins and the same plastic furniture. It exists because for about 200 years we've been able to machine metal to exacting tolerances and harden it to withstand great pressures without making it too brittle. And we have the chemistry to invent efficient powders, strong plastics and rustproof steel. But now it's smaller, its stock folds up, it's got a little nubby barrel and . . . it's got stuff.
 
So much stuff!
 
We in the West, we are our stuff, no? Who could disagree?
 
The M4, particularly as love-labored over by Special Forces and Navy Seal armorers, has tubes everywhere. It's a panoply of tubes. It's tubular magic. One tube, mounted atop the frame, is a red-dot sight. In its intimate recesses, a tiny laser emits a beam that strikes a lens. A red dot is captured on that lens, which may be accessed by the simple act of looking into the thing. Then the dot may be adjusted up or down, left or right, so that it coincides with the point of impact -- so that the gun will actually shoot where you think it will. One adjusts the red dot to the bullet, but it feels the other way: You see the red dot, that's where the bullet will go.
 
The point of all this engineering is to bypass the conscious and enter the soldier's subconscious. To shoot well, one has to look at the sights -- but to do that, one must de-concentrate on the target. Almost impossible when a guy in a turban is shooting at you. With a glowing red dot, the operator's eyes pick up the marker subconsciously and so no time is lost in that most annoying of human habits in close-quarter combat: thinking. If you're thinking, you're already behind the curve, which means you're dead. No, here's what happens: Look at the guy and when the red dot crosses him, your reptile brain instructs your reptile trigger finger to press. You haven't done it, your subconscious has. It's much faster that way.
 
But suppose it's night. Well, in front of the red dot tube there's a night vision tube, which has the alchemical capacity not to turn lead into gold, but something far more valuable: It turns dark into light. Or semi-light. By magnifying the ambient illumination, the night vision scope can render enough of a universe to shoot accurately.
 
But suppose you've got five targets and only one of 'em is a bad guy. Then you go to Tube No. 3, which is a Sure-Fire brand flashlight locked neatly to the barrel with an on-off switch up in the trigger housing. You separate the fellow with the AK from the three kids and the veiled gal he's using as hostages. Then you double-tap him and move on.
 
But suppose . . . all five of them are bad guys? Then you go to tube No. 4, which is an M203 grenade launcher. You go 40mm on them. Pay no attention, ladies and gentlemen, to the sound of two ounces of TNT detonating as they send about 10,000 shards of white-hot steel into a very small area formerly occupied by five human beings.
 
You won't see guns like that carried by the Taliban, no sir. Look at Osama bin Laden's gun. It's visible in any of a dozen pictures and it's tubeless, screenless and grenade-launcherless. But it, too, is not only a gun. It's a gun with a coded message; you can read this guy like a book.
 
He's certainly no Captain Winters from HBO's "Band of Brothers," who, despite his natural genius for soldiering, insisted on carrying the line soldier's prosaic M1 all the way to Berchtesgarten. No, bin Laden's narcissism -- dead giveaway to a fake tough guy -- mandates that he make a fashion statement.
 
Any idiot knows that was an AK-47 leaning against the cave wall behind bin Laden during his videotaped response to the American bombing. Yes, the AK-47, the most famous of the liberation firearms distributed globally by the Soviet Union and its client states during the Cold War. There may be 50 million of them floating around the globe today.
 
Except it wasn't. But if you're one of the idiots, don't feel bad; you belong with the other 99.9 percent of the population that doesn't know anything about guns. Bin Laden's rifle wasn't an AK-47 at all, but one of its descendants, an AK-74, and of a particular modification that included, for portability and ease of handling, a very short barrel and a folding skeletonized stock and a flash suppressor. It's called a Krinkov.
 
