Suppose a study came out that demonstrated that states with stricter gun laws had less gun violence than their sister states that regulated guns less rigorously. How would the National Rifle Association and its congressional devotees counter that?
Well, a very interesting study — not exactly what I posed above, but close — has just been concluded by Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University, and the results are intriguing. The states with the strictest gun control laws see 42 percent less gun violence than states with permissive gun laws. This is a first and while imperfect, represents a huge threat to the NRA’s constant mantra that gun control laws don’t work.
The NRA and the gun industry are, understandably, not happy with this finding, and have begun their assaults on it, questioning both the study methodology and the researchers who conducted it. Regarding the study itself, they have a small point: The study does not tell us anything about gun law enforcement or about which specific gun restrictions are effective and which are not. Their attacks on the researchers, in contrast, are ad hominem, demagogic, and disturbingly reminiscent of the underhanded tactics and vicious character assassinations of the mercifully now-defunct House Un-American Activities Committee and the thoroughly discredited Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who ruined so many innocent lives.
If this were the only bad news for the NRA, it would be threatening enough. But suppose that the federal government was unleashed to study gun violence? That is happening as we speak. One of the executive orders President Obama signed in January in response to the Newtown Massacre directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to resume studying gun violence, something that Congress — at the direction of the NRA — has prohibited since 1995.
By itself, the CDC directive might not be as serious a menace to the NRA’s long-time hegemony and dominance of the debate and the NRA and gun industry money that fuels so many congressional campaigns. On top of the Harvard-Boston study, however, the CDC directive looms as an existential threat to the NRA and its legislative lapdogs.
Suppose that the CDC finds that certain specific laws do, in fact, reduce gun violence. Not only the NRA, but also its congressional allies, would be put in the uncomfortable position of denying science and fact.
Suppose, too, that one of the two 76-year old Supreme Court conservatives (Scalia and Kennedy) suddenly retires in the next three years for health or other reasons. President Obama is likely to appoint a replacement more in tune with the standard English interpretation of the language of the Second Amendment than the convoluted exercise in bad grammar, syntax and usage that the current court had to strain to employ in order to cut reasonable gun regulation loose and permit all the crazy-quilt, permissive laws that followed — such as allowing the carrying of concealed weapons in church — to stand. Such an appointment would represent the biggest threat to an overconfident organization that, for far too long, has dominated the debate.
Rants is a series of political and social observations written by part-time Canandaigua resident and Canandaigua Academy graduate Richard Hermann. Email him at messenger@messengerpostmedia.com
Suppose a study came out that demonstrated that states with stricter gun laws had less gun violence than their sister states that regulated guns less rigorously. How would the National Rifle Association and its congressional devotees counter that?
Well, a very interesting study — not exactly what I posed above, but close — has just been concluded by Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University, and the results are intriguing. The states with the strictest gun control laws see 42 percent less gun violence than states with permissive gun laws. This is a first and while imperfect, represents a huge threat to the NRA’s constant mantra that gun control laws don’t work.
The NRA and the gun industry are, understandably, not happy with this finding, and have begun their assaults on it, questioning both the study methodology and the researchers who conducted it. Regarding the study itself, they have a small point: The study does not tell us anything about gun law enforcement or about which specific gun restrictions are effective and which are not. Their attacks on the researchers, in contrast, are ad hominem, demagogic, and disturbingly reminiscent of the underhanded tactics and vicious character assassinations of the mercifully now-defunct House Un-American Activities Committee and the thoroughly discredited Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who ruined so many innocent lives.
If this were the only bad news for the NRA, it would be threatening enough. But suppose that the federal government was unleashed to study gun violence? That is happening as we speak. One of the executive orders President Obama signed in January in response to the Newtown Massacre directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to resume studying gun violence, something that Congress — at the direction of the NRA — has prohibited since 1995.
By itself, the CDC directive might not be as serious a menace to the NRA’s long-time hegemony and dominance of the debate and the NRA and gun industry money that fuels so many congressional campaigns. On top of the Harvard-Boston study, however, the CDC directive looms as an existential threat to the NRA and its legislative lapdogs.
Suppose that the CDC finds that certain specific laws do, in fact, reduce gun violence. Not only the NRA, but also its congressional allies, would be put in the uncomfortable position of denying science and fact.
Suppose, too, that one of the two 76-year old Supreme Court conservatives (Scalia and Kennedy) suddenly retires in the next three years for health or other reasons. President Obama is likely to appoint a replacement more in tune with the standard English interpretation of the language of the Second Amendment than the convoluted exercise in bad grammar, syntax and usage that the current court had to strain to employ in order to cut reasonable gun regulation loose and permit all the crazy-quilt, permissive laws that followed — such as allowing the carrying of concealed weapons in church — to stand. Such an appointment would represent the biggest threat to an overconfident organization that, for far too long, has dominated the debate.
Rants is a series of political and social observations written by part-time Canandaigua resident and Canandaigua Academy graduate Richard Hermann. Email him at messenger@messengerpostmedia.com
