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Sun Nov 14 00:38:15 GMT 2004

Colleagues:

In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof describes methods to make
handguns safer. 

The original column is in HTML at 
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/13/opinion/13kristof.html?th (Free
registration may be required) 
and it is pasted below.

Barry Armstrong
General Surgeon
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
________________________________

November 13, 2004

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR 

Lock and Load

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Nothing kills Democratic candidates' prospects more than guns. If it weren't
for guns, President-elect Kerry might now be conferring with incoming Senate
Majority Leader Daschle.

Since the Brady Bill took effect in 1994, gun-control efforts have been a
catastrophe for Democrats. They have accomplished almost nothing nationally,
other than giving a big boost to the Republicans. Mr. Kerry tried to get
around the problem by blasting away at small animals, but nervous Red
Staters still suspected Democrats of plotting to seize guns.

Moreover, it's clear that in this political climate, further efforts at gun
control are a nonstarter. You can talk until you're blue in the face about
the 30,000 gun deaths each year, about children who are nine times as likely
to die in a gun accident in America as elsewhere in the developed world,
about the $17,000 average cost (half directly borne by taxpayers) of
treating each gun injury. But nationally, gun control is dead.

So it's time for a fundamentally new approach, emblematic of how Democrats
must think in new ways about old issues. The new approach is to accept that
handguns are part of the American landscape, but to use a public health
approach to try to make them much safer. 

The model is automobiles, for a high rate of traffic deaths was once thought
to be inevitable. But then we figured out ways to mitigate the harm with
seat belts, air bags and collapsible steering columns, and since the 1950's
the death rate per mile driven has dropped 80 percent.

Similar steps are feasible in the world of guns.

"You can tell whether a camera is loaded by looking at it, and you should be
able to tell whether a gun is loaded by looking at it," said David Hemenway,
director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Professor Hemenway
has written "Private Guns, Public Health," a brilliant and clear-eyed primer
for the country.

We take safety steps that reduce the risks of everything from chain saws (so
they don't kick back and cut off an arm) to refrigerators (so kids can't
lock themselves inside). But firearms have been exempt. Companies make
cellphones that survive if dropped, but some handguns can fire if they hit
the ground.

Professor Hemenway notes that in the 1990's, two children a year, on
average, died after locking themselves in car trunks. This was considered
unacceptable, so a government agency studied the problem, and General Motors
and Ford engineered safety mechanisms to prevent such deaths. 

In contrast, 15 children under the age of 5 die annually in fatal gun
accidents in the U.S., along with 18 children 5 to 9 years old. We routinely
make aspirin bottles childproof, but not guns, even though childproof
pistols were sold back in the 19th century - they wouldn't fire unless the
shooter put pressure on the handle as well as the trigger. 

Aside from making childproof guns, here are other steps we could take:

Require magazine safeties so a gun cannot be fired when the clip is removed
(people can forget that a bullet may still be in the chamber and pull the
trigger). Many guns already have magazine safeties, but not all.

Finance research to develop "smart guns," which can be fired only by
authorized users. If a cellphone can be locked with a PIN, why not a gun?
This innovation would protect children - and thwart criminals.

Start public safety campaigns urging families to keep guns locked up in a
gun safe or with a trigger lock (now, 12 to 14 percent of gun owners with
young children keep loaded and unlocked weapons in their homes).

Encourage doctors to counsel depressed patients not to keep guns, and to
advise new parents on storing firearms safely.

Make gun serial numbers harder for criminals to remove.

Create a national database for gun deaths. In a traffic fatality, 120 bits
of data are collected, like the positions of the passengers and the local
speed limit, so we now understand what works well (air bags, no "right on
red") and what doesn't (driver safety courses). Statistics on gun violence
are much flimsier, so we don't know what policies would work best, and much
of the data hurled by rival camps at each other is inaccurate.

Would these steps fly politically? Maybe. One poll showed that 88 percent of
the public favors requiring that guns be childproof. And such measures
demonstrate the kind of fresh thinking that can keep alive not only
thousands of Americans, but the Democratic Party as well. 

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>  | Home
<http://www.nytimes.com/>  | 

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