[Vision2020] Lessons From Guns and a Goose

[Art Deco]

 [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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January 16, 2013
Lessons From Guns and a Goose By NICHOLAS D.
KRISTOF<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html>

When I travel abroad and talk to foreigners about the American passion for
guns, people sometimes express a conclusion that horrifies me: in America,
life is cheap.

President Obama announced a terrific series of gun-control
measures<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/01/16/us/politics/16white-house-gun-proposals-documents.html>to
show that we do indeed hold life dear. But the fate of these proposals
ultimately will depend on centrist Americans who are torn. They’re troubled
by the toll of guns but also think that it’s reassuring to have a Glock
when you hear a floorboard creak downstairs.

So, to those of you wavering, let me tell you the story of a goose.

I grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Ore., a rural town where nearly every home
had guns. My dad gave me a .22 rifle for my 12th birthday, and I then took
an N.R.A. safety course.

I understand the heartland’s affection for guns, and I share that sense of
familiarity. A farm needs a gun or two to deal with coyotes with a fondness
for lamb, and, frankly, it’s also fun to shoot.

But all those guns didn’t make us safer. Take the time we gave a goose to a
neighbor.

That goose would wander off to a different neighbor’s property and jump
into the watering trough for his sheep. The sheep owner was furious that
the water would be fouled, and one time he was so fed up he threatened to
shoot the goose.

He was probably just making a point, but, since he had a gun handy, he
pulled it out and aimed it in the direction of the goose. Seeing this, the
goose-owner (who had come to fetch his bird) saw the need to protect his
property and pulled out his own gun. They faced off — over a goose!

Our neighbors were both good, admirable, law-abiding people, but their guns
had led to a dangerous confrontation. The N.R.A. might say that guns don’t
kill people, geese kill people, but in the absence of firearms they
wouldn’t have menaced each other with axes or hammers.

The sheep-owner’s wife eventually persuaded the men to stand down. Good
sense prevailed, the goose survived, and so did the neighbors.

But I think of that episode because it underscores the role that guns too
often play in our society: an instrument not of protection but of
escalation.

Lovers throw plates at each other and then one indignantly reaches for a
gun — maybe just to scare the other. And then, too often, something goes
wrong.

*One study, reported in Southern Medical Journal in 2010, found that a
gun<http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100204/Guns-in-homes-can-increase-risk-of-death-and-firearm-related-violence.aspx>is
12 times more likely to result in the death of a household member or
guest than in the death of an intruder. Another study in 1993 found that
gun ownership creates nearly a threefold
risk<http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506>of a
homicide in the owner’s household.
*
* *

* *Far too many Americans are like Nancy Lanza, who may have thought that
her guns would make her safer, and then was killed with them. Something
similar happened in Yamhill, where a troubled teenager took a gun that his
grandmother owned and shot her dead. The N.R.A. is right that most guns are
used safely, but it’s also true that guns are more likely to cause
tragedies than to avert them.

President Obama said that there have been 900 violent gun deaths since
Sandy Hook, but that was a rare error. He perhaps was speaking of gun
homicides only, but he should also include gun suicides — which are even
more common and certainly qualify as violent firearms deaths.

*The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculates that each year
there are more than 11,000 gun
homicides<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm>and nearly
19,000 gun suicides <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm>. That’s
30,000 firearms deaths a year in the United States. At that rate, there
have already been some 2,500 violent gun deaths since Sandy Hook. *
* *

* *David Hemenway, a public health specialist at
Harvard<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/david-hemenway/>,
says that having a gun at home increases the risk of suicide in that
household by two to four times.

To reduce auto deaths, we’ve taken a public health approach that you might
call “car control” — driver’s licenses, air bags, seat belts, auto
registration. The result is a steady decline in vehicle fatalities so that
some time soon gun deaths are likely to exceed traffic fatalities, for the
first time in modern American history.

There are no magic solutions to the gun carnage in America. But in the same
spirit as what we’ve accomplished to make driving safer, President Obama
has crafted careful, modest measures that won’t solve America’s epidemic of
gun violence but should reduce it.

If we could reduce gun deaths by one-quarter, that would be 7,500 lives
saved a year. Unless life in America really is cheap, that’s worth it.

•

I invite you to visit my blog, On the
Ground<http://www.nytimes.com/ontheground>.
Please also join me on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/kristof> and
Google+ <https://plus.google.com/102839963139173448834/posts?hl=en>, watch
my YouTube videos <http://www.youtube.com/nicholaskristof> and follow me on
Twitter <http://twitter.com/nickkristof>.



-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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