It's actually a hybrid. If you crossed a classic 7.62mm x 39 Soviet AK-47 with an American 5.56mm NATO M4, its natural antagonist in about a million firefights in about 75 wars, insurrections and special-ops tiffs, you'd get the AK-74, which is the AK-47 mechanism reconfigured to fire the smaller-caliber, high-velocity round. Then you trick it up; by cutting the barrel and adding that folding stock, you get a Krinkov, which is the current hot lick among people who want to be noticed. It was designed for airborne troops. If you're not going to be jumping out of airplanes, it doesn't do anything for you that the 47 won't.
 
Bin Laden knows this: For him the gun isn't just a weapon, it's a symbol. He's making a statement, as with the curved ceremonial dagger that hangs from his belt when he's all duded-up in his white finery. He is making a claim: I am of the elite. In other words, he is saying something so Western it suggests the soul-deep depth of his hypocrisy. He is saying: I am so cool.
 
A fellow who favors posing with a Krinkov has delusions of grandeur, and he'll try to take over no matter the venue.
 
Bin Laden wouldn't be caught dead with a regular old AK, but his men are, all over the place. In a funny way, I like it better that he has this little vanity. I don't think he's a good enough man for an AK-47 and what it stands for. This is the true symbol of the war, for both sides seem to have it in the thousands, and no matter where the war blows next, you can bet that most of the close-in killing will be done with that old war horse. That cold wind you just felt, that was the chill of history.
 
Remember, folks, in the bad old days, a thing called the Soviet Union, run by a principle called communism? The AK-47 was at once its tool, its icon, its manifesto.
 
The AK-47 was to the Russian empire what the short sword was to the Roman Empire. It dwelt at the centurion's right hand. It was the cutting edge of a cynical philosophy that disguised conquest under the bogus banner of liberation. It was so simple that even the most undeveloped nations could fabricate it from Russian plans with Russian guidance and a few lathes and stamping machines. You could probably build one in your basement if you wanted. Crude, derivative, simple, powerful, robust, tough as hell.
 
Can a gun be great? If you don't think so, you probably shouldn't be reading this piece, but the AK-47 was great. It was invented by a peasant sergeant, and it was manufactured in a tractor factory. What could be more Red?
 
Though they won't acknowledge it -- just as they won't acknowledge that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane -- the Russians must know deep in their hearts that the AK family of weapons was influenced heavily by a German creation from late in World War II called the Sturmgewehr-44. Yes, folks: Sturmgewehr decrypts perfectly into . . . assault rifle.
 
The Stg-44 represents what might be called the "base of fire" approach to military doctrine, something the Russians, who were machine-gun nuts, agreed with enthusiastically. The Russians, in fact, armed whole battalions with the PPSh-41 submachine gun in World War II -- that's the real clunky-looking one with a ventilated barrel, no handgrips and a giant drum to hold 71 9mm rounds. They just sprayed out blizzards of lead and marched in behind them. But late in the war, one story has it, the Russians ran into an SS unit armed with the new Stg-44s, and the result was a slaughter. The submachine guns fired that 9mm pistol round and their effective range was about 50 yards. The assault rifle fired a shortened rifle round just as fast, but its range was about 200 yards. Simple reality: 200 is farther than 50 by 150. So as they advanced, the Russians were in a 150-yard kill zone and couldn't even bring fire to bear on the hidden Germans who mowed them down from so far out. Ultimately, the Russians simply called in air support and dumped white phosphorus on the Germans.
 
But they learned: In the small physics-driven universe of terminal ballistics, the faster round beats the slower round, and the rifle round always beats the pistol round. If you can fire it fast and accurately, you will win.
 
