Gun rights must be balanced by life, liberty, happiness - Jack Kligerman

We've dealt with Mr. Kligerman previously here and here. Mr. Kligerman has a spotty record on his logical thinking, and this letter is no exception. Our comments in bold.

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Since 1979, there have been approximately 900,000 gun-related deaths within the U.S. (source: Bloomberg Government News). (34 years? That long, long time period allows Mr. Kligerman to make the number seem high. But that averages out to 26,000 per year. In addition, we don't know home many of those were accidental deaths, deaths caused by self-defense, or suicides. 

But since he compares those deaths to deaths caused by war, it would be reasonable to isolate the number to firearm homicides, that is, violent deliberate war deaths compared to violent, deliberate firearms deaths.

Happily, the CDC splits out the death by cause in this chart. Here's their statistics from 1988 to 1992:

From this we can see that there were 15,769 firearm homicides in that 4 year period. Since I don't have the figures for other years, we shall extrapolate. 15,769/4=3942.5 firearm homicides per year. 3942.5 x 34 years = 134,045 firearm homicides, much less than the 900,000 Mr. Kligerman asserts. 

But notice the other causes of death from the chart. Heart disease, cancer, and stroke are all much higher risk of death than firearm homicide. In fact, firearm homicide is dead last on the list, accounting for only 0.07 percent of all deaths.) 

The combined U.S. deaths among all Armed Service members in World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War total 626,582. We have to add the 625,000 Civil War deaths to exceed our recent peacetime record. I guess one has to have a rather high degree of tolerance to accept 900,000 as a normal, run-of-the-mill U.S. amount. (It's worth noting that every single death chronicled in this list was perpetrated by government. We wonder how that might sit with Mr. Kligerman, if it ever occurred to him.) 

Then, of course, there are the more recent, assault weapons’ slaughters, especially of children and high school students. Is it really safer on the battlefield than in our homes and on our streets? (Notice that the CDC chart separates the figures by race. 7,274 black men died from firearm homicide over that 4 year period, which is 46% of all firearm homicides, even though blacks comprise only 13% of the population. We have the answer to his question, don't we? It's certainly not safer on a battlefield than on the street, unless you're a black male.

Here's another chart from the same CDC website. You can see that firearm homicides are mostly a youth affair, with black youths far and away at most risk. This means that there is a very small risk of being murdered by a firearm unless you are a young black male. So if Mr. Kligerman is interested in stopping gun violence, he needs to start in the inner city gangs, not the general law-abiding populace. And, if he wants to be consistent, he should be in favor of taking the guns out of the hands of government, which far and away perpetrates the most firearm violence.)

The Declaration of Independence promises the chance of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” to all Americans (No, it does not. The Declaration says that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. It does not promise a chance at anything.),

but what chance do the almost million dead over the past 40-plus years have that any of these promises might be kept? (Indeed, death denies the right to life, doesn't it? And all death does that, not only firearm homicide. If Mr. Kligerman wants to be consistent [again], he would favor outlawing cancer and heart disease. And we would be willing to bet that the 56 million aborted babies who didn't get a chance at life are not particularly concerning to a leftist like Mr. Kligerman.) 

Set against them is the Second Amendment, which — because of a Supreme Court misreading of 18th-Century English — has been taken to give carte-blanche to possession of all kinds of guns and munitions, none of which, as we all know, could ever have been imagined by the Founding Fathers (There is no carte-blanche possession. This is a common leftist meme, completely false. There are hundreds of limitations on gun possession right now. Mr. Kligerman is simply misrepresenting the truth. 

But more egregious is his suggestion that the supreme court erred. The second amendment, like all of the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution itself, was adopted to further limit and define the power of government. So the Second Amendment tells government that the right to keep and bear arms "...shall not be infringed." There was no misreading by the supreme court, they finally got one right.). 

So what is to be done?

Perhaps a new gun-owners organization that might call itself Responsible Gun Owners of America, who would lobby for sensible regulations regarding firearms, since the NRA seems to take no responsibility for conditions which have lead to slaughter on our soil (Because we have no gun regulation at all at present...

And why should the NRA take responsibility? They didn't commit the crime. In fact, the NRA teaches gun safety and responsible gun use. I would be willing to bet that an examination of its membership roles would yield not a single gun felon. You see, gun felons break the law with guns. That is the opposite of responsible gun use. And criminals certainly are not responsible gun users).

Arm all teachers? According to an ER doctor in a New York Times op-ed piece, “one-quarter of gun crimes (Moving the goalposts from gun deaths to gun homicides to gun crimes...)

in American ERs were committed with guns wrested from armed guards.” (No one has suggested that all teachers must be armed.) 

Get real and begin a new dialogue that takes as its starting point the promise of the Declaration of Independence.