What Do Gun Owners Need to Know About Their Guns?

I was born in 1944. I once asked my mother whether she had a difficult pregnancy with me. She laughed and said, “Oh yes. It was very difficult. My doctor told me I couldn’t drink or smoke for nine months!”

What medicine knew about the health risks of tobacco took the country another forty years to learn and figure out a response. Walk up to a counter in the convenience store and you don’t even notice the sign which says you will be asked to show an ID before you can buy a pack of cigarettes. Those signs didn’t exist anywhere until the 1980’s if then.

Thank to research by Art Kellerman and Fred Rivara published thirty years ago, we have known that access to guns in the home represents the same kind of medical risk which exists in homes which contain cigarettes. The gun industry can promote the false narrative about how guns protect us rather than harm us, but nobody takes that nonsense seriously, if they ever did.

So how come, here we are in the midst of what appears to be an overwhelming incidence of gun violence, and the chances are better than even that nothing will get done? How come for every state like Colorado which tightens up gun-control laws, another state like Florida will make it easier for folks to get their hands on guns?