Thus, the AK-47, officially adapted by the Soviet Army in 1949 -- when our men were still carrying the M1, which had been designed in the early '30s. Later, in Vietnam, the AK-47 so outperformed the Army's M14 (a sort of super M1), we hastily adapted, as a countermeasure, the M16. The AK-47 is what might be called a rough masterpiece, with its weird choreography of slants and curves, the bluntness of its receiver. It looks like a tommy gun designed by Mr. Moto, after reading Dostoyevsky and a favorable history of Peter the Great. The curved magazine is necessary for technical reasons, but it provides an aesthetic: It gives the rifle an Orientalized sensibility. Then there's the peasant thickness of the gas tube over the barrel like a Siberian pipeline, and that wicked high front sight that just keeps on going. It has no elegance whatsoever, and no wit. Its cleverness lies in its contempt for cleverness. It's a tractor of a rifle, a serious piece of work.
 
The genius behind this was one Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov, a senior tank sergeant who, wounded in the battle of Bryansk in 1941, conceived of the weapon's design while in sick bay. Later he fabricated early prototypes "with the help of the leadership and comrades," according to the official Kalashnikov Web site. (Yes -- it's at kalashnikov.guns.ru/!) For his efforts he was ultimately awarded the Hero of Socialist Labour (twice), the Stalin Prize and the Lenin Prize Laureate, as well as a chestful of other cheesy Red doohickeys.
 
Look at his face; he's got that bluff-peasant look of utter placidity, those cold gray eyes that suggest the steppes in winter, that sheathing of flesh, the surprisingly luxuriant hair, but somehow a sense of the orthodox to him.
 
He's as Russian as vodka, and his masterpiece reflects his culture brilliantly. It is not fancy or high tech. It answers one question so useful to empires: How do you kill a lot of people fast, simply and without spending too much money?
 
Because of the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the country is awash in Russian pieces. You see as well the ever-present PK machine gun on its bipod, the former squad automatic weapon of the Soviet army; it looks like it was designed by drunken plumbers in an Odessa hotel room while waiting for the hookers to arrive. But still, like the other Russian weapons, it just keeps on working, even after being packed in mud.
 
That is why, when you look at the small arms the Taliban and the Northern Alliance use, and the sleeker things our soldiers carry, you can see not just things and stuff but ideas and metaphors: the drift of violent history over the dusty hills of that raw land. You can feel shadows of a past never forgotten. When it is over and history has moved elsewhere, only the bones and the guns, one whitening, the other rusting, will remain.
 
© 2001 The Washington Post Company

   London Mayor Sadiq Khan is giving Metropolitan Police stop-and-search powers to enforce his order against the carrying of knives. The mayor said stop-and-search is a vital tool to fight crime and save lives. He said a survey found 74 percent of Londoners favor the tactic.
   “Our communities are sick and tired of the damage being done by knife crime,” Khan said. “We are supporting communities as they stand up against knife crime, with new funding for grass-roots community activities to protect their children and drive out crime.”
   The mayor has created a new 120-member violent crime task force as part of his Knife Crime Strategy to help stem street violence in the UK city.
   Khan’s initiative began in June of 2017 when he outlined a comprehensive plan to get knives off the street and attack the root causes of street violence.
   The mayor took action after 1,844 Londoners under the age of 25 were injured as a result of non-domestic knife crimes in 2016.
    In November and December of 2017, London Met Police made more than 900 arrests during a crackdown, taking more than 350 weapons off the street.
   “Firearms, bottles, and even acid can be used as a weapon, but we are also mindful that the volume of harm caused by knives in London is significant and so must be targeted and addressed,” Khan said.
   The mayor’s three-point plan targets lawbreakers, works with young people and communities and supports victims.
   More than 150 London schools have already received metal-detecting wands to stop students from carrying knives to school.
   I really have no comment.

​  - Dr. Gatling

   This article in the Washington Post as amazing as the previous post about an op/ed piece in the NYT.
   Again, a medium that many believe to be staunchly anti-gun reports fairly on the plight of a Connecticut man whose gun collection was confiscated because he gave voice to his inner turmoil.
    This was NOT a case of a deeply troubled and potentially violent person (like the Parkland, Fla., shooter) whose views and stated objectives should indeed be investigated. And bear in mind that the man whose guns were seized had gone through the honest effort to register them.
   Even more frightening to me are President Trump's flip-flops on the Second Amendment.  He weaves a confusing view on gun policy, even going so far as to say it's better to seize guns now and let courts decide later whether the action was warranted. 
    The president has retracted some of his other statements that shocked his fellow Republicans and the NRA. But I have yet to see a clarification of this disturbing pronouncement.

