President Obama opened his remarks at McGavock High School in Nashville, Tennessee with a brief mourning of the death of a student there on Tuesday, the day of his State of the Union speech. Obama mentioned gun violence once in his address to the nation. Again yesterday, the bulk of his speech was about education policy, not gun control.

The fact that McGovock was itself the site of a gun fatality only gave a glancing emphasis on the firearm policies he says he is trying to move forward. The setting perhaps emphasized just as much the futility of the rhetorical gesture. President Obama needs to talk more about gun policies in this country, but he has to do it differently. As horrific as school shootings are, gun violence takes more lives outside our classrooms than in them.

In the five years of Obama's presidency, mass shootings have been the one reliable catalyst for a presidential push on our nation's uniquely liberal firearm laws. He broke a three-year streak of non-engagement on the issue in January 2011, after the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 17 other people in Tucson, Arizona, giving one speech and writing one op-ed calling for more legislation. Then, the White House was for the most part silent for another 10 months, until Newtown. That tragedy brought a flurry of urgent officials pleas: 18 sets of remarks in five months, according to C-SPAN. After that, another season of silence, until the Naval Yard shootings in September 2013.

I understand that Obama has vowed to do what he can to limit access to guns "with or without" Congress, but it's clear that his administration sees mass shootings as their best leverage to accomplish the more substantial changes that come with new federal regulation. It's equally clear that it isn't working. I have some suggestions for a shift in emphasis.

Perhaps the White House believes the deaths of children are the most sympathetic emotional wedge. Fine. If you look at the data, Obama should have been talking about gun control legislation in the Senate twice a day, as 215 children died in the 99 days the Senate was in session last year. As many have argued, Americans are becoming numb to gun violence. If it's the scale of a tragedy that might inspire Congress, the murder of, say, three or more, then he should have hammered at them about once every two and half hours, the entire year. Over 12,000 people, adults and children, died from gun violence in 2013 – about 30 a day.

President Obama opened his remarks at McGavock High School in Nashville, Tennessee with a brief mourning of the death of a student there on Tuesday, the day of his State of the Union speech. Obama mentioned gun violence once in his address to the nation. Again yesterday, the bulk of his speech was about education policy, not gun control.

The fact that McGovock was itself the site of a gun fatality only gave a glancing emphasis on the firearm policies he says he is trying to move forward. The setting perhaps emphasized just as much the futility of the rhetorical gesture. President Obama needs to talk more about gun policies in this country, but he has to do it differently. As horrific as school shootings are, gun violence takes more lives outside our classrooms than in them.

In the five years of Obama's presidency, mass shootings have been the one reliable catalyst for a presidential push on our nation's uniquely liberal firearm laws. He broke a three-year streak of non-engagement on the issue in January 2011, after the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 17 other people in Tucson, Arizona, giving one speech and writing one op-ed calling for more legislation. Then, the White House was for the most part silent for another 10 months, until Newtown. That tragedy brought a flurry of urgent officials pleas: 18 sets of remarks in five months, according to C-SPAN. After that, another season of silence, until the Naval Yard shootings in September 2013.

I understand that Obama has vowed to do what he can to limit access to guns "with or without" Congress, but it's clear that his administration sees mass shootings as their best leverage to accomplish the more substantial changes that come with new federal regulation. It's equally clear that it isn't working. I have some suggestions for a shift in emphasis.

Perhaps the White House believes the deaths of children are the most sympathetic emotional wedge. Fine. If you look at the data, Obama should have been talking about gun control legislation in the Senate twice a day, as 215 children died in the 99 days the Senate was in session last year. As many have argued, Americans are becoming numb to gun violence. If it's the scale of a tragedy that might inspire Congress, the murder of, say, three or more, then he should have hammered at them about once every two and half hours, the entire year. Over 12,000 people, adults and children, died from gun violence in 2013 – about 30 a day.

I suppose another aspect of mass shootings that makes them, in theory, the best bet for Congressional actions is that we assume that anyone who plans a massacre is, by most definitions, crazy. No one wants crazy people to have guns, right?

There are numerous different proposals that try to prevent the definably mentally ill from obtaining firearms, indeed, one of Obama's "without Congress" proposals to curb gun access is an expansion of the ways a "lawful authority" can report on an individual who is prohibited by federal law from owning a gun. This is a step forward, to be sure, though the rule also gives the impression that the current background check system (National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS) is working at all – and that the prohibited category is a useful screen.

First of all, using the NICS is voluntary – only 13 states use it for all commercial gun purchases (leave alone the gun show loophole for now). States that report to the database have incredible latitude as to what they include: some states limit the time period of the reporting (letting those with older sign of trouble slip through), some states narrowly define "mentally ill".

