opinion

More guns produce one thing: more gun deaths

As it turns out, I was wrong.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that the so-called “war on police” narrative that’s being pushed by conservative talking heads was nothing more than a ploy to undermine a growing “Black Lives Matter” movement.

I said that because looking at actual statistics, 2015 has so far been one of the safest years on record – ever – for police officers across the country.

But the statistics failed me.

I didn’t realize it, but there is a war on police. It’s just not being waged by black protestors or the Nation of Islam.

Instead, it has been fought by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

A recent study, which was reported on by Vice News, found that in states with higher gun ownership rates, police officers are three times more likely to be killed.

Which is ridiculously high. But not really surprising.

With every regulation and every law the NRA gets knocked down, more guns flood the streets and wind up in the hands of untrained owners. With every scare tactic pushed by the NRA that sends the average American scrambling to purchase a gun before President Obama confiscates them, another firearm lands right in the middle of a domestic situation.

Guess who most often has to deal with those untrained gun owners and break up those domestic disputes?

And in states with legislatures that are mostly owned by the NRA and other gun advocacy groups, where there’s never a pro-gun bill that wasn’t all but passed the moment it was written, things get out of control in a hurry.

Look at Alabama, with some of the most lax gun laws in the world, and still our legislators have been fighting with state sheriffs over the passage recent gun bills, including one that would inexplicably remove the requirement for a permit to carry a loaded gun in a car.

(One of the primary arguments used in defense of this bill is that drivers need access to a firearm in case of a road rage incident. Because what road rage incident hasn’t been made better by the presence of a loaded firearm?)

It’s all part of this idiotic mindset that more guns make us safer.

But they don’t. And this is not an arguable point.

The states with the highest gun ownership rates also have the highest rates of gun deaths. And the highest rates of firearm suicides. And the highest rates of accidental shootings. And the highest rates of accidental child shootings and child deaths by firearms.

What more guns, along with our absurd belief that a gun in hand makes anyone – regardless of training or skill – safer, gets us is this: A few weeks ago, the Washington Post reported on the number of toddlers shooting people.

It’s at a rate of one per week now.

Let me repeat that: Toddlers. Are. Shooting. People. Weekly.

That’s not to mention the accidental shootings that have occurred in businesses, like the two people shot in a grocery store near Huntsville. Or the three injured in a Cracker Barrel accidental shooting in Florida on Tuesday.

Sounds safe to me.

The NRA and its paid-for politicians have fought off every requirement for training for gun owners, every requirement for the safe storage of firearms in homes with children and every requirement that might prevent the accidental discharge of a firearm.

Along with a bunch of dead police officers and other innocent victims, here’s what all of that fighting has brought us: In this safer, gun-loving country, nearly 600 children under the age of 11 have died just this year from gun-related injuries.

One of the more recent ones was 2-year-old Abigail Newman in North Carolina. A beautiful, blonde-haired little girl, Abigail was killed when she found a loaded shotgun sitting on a table in the home where she went for daycare. Three other kids were also in the home when Abigail was shot in the neck and died some time later on her way to the hospital.

Now, multiply that awful scene by 600. And then triple the cops killed.

And at some point maybe we should ask just what the hell the definition of “safer” is.