  - Dr. Gatling

    This article is one of those "even a blind hog can find an acorn sometime" happenings. I applaud Bob Leonard for writing it and The New  York Times for publishing it.  
    "Why Gun Culture Is So Strong in Rural America" is remarkable on several fronts. First of all, it's a a fair examination of the subject. Second, it's published in a newspaper considered by many to be strongly anti-gun. Third, it is written by a real member of the media.
    I spent many years as a mainstream media reporter and can assure you that I was never instructed what to write or even received a hint of an anti-gun agenda.  Yes, reporters may have a personal feeling on a subject. But they should never display that bias in their work. 
   In many cases, the tone of an article is captured by a headline that usually is written by somebody else whose job is to attract readers. In other cases, the reporter may be ignorant of the facts and must rely on what his sources say. And if that source happens to have a bias, then that may be reflected in the story. A good reporter should realize the bias and seek opposing comment..
   Finally, as much as I appreciate the work the NRA does in protecting the Second Amendment, the association's inflammatory rhetoric too often polarizes people with little room to consider that there may actually be truth in The New York Times.

​  - Dr. Gatling
     

    I saw this analysis when it was published a year ago but forgot to post it.

    You’ve heard of the Terrible Twos. But did you know about the Deadly Threes?
    
    According to an analysis by The Associated Press and the USA TODAY Network, “Deaths and injuries spike for children under age 5, with 3-year-olds the most common shooters and victims among young children. Nearly 90 3-year-olds were killed or injured in the shootings, the vast majority of which were self-inflicted.”

    The investigation covered more than 1,000 incidents spanning two and a-half years ending last year. “In all, those shootings claimed the lives of more than 320 minors and more than 30 adults,” the report said.

    The report does not delve into the causes of the accidental shootings other than the obvious: a child should not have had access to a readily-dischargeible firearm.

    In Texas, the gun owner can be charged with a Class C misdemeanor if a child younger than 17 gains access to a readily dischargeable firearm. That’s a gun that is loaded and not secured in any way such as in a safe or by a trigger lock. If the child kills or injures somebody with the gun, the charge increases to a Class A misdemeanor.

    Gun owners must balance their ease of access to the weapon with the proper security preventing unauthorized persons – not just children – from gaining control of the weapon. It’s a basic responsibility of gun ownership.

    Excuses such as, “I didn’t know the gun was loaded” pale in the light of evidence showing the gun was in easy reach of a three-year-old.

    Education programs like the NRA’s effective “Eddie Eagle” program teach kids what to do when they encounter firearms: “STOP! Don't Touch. Run Away. Tell a Grown-up.” 

    This valuable safety program helps augment the security efforts by responsible gun owners to prevent accidental shootings.

    But what if the custodian of the gun really does not know if it is loaded. Or even that it is hidden in the closet or bedside drawer.

    When the gun is no longer wanted, maintained or secured properly, the time has come to get rid of it.
If the custodian is comfortable handling the gun, it may be taken to a store for sale or given to friends or relatives who will accept the ownership responsibility.

But if the custodian is not comfortable in touching the gun or does not know anybody to take it, please contact Gatling Gun Rescue™ and we will either find it a new home or help the parts repair other guns. The service is free, confidential and complies with all state and federal laws.
 
  - Dr. Gatling 

    I recently received a frantic email warning that Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas had partnered with some notorious Democrat colleagues to sponsor a gun-control bill, S.2135.  The NRA may be able to find something wrong with this bill, but it looks pretty good to me and it may go a long way toward making gun haters feel better.