The patchwork of laws about reporting means that of all those denied a gun purchase because of a NICS search, even after the Virginia Tech shootings prompted a tightening of the reporting and search laws in many states, less than 2% of individuals run through the NICS database are turned down for mental health reasons. This is almost certainly an under-representation. What's more, evidence implies that many of mentally ill who are determined to get firearms will wind up "jurisdiction shopping". After Virginia started reporting its mental health records to NICS, 378 of the 438 those denied guns because of a Virginia mental health record were trying to purchase a firearm in another state.

So I have a radical suggestion: cede to the gun rights lobby that bad actors who want weapons cannot be stopped – perhaps especially the mentally ill ones. Instead of focusing on how to stop a "bad guy with a gun", see what we can do to stop the guy in the mirror with a gun: a majority of gun deaths are suicides, as I have noted repeatedly. (And will undoubtedly repeat again.) This actually opens up the debate about gun regulation rather than narrows it, because recent research has shown that any reduction of gun ownership in a population decreases the number of suicides overall: looking at the years between 2000 and 2009, the study authors found that for each percentage point the portion of gun owners in a population goes down, suicides decrease by at least half a percent.

Many assume that focusing on preventing gun suicides falls under laws keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, but most people who commit suicide do not meet even the lowest bar for gun ownership prohibition set by federal or state laws: previous documentation of violence to self or others.

Two-thirds of suicides do not have a contact with a mental health profession in the year leading up to the attempt. Another set of studies found that only 24% of those that attempt suicide go on to another attempt. Suicide ideations are also fleeting; 25% of suicide attempts are based on less than five minutes consideration. What's more, those who commit suicide by firearm are the least likely of all attempts to have a record of mental illness – the most likely, it follows, to attempt suicide because of temporary crisis and moment of desperation. But 85% of those who attempt suicide by firearm will never see the other side of that crisis.. Firearm suicide beats the next most effective means (hanging) by a margin of 16%.

The math is easy: if you somehow (a waiting period, sophisticated gun locks) kept guns out of 10% of the over 19,000 in 2010 that died from a firearm suicide – if you forced the determined to use next most effective method – then about almost 600 of them would get another chance at life. And 76%, over 400 of them, would decide they'd stick around.

That's over 15 tragedies the size of Newtown's that could be prevented but weren't, and weren't mourned as the tragedies they all were. To put it in Obama-moved-to-speak math (18 speeches for each Newtown-sized group of deaths): would Obama be willing to give a speech on gun control 250 times a year, just about every day?

I don't know if such a consistent appeal would work on Congress. Would it work on you?

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/31/president-obama-gun-control-push

President Obama opened his remarks at McGavock High School in Nashville, Tennessee with a brief mourning of the death of a student there on Tuesday, the day of his State of the Union speech. Obama mentioned gun violence once in his address to the nation. Again yesterday, the bulk of his speech was about education policy, not gun control.

The fact that McGovock was itself the site of a gun fatality only gave a glancing emphasis on the firearm policies he says he is trying to move forward. The setting perhaps emphasized just as much the futility of the rhetorical gesture. President Obama needs to talk more about gun policies in this country, but he has to do it differently. As horrific as school shootings are, gun violence takes more lives outside our classrooms than in them.

In the five years of Obama's presidency, mass shootings have been the one reliable catalyst for a presidential push on our nation's uniquely liberal firearm laws. He broke a three-year streak of non-engagement on the issue in January 2011, after the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 17 other people in Tucson, Arizona, giving one speech and writing one op-ed calling for more legislation. Then, the White House was for the most part silent for another 10 months, until Newtown. That tragedy brought a flurry of urgent officials pleas: 18 sets of remarks in five months, according to C-SPAN. After that, another season of silence, until the Naval Yard shootings in September 2013.

I understand that Obama has vowed to do what he can to limit access to guns "with or without" Congress, but it's clear that his administration sees mass shootings as their best leverage to accomplish the more substantial changes that come with new federal regulation. It's equally clear that it isn't working. I have some suggestions for a shift in emphasis.

Perhaps the White House believes the deaths of children are the most sympathetic emotional wedge. Fine. If you look at the data, Obama should have been talking about gun control legislation in the Senate twice a day, as 215 children died in the 99 days the Senate was in session last year. As many have argued, Americans are becoming numb to gun violence. If it's the scale of a tragedy that might inspire Congress, the murder of, say, three or more, then he should have hammered at them about once every two and half hours, the entire year. Over 12,000 people, adults and children, died from gun violence in 2013 – about 30 a day.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That's because he's concerned about guns.

Americans have already tried to get rid of booze and failed. Try something that's worked in lots of other countries.

