To reduce gun violence, stop guns at the source
by Heather Martens ,
Mary Lewis Grow
January 18, 2012
Heather Martens is executive director and Mary Lewis Grow is a board member of Protect Minnesota: Working to End Gun Violence.
In Minneapolis, Duluth and 70 cities nationwide, community members gathered Jan. 8 in solemn commemorations of the one-year anniversary of the Tucson shootings. These events followed by less than a week the funeral of three-year-old Terrell Mayes Jr., killed by a bullet that went through the walls of his north Minneapolis house as the little boy and his brother were running for cover from the too-common sound of gunfire. Later in the same week, thousands attended the funeral of Officer Shawn Schneider of Lake City, shot in the line of duty as he responded to a domestic violence call.
Yet 2011 was a year with fewer gun homicides in Minnesota than the year before. About 32 people still die every day in this country from gun homicide — about one a week in Minnesota. The toll is simply appalling. To grasp this in a way statistics cannot convey, watch the video below. It was taken at the Minneapolis event, as grieving relatives and friends read name after name.
The nationwide "Too Many Victims" vigils demanded that public officials commit to stopping these needless deaths. We must start with the source of the guns.
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The sad truth is that more guns in more hands doesn't lead to more public safety. The National Academy of Sciences, after an exhaustive review of the data, found in 2004 that making concealed carry permits available to more people does nothing to improve public safety. But interrupting gun trafficking does. Let's resolve this year to act where the common ground is.
More: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/01/18/martens-lewis-grow/
The 2004 NAS Study: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10881
= new reply since forum marked as read
...to get an idea of how gun-controllers wish to operate. You will find them in OP's link.
If that isn't government by train wreck and chaos, I don't know what is.
I thought we liked social scientists, or is rather that we just like social scientists we agree with and wish to ignore conflicting data analyses? 
How is it that "gun-controllers wish to operate?" Would you care to elaborate? 
...when anti-gun control organizations put their money behind pro-gun studies it's a good thing, but when pro-gun control studies but their money behind anti-gun studies it's a bad thing. Gotcha.
Damn philanthropists, always looking out for the poor and downtrodden with their social activism. 
...but those aren't recommendations, that's why I was confused - the bold headings are the proposals by the gun lobby to the Minnesota State Legislature. I just saw "recommendations" and thought you were referring to the NAS study. My bad. Are the characterizations described in the bold inaccurate?
...maybe we should have reasonable gun laws?
