Barack Obama: Guns Are Our Shared Responsibility | Hacker News Reader

Barack Obama: Guns Are Our Shared Responsibility

nytimes.com

4 pointsust6 comments

"30,000 Americans have their lives cut short by guns"

To put it in perspective (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm):

    Heart disease: 611,105
    Cancer: 584,881
    Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
    Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
    Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
    Alzheimer's disease: 84,767
    Diabetes: 75,578
    Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
    Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
    Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149

Note that Accidents or Unintentional Injuries include (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm)

    Unintentional fall deaths: 30,208
    Motor vehicle traffic deaths: 33,804
    Unintentional poisoning deaths: 38,851

Overall, I think we need to have Executive Order to cure Heart diseases and Cancer before we go after the guns.

To give more consideration to that argument than it's worth for a second, is there no government funded medical research into these medical issues in the US then?

Add to the fact that you'd be talking about prevention, not cure for it to be a parallel to the gun issue.

Shame that no government can try to do something about more than one issue at once, though. Imagine what it would be like if we could keep dangerous drivers off the streets, give those with mental illness the treatment they deserve, conduct medical research into preventing and curing life threatening illnessess, and stop deadly weapons from getting into the hands of those who would use them to harm others, but all at the same time!

"federal funding for cancer research is at the lowest point in decades..."

http://www.asco.org/sites/www.asco.org/files/cancer_resarch_...

That page doesn't give cancer research spending, just overall NIH budgets, and it ignores cancer research spending from outside of the NIH budget.

The problem that the media utterly ignores is that the Obama administration does nothing with the failed checks it has NOW.

In 2010, for example, there were over 73,000 gun purchase attempt denials[1], of which over 48,000[1] were known to be felons and/or fugitives from justice [2]). The number the Obama administration attempted any prosecution of? 44. [1]

Just think: in the first two years of the Obama administration (the most recent data in the WP article), there were over 25,000 fugitives that were identified trying to purchase handguns and over 67,000 felons trying to purchase handguns... and the Obama administration only even attempted to prosecute 121 of the total 92,000+.

Note that fugitive number: that's 25,000 fugitives that could have been caught and taken off the street just by having law enforcement show up at the gun store when the would-be buyer attempted to get a handgun.

1. Washington Post Fact-checker blog, 4/11/13

2. NCJRS

My personal favorite line was the president of United States calling it a democracy.

It is a republic as written in constitution. The framers of constitution wrote much about the dangers of democracy, and here we are, where presidents call the United States one.

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