The third most prevalent cause of death in the USA is iatrogenic reasons. Do you advocate getting rid of doctors?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That's because he's concerned about guns.

Americans have already tried to get rid of booze and failed. Try something that's worked in lots of other countries.

The third most prevalent cause of death in the USA is iatrogenic reasons. Do you advocate getting rid of doctors?

5,000 kids(21 and under) are killed yearly and another 186,000 are admitted to emergency rooms due to alcohol related causes, far more than those kids that are killed or injured by guns yearly.

 Goliath wrote:
Yes, but just because you make that point in every gun thread doesn't mean that it isn't still a bit silly.

The government tried legislating away alcohol, and what happened was the prohibition era. It wasn't particularly fun.

They could try and legislate away cars, I guess? I'm under the impression that cars are used more in daily life for most americans than guns are though, so that might cause some issues.

 MWHistorian wrote:
And how many of those gun related deaths are due to gang activity and/or drugs? Take those out and you'll find that number remarkably reduced. The latest FBI report tracked gun violence in the US over the last 10 years and found that non-gang/drug related firearms deaths has been shrinking by a large percentage. (I'll see if I can find it and post it, otherwise you have no reason to believe me.) Violence and drugs are already illegal, but that hasn't stopped anything. It's a societal problem and no one that's easily fixed. Outlawing guns is attacking the symptom and not the sickness and punishing the millions of law abiding citizens. Also, I consider the purpose of the 2nd Ammendment to be too important to surrender. (Hint: it's not about hunting or even self defense.) So yes, even getting rid of gangs and drugs won't stop all gun violence and where it occurs it will be punished like any other crime. But the right for armed resistance against tyranny is too important. It's like the parachute after all else has failed that you don't wan to use.

 Goliath wrote:
I didn't say it was acceptable? I don't think gun control would work; they're too big a part of the US culture and any attempt to 'get rid of them' would likely spark a civil war.

I think that the US should focus on issues that actually *can* be helped, like the link from mental illness to a number of shootings, or the fact that a large number of deaths from guns are due to suicide and depression.

Those sorts of things can be helped. The number of guns in the US can't.

The point I was trying to make however, is that yes, the number of deaths from alcohol is too high (and yes, something could be done, but that would be education and mental illness again) but just because the number of deaths from alcohol or cars is too high doesn't invalidate the deaths from guns; it may put them into perspective, but it doesn't mean that they become less unacceptable just because car or alcohol deaths are more unacceptable.

 Goliath wrote:
I didn't say it was acceptable? I don't think gun control would work; they're too big a part of the US culture and any attempt to 'get rid of them' would likely spark a civil war.

I think that the US should focus on issues that actually *can* be helped, like the link from mental illness to a number of shootings, or the fact that a large number of deaths from guns are due to suicide and depression.

Those sorts of things can be helped. The number of guns in the US can't.

The point I was trying to make however, is that yes, the number of deaths from alcohol is too high (and yes, something could be done, but that would be education and mental illness again) but just because the number of deaths from alcohol or cars is too high doesn't invalidate the deaths from guns; it may put them into perspective, but it doesn't mean that they become less unacceptable just because car or alcohol deaths are more unacceptable.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Goliath wrote:
I didn't say it was acceptable? I don't think gun control would work; they're too big a part of the US culture and any attempt to 'get rid of them' would likely spark a civil war.

I think that the US should focus on issues that actually *can* be helped, like the link from mental illness to a number of shootings, or the fact that a large number of deaths from guns are due to suicide and depression.

Those sorts of things can be helped. The number of guns in the US can't.

The point I was trying to make however, is that yes, the number of deaths from alcohol is too high (and yes, something could be done, but that would be education and mental illness again) but just because the number of deaths from alcohol or cars is too high doesn't invalidate the deaths from guns; it may put them into perspective, but it doesn't mean that they become less unacceptable just because car or alcohol deaths are more unacceptable.

I very much agree with this. There is a sickness in American society that will increase unless we diagnose it and treat it correctly. Ban guns and these psychopaths will make bombs. Cure the illness to end violence.

 Jihadin wrote:
Ban all violent games...be it console or tabletop...

 Jihadin wrote:
Ban all violent games...be it console or tabletop...

 djones520 wrote:
There is not a sickness in our society.
Just because the media sensationalizes something to the point where we hear about it everyday, doesn't mean it is actually rampant.

 Goliath wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
There is not a sickness in our society.
Just because the media sensationalizes something to the point where we hear about it everyday, doesn't mean it is actually rampant.

Just because there's only a small number of mentally ill people killing other people doesn't affect the fact that a large number of deaths due to guns and other methods are due to mental illness.