    I asked Sen. Cornyn to explain the bill, and he responded thusly:

    Like every Texan, I want to prevent violent crime, and I believe this begins with fully enforcing existing gun laws. The federal government has not adequately enforced the 2007 NICS Improvement Amendments Act (P. L. 110-180), a law that is supported by organizations ranging from the National Rifle Association to the Brady Campaign. Passed unanimously by Congress, this law requires states to submit criminal history and mental health records of individuals who are adjudicated as a danger to themselves or others in order to prevent them from legally purchasing firearms. This includes felons, domestic violence perpetrators, and other dangerous individuals.
    To prevent these individuals from illegally purchasing firearms, dealers are required to run an FBI background check on all individuals who attempt to purchase a firearm. This system, known as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), relies on the sharing of records by federal agencies and state governments to ensure that individuals who are prohibited from possessing a firearm are not able to obtain them illegally.
    Unfortunately, federal agencies and state governments often fail to upload relevant information to NICS—allowing dangerous individuals and violent criminals to obtain firearms. This failure to share information had tragic consequences in multiple mass-violence events. This failure to share information had tragic consequences in multiple mass-violence events, including Blacksburg, Virginia (2007); Charleston, South Carolina (2015); and Sutherland Springs, Texas (2017). In each of these cases, a dangerous individual who was prohibited from purchasing firearms was able to pass a NICS Background Check despite criminal or mental health records that were not uploaded to the system.
    To this end, I introduced the bipartisan Fix NICS Act (S. 2135) on November 15, 2017 to help prevent future tragedies and ensure the integrity of our criminal background check system. S. 2135 would require federal agencies and states to produce NICS implementation plans focused on uploading all information to the background check system showing that a person is prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms under current law—including measures to verify the accuracy of records.       Federal agencies will be held accountable if they fail to upload relevant records to the background check system through public reporting and prohibiting bonus pay for political appointees. S. 2135 would reward states who comply with NICS implementation plans through federal grant preferences and incentives. Also, this legislation would create a Domestic Abuse and Violence Prevention Initiative to ensure that a felon or domestic abuser is excluded from purchasing firearms.
    I also believe improving mental health is another way to prevent violent crime. On August 5, 2015, I introduced the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act of 2015 (S. 2002), which was later included in the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016, and was signed into law last year (P.L. 114-255). This legislation enhances the ability of local communities to identify and treat potentially dangerous, mentally-ill individuals. The law also includes reforms to increase the use of treatment-based alternatives for mentally-ill offenders, and improve crisis response and prevention by state and local law enforcement officials. The bill was endorsed by a diverse group of organizations, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the National Association of Police Organizations.
    This is the debate we should be having—a debate that focuses on the root causes of mass violence, fully enforcing current law, and addressing improvements for mental health care in America. We can tackle these problems without curtailing Second Amendment rights, and I will continue to push for effective solutions that protect communities while preserving our constitutional liberties.

    The only thing in the text of the bill that bothers me is that federal agency supervisors would be punished for non-compliance by having their payroll bonuses withheld!? What? They now get a bonus for complying? Sheesh.

    I can see how Cornyn's cohorts upset some gun owners. If Cornyn really wanted to do some good, he could push for national reciprocity of state carry permits. Now THAT'S a bill I could back!

​ - Dr. Gatling

A study published Nov. 14, 2016, in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine is purported to show that increased restrictions on firearm sales lead to fewer gun homicides.
Another study published by JAMA Intern Med. discussed the effect of Florida’s stand-your-ground law.
The studies were widely reported, including in Popular Science, which took a somewhat slanted approach:

“In this week’s obvious news, laws that allow people to kill other people with guns have led to more people killing other people with guns. According to two new research papers, stricter firearm laws are associated with fewer firearm homicides, and the implementation of Florida’s stand-your-ground law was associated with increased firearm homicides.” (Emphasis mine)

Wow. I’m astounded by this statement and would like to know where in the United States the laws allow people to kill other people with guns.

