Like so many people around the world, the Knodes team is heartbroken. After the tragic events soul sucking, senseless, inexplicable murder of 20 children, it’s hard to know what to do, what to feel or how to help.
Perhaps like me, you scour the web looking for answers, craving to understand what we as a society should be doing differently (it is NOT demonizing Autism by the way). Perhaps you’re looking to rationalize what can’t possibly be rationalized. Inadvertently you are probably pulled into the endless cycle of tragedy porn that our modern media excels at. Soundbites. Pictures of impossibly cute children who will never grow up. And the punditry. The g–damn punditry. Political posturing and tons of rhetoric. But what I want to challenge everyone (EVERYone), to do is to bring some facts to the conversation. There are people who have tried, but we need MORE fact-based conversation.
There have been amazing tweets like this one drawing parallels between shoe-bombers and revised TSA practices. There have been impassioned pleas from unabashed gun control advocate Mayor Mike. But there has simply not been a grassroots push for DATA in the dialog.
Let’s shed the light of real truth. Not militia-fabricated, NRA-sponsored studies. Not left-wing super crunchy liberal agenda-driven polls. If we really give a shit about changing the outcomes in this country, let’s apply the same passion and rigor to analyzing the value chain of guns, self-defense, crime and gun violence that we do to parsing election data, market data, sales data and every other kind of f-ing data. Let’s have a conversation rooted in accurate historical perspectives and updated demographic, geographic and whateverelse-graphic trend data.
To be clear on my perspective. I grew up in Brooklyn, NY. I narrowly missed being shot at age 14. Despite that fact, I came to enjoy going to firing ranges when I travel to places that have them. And yet this weekend, I took down and trashed a shooting-range target riddled with holes that I’ve been proud of for 9 years. I’m done glorifying guns even if I’m still divided on their place in our society. And personally, I’d love to have a better understanding of the data behind both positions.
And if another pro-gun person lectures me on how we shouldn’t regulate guns because it’ll be hard to do (and in defense of the position cites the fact that we can’t “even” keep drugs out of people’s hands)…I’ll actually scream. That argument is a lot like saying that since we can’t stop all drunk drivers we should strike down DWI laws and accompanying law enforcement.
We should be looking for real data. Crime prevention stats, accidental deaths, gun-related crimes as a % of total crime in major metro areas and in rural areas. Gun crimes in areas with harsh mandatory minimums. Gun crimes in surrounding areas where the “gun show loophole” is in effect. Not just studies that show that the US sucks compared to other countries around gun crimes (it does) but a study looking at the US itself in great detail. If this resonates, can you please share that sentiment by asking everyone, especially the gun lobby to share the #realgundata?
Rhetoric won’t bring back the lives taken in Sandy Hook. But perhaps a more factual dialog with the goal of better regulation could prevent the majority of tragedies that haven’t happened yet? Isn’t it worth abandoning the political jockeying?
It’s hard not to feel emotional about this topic and just have the discussion on fact-based analysis, but it’s necessary. Then again, so are the emotions. From my naked, non-scientific, review of the assessments of my friends of various political persuasions, it’s clear there is consensus that SOMETHING needs to be done. Interestingly, my friends who are more conservative believe that the focus should be on the need for mental health support as opposed to stopping the sales of the AR-15 that seems to be the gun of choice for a lot of these mass shootings. My more liberal friends believe in taking guns off the street completely. Frankly, I lean center-left, but do think it’s hard to justify the rampant access to firearms that allow someone with a grudge, who is having a bad day, to just buy a weapon.
We regulate food, drugs, personal training, etc…but we cannot regulate guns? I was speaking to a good friend this morning (father of twin boys) who told me when he was sixteen pursuing his driver’s license, his father informed him that this was his first ‘weapon’ and he needed to treat it as such and take the process of assessing his ‘right’ to handle such a weapon seriously. That was a car. We’re discussing real weapons that were designed for killing.
Let’s have the many parties involved in this discussion (gun lovers, gun haters, those of us who are afraid of guns, law enforcement, military, healthcare professionals, ALL OF US OTHERS, etc…) sit down, look at the data and get this done – take reasonable steps and compromise. There is no thing more sacred than the future for our children which should mandate a focus on making real progress on this issue.
Kof