Greg Dworkin is one of the front page bloggers at the Daily Kos. He is also a physician and a friend of mine. He is also a Newtown, Ct resident. We discuss the need for gun control in this country. Yes, we need to talk about other factors, including metal health issues, but Newtown clearly revealed the need for gun control. Remember that the first victim of the Newtown shooting was a gun owner. She was shot with her own gun while she was sleeping. Having more guns isn’t the solution. If having more guns were the solution, then Nancy Lanza would be alive today. She had plenty.
Enjoy my podcast below.
Greg posted the following this morning:
In order to explain, the significance of this graph, let me include another graph that shows gun ownership by region. This is from Gallup:
But if anything has been learned since [the election], it’s that the president’s power in Washington remains severely constrained by a Republican opposition establishment that is bitter about its losses, unmoved by Mr. Obama’s victory and unwilling to compromise on social policy, economics or foreign affairs. House Republicans, in particular, argue that they won elections as well and they see their ability to retain control of the House as granting them the right to stick to their own views even when they clash strongly with the president’s.
So the Times is calling them bitter and uncompromising dead-enders? Accurate observation.
Gun Control discussion with Greg Dworkin of the Daily Kos [ 40:09 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
I don’t think that there ever is a solution to most problems or at least a complete solution.
No guarantees in life.
No, we are not all Newton. I can imagine losing a child but I can’t experience the grief of those parents.
The big picture is that 99.9999% of 34 million elementary school children went to school without any gun violence that day and the day before and for more than 2000 days since the last mass elementary school shooting in the US. More children die from drowning than homicide. The sudden loss of a child will most likely be due to an accidental injury. Being a trauma surgeon, how many shot children do you see compared to those injured in car accidents? How can a policy be measured against such infrequent events? When we had the Assault Weapons Ban school shootings didn’t disappear, ie Columbine.
I didn’t see the point of Dworkin’s chart. Cutting of the chart at 2000 fails to illustrate the dramatic decline in the homicide rate.
Do you think the Biden Commission will have any serious proposals? Would Biden be an effective advocate or will this be a platform for him to launch his 2016 campaign?
As usual, I appreciate your comments
You’re exactly right, there are no guarantees in life. I don’t believe that at any time during this interview or any of the things that I have written on gun control did I ever say or even suggest that eliminating assault rifles will cure all of our problems. My goal is to try to make mass shootings the rare event that it should be.
As I mentioned in the podcast, the rate of homicides in the United States has dramatically dropped since the mid-1990s. (I have updated my post and included a Gallup poll graph that I believe helps explain the original graph.)
I might be wrong but I don’t think that anybody seriously considering Vice President Joe Biden as a serious 2016 candidate. I don’t even think the most optimistic Joe Biden supporters are considering that he has a legitimate shot. In my opinion, Joe Biden has been a good, solid Vice President. There may be some dramatic events that happen in the next 2-3 years that make him a more viable presidential candidate but I don’t see it right now.
Thanks for your time. Oh, happy holidays to you and your family.
To TCB: No, there are no complete solutions, and as I hope I indicated in the podcast, there are no plans and no appetite for “going after people’s guns’. But taking the ‘mass’ out of ‘mass murder’ is a good idea, and an assault weapons and high capacity magazine ban is a common sense solution, supported by the public, conservatives, hunters and gun owners.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/20/1172170/-Daily-Kos-PPP-Poll-NRA-and-GOP-grossly-out-of-step-with-America-including-Republicans
here’s another helpful graph from kearenhealy.org so things are not taken out of context:
<img src=”http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/13682/lightbox/America-is-violent-graph.png?1356449846″ width=”450″>