Getting back to the study, doctors and scientists from Harvard Medical School, Boston Children's Hospital and Texas Children's Hospital in Houston evaluated peer-reviewed articles from 1970 to 2016.

Thus this study is not actually new research. In fact, it is simply an analysis of old research. JAMA did not provide a public text listing the research examined. I, for one, would like to know whether some of the data came from agenda-based organizations, agencies, or researchers.

The stated objective was: “To evaluate the association between firearm laws and preventing firearm homicides in the United States.” Yet the researchers intermingled the terms “injury” and “homicide,” saying, “Firearm homicide is a leading cause of injury death in the United States …”

FYI, the Centers for Disease Control publishes mortality statistics, with the most recent being for 2014:

• All Injury Deaths per 100,000 population: 62.6
  
• All Poisoning Deaths per 100,000 population: 15.4
  
• All Motor Vehicle Traffic Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.7
  

• All Firearm Deaths (injuries plus homicides) per 100,000 population: 10.6
  

• All Firearm Deaths from Homicides per 100,000 population: 3.4.
  

The laws examined in the JAMA study were in five categories:

• Curbing gun trafficking
• Strengthening background checks
  
• Improving child safety
  
• Banning military-style assault [sic] weapons
  
• Restricting firearms in public places and leniency in carrying guns
  

(Yes, I know that there is no such thing as an assault weapon, but apparently either the docs did not know or did not care. But more later on this single point!)

The study concluded: “The strength of firearm legislation in general, and laws related to strengthening background checks and permit-to-purchase in particular, is associated with decreased firearm homicide rates.” Again, it is not clear whether accidental firearm injuries were included in the analysis.

There is little doubt that the background checking system is highly flawed and many proposals to “improve” gun control focus on this aspect. One key problem has been in the reporting chain of local agencies providing information to the FBI NICS. This is one of those enforce-existing-laws issues.

Another “problem” has been the so-called “gun show loophole” allowing sellers without Federal Firearms Licenses may provide cash-and-carry service without record-keeping. I’m not going into this now, but I would like to note that some states require an FFL dealer to be involved in ALL private gun sales and conduct the NICS check. This requirement could quickly be converted into a registration database if the FBI was not required – as it is now – to purge data.

As for a permit to purchase a firearm, the study did not specify whether this applied to just handgun sales or to all gun sales. Chicago, for example, requires a permit and yet has an out-of-control gun violence problem. Chicago also has universal gun registration.

The study also concluded, “Specific laws directed at firearm trafficking, improving child safety, or the banning of military-style assault weapons were not associated with changes in firearm homicide rates. The evidence for laws restricting guns in public places and leniency in gun carrying was mixed.”

Please allow me to repeat, for emphasis, “ … THE BANNING OF MILITARY-STYLE ASSAULT [sic] WEAPONS WERE [was] NOT ASSOCIATED WITH CHANGES IN FIREARM HOMICIDE RATES.”

Any lawmaker still inclined toward a ban please take note.

I’m disappointed, but not surprised, that it is hard to legislate child safety. Gatling Gun Rescue(tm) exists to help remove the threat posed by improperly-stored firearms that are no longer wanted or properly maintained. PLEASE contact a relative or friend who is familiar with guns and willing to assume the responsibility of ownership. Otherwise, we will be glad to help.

Finally, I realize that federal funding is not available for firearms studies. But, if this study is any indication, I see no harm in collecting incident data (but not names and serial numbers!)  

• Dr. Gatling
  

 
Study Citation:
Lee LK, Fleegler EW, Farrell C, Avakame E, Srinivasan S, Hemenway D, Monuteaux MC. Firearm Laws and Firearm HomicidesA Systematic Review. JAMA Intern Med. Published online November 14, 2016. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.7051