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I agree that the distinction is important. Firearm homicide and firearm suicide are very distinct problems, with very different solutions.

Beiruty wrote:Thanks for your feedback. IMHO, the anti-guns dropped the gloves and went all in.
Time to stand up and loose the strings and fight on.

The antigun lobby is going all out, but their tactic is lying and throwing up a shield wall of emotion. People hate being lied to, and voters are people. An ambush, if discovered and promptly surrounded, will repay the intended mischief with interest. The antigun lobby is overextending itself right now, and if we are smart, we will turn that on them.

We need to be the ones with solutions. We have the advantage of understanding how poorly gun ownership correlates with violence. If we say "this us why you shouldn't take our guns", then we're selfish. If we say, "these are the complex social problems that you ignored because you're committed to gun control rather than your stated aim of reducing violence, and KIDS are dying because of your arrogance", THAT will resonate with voters.

Beiruty wrote:Can I share your post on my FB page?

I would rather that you didn't, if only because I would phrase things slightly differently. My colleagues in medicine tend to be pretty anti-gun, but they're also smart people who are highly trained to interpret facts. I'm against gun control because the correlation between guns and gun violence is minuscule or absent entirely. When you point that out in a non threatening manner, it changes minds. When you out yourself as an NRA member, even smart people let their preconceptions take hold.

Ending gun violence is everyone's problem. We have the benefit of poorly recorded experiential data showing the safety of firearms and firearm use in nearly all contexts. Most people see news reports, hyperviolent movies and video games. The numbers are out there, and the available data say that they're on our side. Like that JAMA paper trying to show how NRA members have a bunch of accidents: what it really showed, through a good review of data, was that the US rate of ER visits for firearm-related emergency room visits is about 1/100,000 per year among insured people.

For people who are inclined to oppose the 2A, phrasing things in a non-confrontational manner and pointing out solutions is the better way. I don't want to do that in a half-cocked manner because it's important.

There are a lot of layers to that. The failures with regard to spotting the clear and imminent threat that Cruz posed were even more egregious than the warning signs given by Choi, right up to the point that Peterson didn't stop a personally known-to-him burnout with a black duffel straight out of The Matrix from marching into the school. They had a hundred chances to stop Dylan Klebold's twin from shooting kids and they didn't even flag him as mentally incompetent. Even if he hadn't shot up a school, that sort of person has no business owning a gun.

I mean before all of that. Most monsters aren't born, but made. Most of those kids, maybe even Nikolas Cruz, need someone to reach out to them before they turn into active threats

Statistically, the most important change that we could make would be raising the driving age to 21. 1000x more teens die from accidents than school shootings.

Death in the 18-24 age group is dominated by accidents, with homicide and suicide vying for a far distant second place. Homicide occurs in predictable, hyperviolent circles focused upon gangs in low income areas. Suicide is steadily enlarging its lead over homicide, and has demonstrated the hypothesis that limitation of means won't stop suicide. Indeed, suffocation now accounts for the plurality of sucides in the 18-24 group and is a high lethality (i.e. The same category as firearms) method. Indeed, our suicide rate is indistinguishable from the rest of the developed world , and the ranking of nations by suicide rate is determined by cultural factors (i.e. Japan leads by a mile even though you can't get guns there).

Looking at numbers, the March for our Lives is akin to a mad rush to save the microwave in a burning house: It's a tiny part of a far larger tragedy, and the focus stems from the gun control movement's knowledge that dead white kids pass legislation. There aren't any marches with celebrities for the kids who died in car wrecks or who killed themselves. Yet those kids are the vast majority. This push is capitalization on tragedy, but more than that, it's tilting at windmills.

The same improvements in mental health that will keep obviouly ill people like Nikolas Cruz and Seung Hui Choi from obtaining guns will do far more good by helping the kids who don't want to hurt anyone but themselves.